By: Nicole Anderson, Randi Huston,
Kathryn Grimes, Sam Larson
He was born Feb.1st in Joplin, Missouri. His
parents divorced and lived with his
grandmother until he was 13 he grew up
mostly in Lawrence, Kansas then moved
to Lincoln, Illinois to live with his mother
and her new husband.
Schooling: He went to Columbia University
but left after a year because he felt
unhappy. He went to Lincoln University
in Oxford Pa. on a scholarship and get his
B.A degree in 1929.
Jobs: Assistant cook, Launderer, Bus Boy,
Sea Man, Children's Author, Journalist,
Dramatist, and most importantly a Poet.
Langston Hughes poetry style was jazz. He
impacted the Harlem Renaissance by
voicing his concerns about social justice
through poetry, novels, plays, and essays.
Some of his inspirations and influences
are Paul Lawrence Dunbar, Carl
Sandburg, Walt Whitman.
Hughes defended African American
activists. In 1941 he wrote a poem
called Ballad of Booker T., Langston
Hughes defends Booker T.
Washington a farmer slave and more
conservative advocate for equality.
Booker T
Was a practical man.
He said , Till the soil,
Let down your bucket
Where you are.
Your fate is here
To help yourself.
And not afar
And your fellow man,
Train your head,
Your heart, and your head.
For smartness alone
Surely not meetIf you haven’t at the same time
Got something to eat.
Thus at Tuskgee
He built a school
With book-learning there
And the workman’s tool,
He started out
In simple wayWas not today,
Sometimes he had
Compromise in his talkFor a man must crawl
Before he can walkAnd in Alabama in’85
A joker was lucky
To be alive.
But Booker T.
Was nobody’s fool:
You may carve a dream
With a humble tool.
The tallest tower
Can tumble down
If it be not rooted
In solid ground,
So, being a far-seeing
Practical man,
He said, Train your head,
Your heart, and your head
Your fate is here
And not afar,
S o let down your bucket
Where you are.