Langston Hughes was one of the most important writers and thinkers of the Harlem Renaissance, which was the African American artistic movement in the 1920s that celebrated black life and culture.
Langston Hughes made a major poet. He wrote novels, short stories, essays, and plays. Hughes sought to portray the joys and hardships of working class black lives.
Hughes moved to harlem in 1921 after attending Columbia University in New York City in 1921-1922, he explored Harlem. He then formed a permanent attachment to what he called ¨ The great dark city¨ and worked as a steward on a freighter bound in Africa.