Starting his career as
a poet in the 1920s, Langston Hughes quickly became associated with the
Harlem Renaissance, a movement that brought Black culture into the American
mainstream. His debut novel, Not Without Laughter, won the
Harmon Foundation Gold Award for Literature, but he was more enamored with the
stage, writing plays and musicals that subverted the form. The most famous of
these, Black Nativity, has been staged every year since its first
production. Meanwhile, he created the character Jesse B. Semple, AKA
“Simple”—an iconic, hilarious and popular Black everyman whose adventures and
reflections reveal essential truths about the Black American experience. Hughes
lived long enough to witness the Civil Rights Act of 1964 and is remembered as
a leading voice that put Black intellectuals on the map.
