Langston Hughes

In his autobiography The Big Sea, Langston Hughes writes about living his first years in Lawrence, Kansas, until he was "going on fourteen." Indeed, local documents support this claim. Although he was born in Joplin, Missouri, and started school in Topeka, he spent most of his first years in Lawrence. Soon after his birth in 1902, his mother and her mother, Mary Sampson Langston, returned to the family home in Lawrence (1902-03 city directory). Later, in 1907, his father also lived in Lawrence at the same residence, and he was employed as a stenographer. The reconciliation did not last, and when her husband left for Mexico, Carrie Langston Hughes traveled the region looking for work. Most often she left the young Hughes with his grandmother at 732 Alabama Street.

When Thomas Pecore Weso and I began the project of photographing and researching sites connected to Hughes, most information focused on his later life. We found a trove of historic documents that had not been touched, including mortgage records, deeds, newspaper accounts, and addresses. We discovered the mostly lost site of Woodland Park, once a well known destination for early Lawrencians and the setting for a true incident in Hughes's novel Not Without Laughter. In a history of local school districts, we found a reference to Charles Langston at a time when integration of 19th century rural schools was an issue. He and his colleagues prevailed. In U.S. and Kansas census records we found shifting categories of "race" for the Langston and other similar families-"White," "Mulatto," and finally "Colored." Lumbee, Pamunkey, and Cherokee ancestry of Langston grandparents were erased in these generic racial terms. Deeds and mortgages showed the Langston holdings on Alabama Street went beyond the one lot, and although the original house was destroyed, other family dwellings remain. We also found the ground-breaking 1970s work of local historians Katie Armitage, William Tuttle, Elizabeth Schultz, and Paulette Sutton. We came to appreciate how the Lawrence Preservation Alliance and other community initiatives helped to retain some of Langston Hughes's architectural environment in Lawrence. The downtown is on the National Register of Historic Places, as well as other Lawrence sites. We were surprised how much remained of early 20th century Lawrence.

When Hughes left town, probably at the end of 1915 or perhaps into 1916, he took with him an educational foundation that made it possible for him to succeed in high school and college. By his early twenties, he wrote remarkable poetry that caught the eye of Alfred Knopf, who published Hughes's book The Weary Blues in 1926. This was the first African American-authored book published by a mainstream New York press for a national public. It launched his career as an essayist, dramatist, poet, novelist, journalist, and lyricist. He gained prominence as one of the leaders of the Harlem Renaissance. At the time of his death in 1967, he had written over thirty books in addition to a dozen plays. He innovated jazz poetry, which still evolves as a unique American form.

Hughes's Lawrence life, despite its difficulties, afforded opportunities that would support his career as a national, multi-talented writer. He achieved an education in the partially integrated and sometimes hostile schools (a childhood friend remembered him as an advanced student); he gained work experience in downtown businesses; and he was exposed to vaudeville, theater, and film. Through family friends James and Mary Reed, he attended St. Luke A.M.E. Church, where he heard music and literary programs as well as sermons. In addition, his grandparents bequeathed a proud heritage of activism.

Hughes was born into a family with prominent roles in the Civil War-era struggle for equality. Lawrence was founded by abolitionists, and this must have attracted the Langston family in 1870 when Charles and Mary Sampson Langston bought a farm five miles northwest of town. This was an area settled by African American people, many of whom had traveled the runaway slave route known as the Underground Railroad. Mary was recognized publicly by President Teddy Roosevelt as the widow of Lewis Leary, a man who died with John Brown at the raid on Harper's Ferry. Her second husband Charles attended Oberlin College and helped rescue a runaway slave in a celebrated incident known as the Oberlin-Wellington Rescue.

When the family moved to Lawrence in 1886, they quickly became prominent members of the community, as indicated by society pages in the local paper. After the grandfather's death, however, the family farm and grocery business failed. By the time the boy Langston Hughes was born in 1902, the remaining family lived off renting rooms in their house near the University of Kansas. In his books, Hughes describes watching K.U. football games, riding the electric street cars, visiting libraries, delivering newspapers, cleaning a hotel, and attending school and church.

Much of the Lawrence that Langston Hughes knew as a boy remains. The barn where he milked the Reeds' cows and collected eggs is still standing, as well as churches, junior high, library, opera house, and an uncle's house. His grandfather's grocery store building is intact, as well as the seed company where Hughes sold maple seeds in the springtime. One of the railroad stations, where he sometimes journeyed to Kansas City to visit his mother, still stands. The cemetery holds gravesites of his grandparents, two uncles, and perhaps a cousin. His African American elementary teacher's house still stands near his former school. Other original buildings mentioned in Hughes's books are gone, but images of them are available in historic photographs, also collected for this project.

Acknowledgement of these places commemorate a remarkable man and author-a true hero. They also show how the 19th century and early 20th century businesses, churches, and schools anchored this community. They show stratification of economic and ethnic classes, as well as the exceptions. Lawrence is a place where a young boy had deferred and sometimes angry dreams. It also is a place where even a person of humble origins can rise to full potential. Perhaps that is the magic of looking at photographs of places elaborated by Hughes's commentary. We know he was a marginalized, impoverished child who gathered strength from family and community-and then as a grown man, he used his gifts to create a legacy of beautiful, powerful language.

Denise Low