Groundsite Image Gallery
University of Kansas
Artist: Hughes, Langston
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University of Kansas, about 1895
Langston Hughes’s mother Carolina (Carrie) attended K.U. from 1894 to 1895, although she could not afford to be a full-time student. She took classes in English and German. This 1895 photograph (by E.S. Tucker) shows the extent of campus at that time. Most of the area outside downtown was treeless, since it was natural prairie.
This view shows Spooner Library on the left, the Physics Building in the distance, the Main Building, and Snow Hall on the right.
Hughes attended cultural events at K.U., as he writes in I Wonder as I Wander, “As a child in Lawrence, my grandmother had carried me to hear Booker T. Washington speak at the University of Kansas, so I had a vague memory of that great Negro educator and of the packed auditorium listening to him” (60). This event could have been around 1905 when Hughes was listed on the Kansas census as living with his grandmother. Other sources place this lecture in Topeka.