Langston Hughes
American poet and social activistWikipedia
118
MENTIONS
64
EPISODES
56
PODCASTS
Search complete. 118 mentions across 64 episodes found for "Langston Hughes".
Sep 15, 2026
Karina LongworthHOST
This was a moment when there was cultural capital in racial ambiguity.
Karina LongworthHOST
Langston Hughes wrote about it as, quote, "The period when the Negro was in vogue," but also noted that the, quote, "Colored chorus girl amber enough to pass for a Latin American had the most capital of all." There was nothing voguish about being a Jewish girl from Cincinnati.
Karina LongworthHOST
So if people thought Libby was passing as white, and if that made her more appealing in show business, she was going to take advantage of that.
Karina LongworthHOST
But there's also something else.
17 MINS LATER
Karina LongworthHOST
Here, Black people could flourish by providing services that they needed." And yet, there was money and prestige to be had in catering to the white tourists flooding uptown.
Karina LongworthHOST
The Black star musicians of the day who were selected to perform for white audiences often did so in clubs controlled by white people.
Karina LongworthHOST
Lucy Moore quotes Langston Hughes as saying that the community merely accepted, quote, "the role forced on it, that of bookie, bootlegger, and bordello to white downtown." One reason Libby and her friends liked to go uptown was that Harlem was a safe space to explore bisexuality.
Karina LongworthHOST
Libby did not, as far as we know, call herself a bisexual, but in the 1920s, it was rare to be into labels.
Catherine A. JohnGUEST
You know, when I started, it was probably one of the earlier courses on hip hop in the country.
Catherine A. JohnGUEST
Um, and I did it because I realized that hip hop artists had performed a similar kind of indigenization of the landscapes they found themselves in, right? Indigenizing it with their graffiti, their noise, their spoken word, their DJ parties, their break dancing, their style, right? To say nothing of their re-indigenizing of the planter- plantation owner's English into their own vernacular sound and sense, right? And in the process, they created a situation in which the children of both immigrants and plantation owners, as well as various people outside the African diaspora community, began to imitate the style, sound, and sense of what Zora Neale Hurston and Langston Hughes would refer to as the folk's lowest down, right? In fact, Hurston prophetically, I think, states that, quote, "The man in the gutter is the god maker.
Catherine A. JohnGUEST
He is the creator of everything that lasts." Right.
Catherine A. JohnGUEST
We can modernize her statement to say woman or person, but the idea at the core is powerful, right? So Hurston's statement and Winter's essay are part of the theoretical landscape and foundation of the Afro-indigenization concept.
Mike MadridGUEST
I used to write a lot when I was a teenager and a young kid.
Mike MadridGUEST
And I wrote poetry and I would read Langston Hughes.
Mike MadridGUEST
And so I wrote this piece on Langston Hughes going to Kenyon College and giving a very similar talk to what I was asked to come speak at Kenyon College too.
Mike MadridGUEST
So there's this kind of cathartic thing.
Mike MadridGUEST
And I do paint.
1 HR 3 MINS LATER
Mike MadridGUEST
I know time's an issue.
Mike MadridGUEST
So I mentioned that I went to Canyon College in Ohio, and I always research a little bit where I'm going to go.
Mike MadridGUEST
And it turned out in 1947, Langston Hughes came to Canyon College, and he wrote this book.
Mia JacksonGUEST
You know what, Joel, there have been some lonely nights.
Mia JacksonGUEST
Um, [clears throat] times like this I wanna quote, um, Langston Hughes, uh, "Life for me ain't been no crystal stair." But no, it's actually been, it's been interesting.
Mia JacksonGUEST
It's been a, um...
Mia JacksonGUEST
There's a part of me that feels like fly by the seat of my pants kinda thing, and then there's another part of me that feels like, oh, there's an amount of preparation involved in it, 'cause this is one of the things where, you know, I went from always having a job to where I knew, you know, every two weeks I get paid this certain amount of money.
Martha BantaGUEST
I believe there will be visuals to accompany that.
Martha BantaGUEST
Portraits of Langston will include, uh, spoken word poems by Langston Hughes.
Martha BantaGUEST
Um, I'm also really excited about the WC Sonata for violin and cello.
Martha BantaGUEST
It's one of my favorite pieces.
Jackie KayGUEST
because her life went from very poor, as a nine-year-old girl, she sang on street corners for a nickel and a dime, to very rich in the 1920s when she was, you know, kind of also part of the kind of Harlem Renaissance, where they hang kind of all sorts of different people.
Jackie KayGUEST
in Harlem at the time, artists and other singers and other poets, Langston Hughes.
Jackie KayGUEST
She was just an extraordinary person.
Jackie KayGUEST
She was very working class.
Otis Moss IIISOUNDBITE_SPEAKER
You're still missing it.
Otis Moss IIISOUNDBITE_SPEAKER
Langston Hughes, without a doubt, is the poet laureate of the Harlem Renaissance.
Otis Moss IIISOUNDBITE_SPEAKER
the dean of the poetic craft in black America, but would be excluded from many churches.
Otis Moss IIISOUNDBITE_SPEAKER
You're still missing it.
Eddie GlaudeGUEST
There's all kinds of carnage happening here, so what, what is the musical landscape giving us?
Lara DownesGUEST
And it's also 1921, and it's Shuffle Along on Broadway, and it's, you know, this huge craze for Black music, and it's Langston Hughes saying, "This is the beginning of the Renaissance" and it's all of this energy, and it's migration.
Lara DownesGUEST
It's all these people finding each other in Chicago and Harlem, and that kind of flowering that we can't, we can't regret that.
Eddie GlaudeGUEST
Oh, but it's also the kind of tension that makes this place swing.
Teri JohnsonGUEST
You're a natural storyteller.
Teri JohnsonGUEST
And you're so passionate about Harlem and Josephine Baker and Langston Hughes and Duke Ellington.
Teri JohnsonGUEST
So...
Teri JohnsonGUEST
I said, well, let me just see, let me try.
Teri JohnsonGUEST
I have to do my own due diligence and read and watch, watch the documentaries and the movies and films that have been created about this time period and about these people and read their work.
Teri JohnsonGUEST
and also walk on the same streets that they walked in Harlem.
Teri JohnsonGUEST
Go to the home where Langston Hughes lived.
Teri JohnsonGUEST
Spend that time.
J.T. WheatleyHOST
Pies would also teach part-time at the YWCA, which was dubbed the Living Room of the Harlem Renaissance, while also working for the WPA, Works Projects Administration, as a muralist.
J.T. WheatleyHOST
Often congregated at the converted horse stable at 306 West 101st Street were fellow artists like Ralph Ellison, Duke Ellington, Richard Wright, and Langston Hughes, many of whom he would do portraits of.
J.T. WheatleyHOST
In 1936, Robert Pius designed a poster for the Texas Centennial Exposition, which was held at Dallas and included the Hall of Negro Life, one of the earliest mainstream examples of celebrating black history.
J.T. WheatleyHOST
At 1940, Pius won $100 for the program booklet and poster of the American Negro Exhibition in Chicago, which focused on black achievement and culture often overlooked in Western society and designed as an answer to the New York World's Fair.
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