Me and the Mule

Langston Hughes’s poetry is nearly synonymous with the Harlem Renaissance, a period of time that lasted from approximately 1920 through the mid 1930s. Although the movement was associated with and named after the Manhattan neighborhood of Harlem, it was really an African diaspora revival of cultural, literary, artistic, and musical forms that spanned the globe. As a Black man and poet living in Harlem at the height of the movement, Langston Hughes was at its center; his work—both early and late in his career— is obviously informed by the ideals of the Harlem Renaissance.

Harlem, as the center of African American Northern migration in the United States, was considered the epicenter for the renaissance of African cultural arts. At the time, many African American families moved from the Southern part of the United States to cities and towns in the Midwest or Northeast to escape the racism associated with Jim Crow and segregation laws that followed the post-Civil War Reconstruction Era. This sweep of immigration, which took place in the early 20th century, is often referred to as the Great Migration. Hughes’s family was one of many that moved northward during the Great Migration, which makes his work’s connection to the movement multi-layered.