(JAMES MERCER) LANGSTON HUGHES

Hughes (1902-1967) was born in Joplin, Missouri, and was a young man whom everyone liked and respected for his quiet, natural ways and his athletic abilities. His divorced father spent a year in Mexico with him, attempting to discourage him from writing. But Hughes's poetry and prose were beginning to appear in the Brownie's Book, a publication for children edited by W. E. B. Du Bois, and he was starting work on more ambitious material dealing with adult realities. Disenchanted with college, in 1923 he signed on as steward on a freighter, which took him along the coasts of Spain and the western coast of Africa. The next year he spent in Paris writing poetry. Most of his work appeared in African American publications, but Vanity Fair, a magazine popular among middle and upper class women, published three poems. Upon his return to the States to live with his mother in Washington, D.C., he worked menial jobs but kept writing poetry and began to win awards. Hughes had come to the attention of Carl Van Vechten, a white novelist and critic, who arranged publication of Hughes's first volume of verse, The Weary Blues (1926). He establish his style and showed his commitment to racial themes, transforming the bitterness that such themes generated in many of his African American contemporaries into sharp irony, gentle satire, and humor. A year after graduation from Lincoln University in 1929, he wrote his first novel. During the 30s he tried to make his sole income out of writing, turning out poems, plays, essays, book reviews, song lyrics, plays, short stories, children’s books, and editing anthologies of African American writing. He received many awards, taught creative writing at two universities, made recordings of African American history, music commentary, was elected to the American Academy of Arts and Sciences and to the National Institute of Arts and Letters, and earned a well-deserved international reputation.

ZORA NEALE HURSTON

Hurston (1903-1960) was born in Eatonville, Florida, the first incorporated all-black city in America. She attended Howard University from 1921 to 1925, when she won a scholarship to Barnard College in New York City. Hurston became a central figure in the Harlem Renaissance for her wits , high spirits, and storytelling ability. At Barnard she received a fellowship to collect oral histories and folklore in her home state, and she studied voodoo in Haiti. Her first novel, featuring a central character based on her father, was published in 1934. Mules and Men (1935), a collection of material from her research in oral folklore, became Hurston’s best-selling work during her lifetime even though it still only netted her less than a thousand dollars. Her masterpiece novel Their Eyes Were Watching God (1937) was about a black woman looking for love and happiness and celebrated the rich tradition of the rural black South. In addition to her literary career, Hurston taught for some years at North Carolina Central University, wrote for the Warner Brothers movie studio and was on the staff of the Library of Congress. Her last novel was published in 1948, giving her the distinction of having published more books than any other African American woman. Perhaps because she was unable to capture a mainstream audience, Hurston was forced to find work as a maid near the end of her life, and she died in poverty. Her work was posthumously revived by feminist and African American studies scholars, and today Hurston is seen as one of the most important black writers in American history.

ALICE WALKER

Walker (1944- ) was born in Eatonton, Georgia, the youngest of eight children born to sharecroppers. When she was 8 years old, one of her brothers shot out her right eye with a B.B. gun. Walker’s parents nurtured her with folk stories, and after attending Spelman College and Sarah Lawrence College, she spent a summer in Africa, an experience that provided her with ideas for her first collection of poetry. She was very active during the Civil Rights movement during the 1960s, writing her first novel in 1967 and having it published in 1970. Her second novel, published in 1976, is said to be one of the finest to have come out of the civil rights movement, but it was her third novel, The Color Purple (1982), that established her as a major American writer, best seller, and won her the Pulitzer Prize for Fiction in 1983. After divorcing in 1977, she moved to San Francisco the following year. Walker prefers being called a “womanist” over “feminist,” and is a strong spokesperson for African American women. Though offered academic awards and honorary degrees, she has often refused such recognition.