Langston Hughes is best known as a key figure of the Harlem Renaissance. 

He was an American poet, social activist, novelist, playwright, and columnist.

Hughes wrote plays and published short story collections, novels, and several nonfiction works. 

His regular opinion column published in The Chicago Defender is still referred.

His poetry collection, The Weary Blues, was well received.

The Langston Hughes Memorial Library at Lincoln University and the James Weldon Johnson Collection at Yale both house archives of Hughes's work.

I share his poem “I Look at the World,” which I find very apt for our times.

I look at the world

From awakening eyes in a black face—

And this is what I see:

This fenced-off narrow space   

Assigned to me.

I look then at the silly walls

Through dark eyes in a dark face—

And this is what I know:

That all these walls oppression builds

Will have to go!

I look at my own body   

With eyes no longer blind—

And I see that my own hands can make

The world that's in my mind.

Then let us hurry, comrades,

The road to find.