Additionally, Hughes's collaborations with other playwrights and his efforts to establish African American theaters throughout the United States strengthened American drama in immeasurable ways. Though he was not widely acknowledged as a dramatist, Hughes's talent in the dramatic genre and his influence as a playwright are remarkable; his staging brought the artistry, vitality, and humanity of African Americans to increasingly wide audiences.
James Langston Hughes--named after his father, James, and his maternal grandfather, Charles Langston--was born in Joplin, Missouri, on 1 February 1902. His family soon moved, and Langston, as he was called from the beginning, grew up in Lawrence, Kansas. He was raised primarily by his maternal grandmother, Mary Sampson Patterson Leary Langston, and his upbringing was characterized by frequent moves and familial upheaval and also by a prevailing familial expectation of his success. His father, a professional man prevented from taking the bar exam because he was black, abandoned the family when Hughes was five years old, immigrating to Mexico to better his lot in a society less bound by racial restrictions. Hughes's mother, Carrie, refusing her husband's half-hearted attempts to bring the family to live in Mexico, traveled from city to city finding jobs as a journalist and stenographer.
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