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As a household name for so many readers of varying persuasions, Langston Hughes was perhaps the most significant black American writer in the twentieth century. From the Harlem Renaissance of the early twenties, to the Black Arts reorientations of the sixties, his short stories, novels, dramas, translations, and seminal anthologies of the works of others at home and abroad, helped unify peoples in the African diaspora. He helped nurture, in other words, so profoundly the generations after him. His early work was an innovative complement to the talent of his contemporaries, including the Keatsian verse of Countee Cullen, the avant-garde and even prophetic painting of Aaron Douglass, and the musical flamboyance of Josephine Baker. In his late twenties and early thirties, he helped inspire writers Margaret Walker and Gwendolyn Brooks. Later he encouraged writers of a third generation, including Ted Joans, Mari Evans, and Alice Walker. And, all the while, he indirectly helped open the doors of publishing to them and others of various races; he helped charm the American audience to the future of ethnic equality and pluralism.
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