Chapter 12, Black Renaissance Summary

After his first year at Lincoln, Hughes rented a room in Harlem for the summer. During this time he met with many important literary figures of the Black Renaissance, including Aaron Douglas, Zora Neale Hurston, John P. Davis, and Gwendolyn Bennet. This group of individuals decided to create a black magazine of the arts called Fire. Langston found work as a song lyricist for a musical revue; however, the revue was never seen.

Hughes continued to write poetry throughout this time period, and "Mulatto" and "A House in Taos" were published during that summer. "A House in Taos" won first place in an annual Intercollegiate Undergraduate Poetry Contest. When Fire was finally published at the end of the summer, it was received with mixed reviews. Blacks found the magazine to be crippling to black society, whereas many white critics...