James Langston Hughes was an outstanding African American poet who relentlessly fought against racial segregation and significantly contributed to strengthening black consciousness and racial pride among the black people in America, particularly through the Harlem Renaissance. Hughes was born in Joplin, Missouri, in 1902. His parents separated shortly after his birth, his father eventually moving to Mexico, ostensibly driven by the contempt he had developed for African Americans whom he saw as having accepted their deprived state in the racially segregated America. Hughes spent his early childhood with his maternal grandmother in Lawrence, Kansas. It was an altogether lonely and unhappy life. But the caring and inspiring nature of his grandmother, a political activist in her own right, and the love he cultivated for books and reading, made it bearable. After 1914, he lived with his mother in Lincoln, Illinois, and then Cleveland, Ohio. Upon graduation from high school in 1919, he spent…