langston hughes career

Hughes spent the year after high school in mexico with his father, who tried to discourage him from writing. Hughes returned to america and enrolled in columbia university in new york. He found the atmosphere there unfriendly and left after a year.  His main concern was the uplift of his people, whose strengths, resiliency, courage, and humor he wanted to record as part of the general American experience. Hughes's first collection of short stories was published in 1934 with The Ways of White Folks.In 1930, his first novel, Not Without Laughter, won the Harmon Gold Medal for literature.In 1943, Hughes began publishing stories about a character he called Jesse B. Semple, often referred to and spelled "Simple", the everyday black man in Harlem who offered musings on topical issues of the day. "Langston set a tone, a standard of brotherhood and friendship and cooperation, for all of us to follow. You never got from him, 'I am the Negro writer,' but only 'I am a Negro writer.' He never stopped thinking about the rest of us