LANGSTON HUGHES, was part of the Harlem Renaissance and was known during his lifetime as "the poet laureate of Harlem," He also worked as a journalist, dramatist, and children's author. His poems, which tell of the joys and miseries of the ordinary black man in America, have been widely translated.

James Langston Hughes was born on Feb. 1, 1902, in Joplin, Mo. In 1921 he enrolled at Columbia University in New York City but he was so lonely and unhappy that he left after a year.

He worked at various jobs, including that of a seaman, traveling to Africa and Europe. His first book of poetry, 'The Weary Blues', published in 1926, made him well known among literary people. He went on to Lincoln University in Oxford, Pa., on a scholarship and received his B.A. degree there in 1929.

From then on Hughes earned his living as a writer, portraying black life in the United States with idiomatic realism. 'Not without Laughter', a novel published in 1930, won him the Harmon god medal for literature. A book of poems for children, 'The Dream Keeper', came out in 1932. In 1934 appeared 'The Ways of White Folk's', a collection of short stories. His play 'Mulatto' opened on Broadway in 1935. He wrote the lyrics for 'Street Scene', a 1947 opera by Kurt Weill. Hughes also lectured in schools and colleges, where he talked with black youth who had literary ability and encouraged them to write.

In the 1950s and 1960s, Hughes's work included a volume of poetry, 'Montage of a Dream Differed', published in 1951; of short stories, 'Laughing to Keep from Crying' (1952); and a children's picture book titled 'Black Misery'(1969), which wryly illustrates what it is like to grow up black in the United States.

Langston Hughes died of Lung Cancer, in New York City, in 1967.