Langston Hughes was born in Joplin, Missouri in 1902 but was raised primarily by his grandmother, Mary Langston, after his parents separated. When not living with his grandmother, he traveled with his mother from town to town and lived in such places as Mexico, Colorado, Kansas, Indiana and New York. He also lived part of the time with his grandmother, Mary Langston.

While living in Cleveland, Ohio in his early teenage years, Langston Hughes discovered the poetry of Carl Sandburg, who would become an influence. He was also influenced by Walt Whitman, Paul Lawrence Dunbar and Claude McKay. He so grew in stature as a poet that his eighth grade class elected him as the class poet.

He moved to Mexico after high school and wrote “The Negro Speaks of Rivers,” one of his most famous poems, in 1921. He then enrolled in Columbia University, but soon abandoned his studies in lieu of jazz and blues in Harlem. This was when he earned his reputation as a respected and gifted young African-American poet.

In 1926 Langston Hughes published his first book of poetry, The Weary Blues.

In the early 1930’s, Hughes traveled to the Soviet Union, Japan and Haiti. During this trip he had an affair with an Oriental ballerina and penned “Goodbye, Christ,” a poem that would draw the ire of a Christian fundamentalist group in the 1940’s. After many travels he returned to Harlem to make it his home.

Langston Hughes became an influential and controversial figure and wrote about race relations often, sometimes very provocatively. In 1942 he started a newspaper column featuring a fictional character by the name of Jesse B. Semple. It ran for 20 years.

He wrote one of his most famous poems, “Harlem”, in 1951, around the time that his communist leanings would draw attention from the mainstream press and political personalities. Ten years later he published “Black Nativity” which sparked controversy. To this day, however, many African-American churches put a performance of this play on in their churches. He died in 1967. Many people refer to Langston Hughes as the black poet laureate due to his influence on African-American literature and particularly the Harlem Renaissance.

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Morehouse College welcomed back alumnus Julian Bond ′71 for the Howard Thurman Crown Forum on Thursday, November 12, at 11 a.m. in the Martin Luther King Jr. International Chapel. The celebration will culminate with a public conversation on Thursday at 6 p.m. on the intellectual and spiritual legacy of Howard Washington Thurman featuring The Honorable Andrew Young, former UN Ambassador; The Reverend Otis Moss Jr., retired pastor Olivet Institutional Baptist Church; and Dr. Barbara Holmes, vice president for academic affairs and dean of the Memphis Theological Seminary.

Julian Bond has been an active participant n the movements for civil rights and economic justice since his days at Morehouse as communications director for the Student Non-Violent Coordinating Committee (SNCC), to his current chairmanship of the National Association for the Advancement of Colored People (NAACP).

As an activist who has faced jail for his convictions, a 20-year veteran in the Georgia General Assembly and a university professor and writer, he has been on the cutting edge of social change since 1960.

The Howard Thurman Crown Forum will kick off a three-day celebration of the life and legacy of another famous alumnus. During the celebration, the first of four volumes of Thurman’s papers will be presented. The Howard Thurman Papers Project, which is a research project of The Leadership Center at Morehouse College, was founded in 1992 with a mission of preserving and promoting the work of Howard Thurman. The documents span 63 years and consist of more than 58,000 items, including correspondence, sermons and unpublished writings and speeches.

Howard Thurman, a 1923 graduate of Morehouse College, was one of the 20th Century’s most prominent American religious leaders and theologians. In 1953, he was named by LIFE magazine as one of the 12 greatest preachers of the century. As the first to lead a delegation of African Americans to meet personally with Mahatma Gandhi in 1936, Thurman would become one of the principal architects of the non-violent civil rights movement and a key mentor to Martin Luther King Jr., who graduated from Morehouse in 1948.

Howard Thurman (1899 – April 10, 1981), spiritual advisor to Martin Luther King, Jr.

Howard Thurman graduated from Morehouse College in 1923. The Chapel for the Inward Journey and a Howard Thurman Meditation Room are in Sale Hall on the Morehouse College Campus in Atlanta, Georgia. The Howard Washington Thurman Memorial on the Morehouse College campus was dedicated in the mid-1990s. The stone bell tower is in the shape of an obelisk. The memorial is surrounded by flags and a reflection pool.