black history: langston hughes knew there was nothing wrong with being a “black artist”

Langston Hughes’ name is synonymous with the Harlem Renaissance. As a poet, writer, playwright and activist, Hughes was a major force in Black artistic innovation, and his work has reverberated through Black artistry today.

This was no accident. Hughes was unapologetic about his Blackness, and had no reservations about being called a “Black artist.” In fact, he famously claimed he felt “ashamed” for artists who sought to distance their Blackness from their artistry, saying it is “as though [their] own racial world [was] not as interesting as any other world:

“So I am ashamed for the black poet who says, ‘I want to be a poet, not a Negro poet,’ as though his own racial world were not as interesting as any other world,” Hughes wrote for The Nation. “I am ashamed, too, for the colored artist who runs from the painting of Negro faces to the painting of sunsets after the manner of the academicians because he fears the strange un-whiteness of his own features. An artist must be free to choose what he does, certainly, but he must also never be afraid to do what he might choose.”