The life of the writer

James Mercer Langston Hughes (February 1, 1902 – May 22, 1967) was an American poet, social activist, novelist, playwright, and columnist from Joplin, Missouri.

He was one of the earliest innovators of the then-new literary art form called jazz poetry. Hughes is best known as a leader of the Harlem Renaissance in New York City. He famously wrote about the period that “the negro was in vogue”, which was later paraphrased as “when Harlem was in vogue”

Death

On May 22, 1967, Hughes died in New York City at the age of 65  tofrom complications after abdominal surgery related prostate cancer. His ashes are interred beneath a floor medallion in the middle of the foyer in the Schomburg Center for Research in Black Culture in Harlem. It is the entrance to an auditorium named for him.^[38] The design on the floor is an African cosmogram entitled Rivers. The title is taken from his poem “The Negro Speaks of Rivers“. Within the center of the cosmogram is the line: “My soul has grown deep like the rivers”.

langston hughes he write is story Thank you Ma’m 

I believe that one of the (several) wonderful thing that Langston Hughes did with “Thank You, Ma’am” was to strike a perfect balance with the racial and moral elements of the story. The characters are unmistakably African-American but it is not a story about African-Americans. Skin color is present and well represented in vernacular, but that is not the story’s point. He draws our attention to poverty — why is an older woman having to work a job that causes her to walk home late at night, why can’t a young boy be properly clothed, fed, and cared for — but the poverty is part of the story without ever becoming an excuse. And that sets the stage for the message of the story, that respect, decency and love transcend race and class, that they are wonderful things that can cure all sorts of difficulties and hardships.

Departing further from the literary analysis, I have some additional thoughts related to this story.

The question of race relations in America is still decades away from being an easy one. Even today the complexity and contradictions are clear; we have a twice-elected black president but we also have “the knock-out game” raging in the background (Fall/Winter of 2013/2014). But no matter how difficult and complex that question remains, it will always find some answers in this simple short story by Langston Hughes that helps us to see that we are all the same and that no matter how difficult any one personal situation may be, it’s probably a situation that can changed and improved with acts of kindness.

It’s noteworthy to point out that the story may have some autobiographical elements for the author. This is not to suggest Langston Hughes was out mugging old ladies, but that he himself had been separated from his parents as a young boy and was forced to live with his grandmother who raised him. I’d like to imagine that some of his Mrs. Luella Bates Washington Jones’ kindness was also present in his grandmother and that the hardships of his youth led to the tremendous empathy he put into this story.