Langston Hughes was a poetic innovator and a central figure in the Harlem Renaissance—an arts movement and intellectual revival in the 1920s that celebrated Black cultural expression. Hughes’ work was inspired by his life in New York City’s Harlem, a primarily Black working-class neighborhood at the time. Through his poetry, novels, plays, essays, and children’s books, he sought to honestly depict the joys and hardships of Black lives, avoiding both sentimental idealization and negative stereotypes. Often called “The People’s Poet,” his writing promoted equality, condemned racism and injustice, and helped shape American literature and politics. In 1958, Hughes recited his poem “The Weary Blues” on Canada’s “The 7 O’Clock Show,” accompanied by the Doug Parker Band. It was one of the many poems that he wrote that utilized a rhythm similar to that of jazz music, founding the style of poetry called “jazz poetry.” Today, Hughes’s poems have been translated into German, French, Spanish, Russian, Yiddish, and Czech; many of them have been set to music. Langston Hughes’s legacy continues to inspire artists across mediums today.