1. LISTENING ACTIVITY
Langston Hughes – A Different Kind of Renaissance Man
Langston Hughes was one of the most important writers and thinkers of the Harlem Renaissance, which was the African American artistic movement in the 1920s that celebrated black life and culture. Hughes's creative genius was influenced by his life in New York City's Harlem, a primarily African American neighborhood. His literary works helped shape American literature and politics. Hughes, like others active in the Harlem Renaissance, had a strong sense of racial pride. Through his poetry, novels, plays, essays, and children's books, he promoted equality, condemned racism and injustice, and celebrated African American culture, humor, and spirituality. James Langston Hughes was born in Joplin, Missouri. His mother was a school teacher, who also wrote poetry. His father was a storekeeper. Hughes's parents separated and his mother moved from city to city in search of work. They traveled to Mexico, Kansas, Colorado, Indiana, and Buffalo. By the time Hughes was 13, his mother settled in Cleveland, Ohio, where her new husband, (Hughes's stepfather) worked in the steel mills. After graduating from high school in Cleveland, Hughes spent a year back in Mexico; however, after a year, Hughes returned to the North, and on the train back, he wrote one of his most famous poems, 'The Negro Speaks of Rivers'. Supported by his father, in 1921, Hughes entered Columbia University in New York. To the permanent disappointment of his father, Hughes soon dropped out in the same year, and participated in more entertaining jazz and blues activities in nearby Harlem. He then, in an effort to see the world, enlisted as a steward on a freighter bound to West Africa. He traveled to Paris, worked as a doorman and a bouncer of a night club, and also continued to Italy.
After his return to the United States, Hughes worked doing odd jobs and wrote poems. Hughes was said to have been "discovered" by the famous poet Vachel Lindsay as Lindsay was dining at a hotel where Hughes worked as a busboy. The story goes that Hughes, recognizing Lindsay as a famous poet, dropped his poems beside Lindsay's dinner plate. After reading Hughes’s poems, Lindsay included several of them in his own poetry reading. This prompted interviews of the "busboy poet." Hughes then quit his job and moved to New York City, where he became noted for his contributions to the African American movement known as The Harlem Renaissance.

2. The Negro Speaks of Rivers Langston Hughes
I've known rivers:
I've known rivers ancient as the world and older than the
flow of human blood in human veins.
My soul has grown deep like the rivers.
I bathed in the Euphrates when dawns were young.
I built my hut near the Congo and it lulled me to sleep.
I looked upon the Nile and raised the pyramids above it.
I heard the singing of the Mississippi when Abe Lincoln
went down to New Orleans, and I've seen its muddy
bosom turn all golden in the sunset.
Ancient, dusky rivers.

3. RIVERS
Rivers have been a powerful force throughout human history. Many early mythologies made the river — or the river god — a symbol of both life and death. Most of the great early civilizations formed in river valleys.
The Euphrates, helped to form Mesopotamia. the cradle of civilization, because of the ancient kingdoms which began and flourished there.
The Congo is a backbone of civilization and economic progress in Africa – it also had darker connections to slavery.
The Nile, too, played a central role in early civilization. It is linked to the great advancements of the Egyptians (tied to black ancestry) – but Egyptians used slaves to build the pyramids.
The Mississippi crosses and connects many states in middle America – most importantly here, it ran a course from free states through slave states, and the further south it ran, the worse the conditions for the slaves in those states. The phrase “sold down the river” refers to slaves who were stripped from their families in the North and sent to the harsh conditions of plantations in the South.

4. EUPHRATES 

5. CONGO 

6. NILE 

7. MISSISSIPPI 

8. Mississippi
Euphrates
Congo
Nile

9. RIVERS
Rivers have been a powerful force throughout human history. Many early mythologies made the river — or the river god — a symbol of both life and death. Most of the great early civilizations formed in river valleys.
The Euphrates, helped to form Mesopotamia. the cradle of civilization, because of the ancient kingdoms which began and flourished there.
The Congo is a backbone of civilization and economic progress in Africa – it also had darker connections to slavery.
The Nile, too, played a central role in early civilization. It is linked to the great advancements of the Egyptians (tied to black ancestry) – but Egyptians used slaves to build the pyramids.
The Mississippi crosses and connects many states in middle America – most importantly here, it ran a course from free states through slave states, and the further south it ran, the worse the conditions for the slaves in those states. The phrase “sold down the river” refers to slaves who were stripped from their families in the North and sent to the harsh conditions of plantations in the South.