When Langston Hughes was 17, he went to spend some time with his father in Mexico. He was so unhappy while he was there that he thought about committing suicide. Hughes could not understand how his father felt. He said: "I had been thinking about my father and his strange dislike of his own people. I didn't understand it, because I was a Negro, and I liked Negroes very much!"
Hughes later wrote this poem:
When he was finished at high school in Lincoln in 1920, he went back to Mexico, to ask his father to pay for him to go to university. Hughes' father was a lawyer and a wealthy landowner. He could afford to send his son to university but he made difficulties about it. He said that Hughes could only go to university if he went overseas and studied engineering. Hughes wanted to go to a university in the US. After a time, they made an agreement that he should go to Columbia University but study engineering, not an arts degree. He went to Columbia in 1921 but left in 1922, partly because of the racism in the university.
Until 1926 Hughes did many different types of work. In 1923 he went as a crewman on the ship "S.S.Malone" and went to West Africa and Europe. He left the ship and stayed for a short time in Paris where he joined several other African-Americans who were living there. In November 1924, Hughes returned to the U.S. to live with his mother in Washington, D.C.. In 1925 he got a job as an assistant to Carter G. Woodson who worked with the "Association for the Study of African American Life and History". Hughes did not enjoy his work because he did not have enough time to write, so he left and got a job as a "busboy", wiping tables and washing dishes at a hotel. Hughes is sometimes called "The Busboy Poet". Meanwhile, some of his poems were published in magazines and were being collected together for his first book of poetry. While he was working at the hotel he met the poet Vachel Lindsay, who helped to make Hughes known as a new African-American poet.
In 1926 Hughes began studying at Lincoln University, Pennsylvania. He had help from patrons, Amy Spingarn, who gave him $300 and "Godmother" Charlotte Osgood Mason. Hughes graduated with a Bachelor of Arts in 1929 and became a Doctor of Letters in 1943. He was also given an honorary doctorate by Howard University. For the rest of his life, except when he travelled to the Caribbean or West Indies, Hughes lived in Harlem, New York.
Langston Hughes sometimes went out with women, but he never married. People who have studied his life and poetry are sure that he was homosexual. In the 1930s it was harder to be open about being gay than it is nowadays. His poetry has lots of symbols which are used by other homosexual writers. Hughes thought that men who had very dark skin were particularly beautiful. It seems from his poetry that he was in love with an African-American man. He also wrote a story which might tell of his own experience. "Blessed Assurance" is the story of a father's anger because his son is "queer" and acts like a girl.
Hughes' life and work were an important part of the Harlem Renaissance of the 1920s, alongside those Zora Neale Hurston, Wallace Thurman, Countee Cullen, Richard Bruce Nugent, and Aaron Douglas, who together started a magazine "Fire!! Devoted to Younger Negro Artists". Hughes and these friends did not always agree with the ideas of some of the other African-American writers who were also part of the "Harlem Renaissance" because they thought their ideas were Middle class and that they treated others who had darker skin, less education and less money with discrimination. All his life, Hughes never forgot the lessons that he learned about poor and uneducated African-Americans in the stories that his grandmother told.
In 1960, the "NAACP" awarded Hughes the "Spingarn Medal" for "distinguished achievements by an African American". Hughes became a member of the "National Institute of Arts and Letters" in 1961. In 1973, an award was named after him, the "Langston Hughes Medal", awarded by the City College of New York.
Hughes became a famous American poet, but he was always ready to help other people, particularly young black writers. He was worried that many young writers hated themselves, and expressed these feelings to the world. He tried to help people feel pride, and not worry about the prejudice of other people. He also tried to help young African-Americans not to express hatred and prejudice towards white Americans.
Hughes wrote:
On May 22, 1967, Hughes died in New York City at the age of 65 after having surgery for prostate cancer. His ashes are buried under the floor of the "Langston Hughes Auditorium" in the "Arthur Schomburg Center for Research in Black Culture" in Harlem. Over his ashes is a circle with an African design called "Rivers." At the centre of the design are words from a poem by Hughes: ""My soul has grown deep like the rivers."
Geographic coordinate system
A geographical coordinate system is a coordinate system. This means that every place can be specified by a set of three numbers, called coordinates.
A full circle can be divided into 360 degrees (or 360°); this was first done by the Babylonians; Ancient Greeks, like Ptolemy later extended the theory.
Today, degrees are divided further. There are minutes, and seconds; 1 minute (or 1') in this context is 1/60 of a degree; 1 second (or 1") is 1/60 of a minute.
The first concept needed is called "latitude" (Lat, or the Greek symbol "phi", formula_1). For it, the Earth is cut up into 180 circles, from the Equator at 0°. The poles are at 90°, the North Pole is at 90° N(orth), the South Pole is at 90° S(outh). Places with the same latitude are on a circle, around the Earth.
The other concept is called "longitude" (Long, or the Greek symbol "lambda", formula_2), sometimes referred to as "meridian". The 0° longitude line (or zero meridian) goes through the Royal Observatory in Greenwich. Greenwich is a part of London. Then lines are drawn in a similar way; the opposite (or "antipodal") meridian of Greenwich is considered both 180°W(est), and 180°E(ast).
The third number is the height, altitude, or depth. This is given with respect to some fixed (usually easily calculable point). One of these is called mean sea level.
Altmarkkreis Salzwedel Rural District
Altmarkkreis Salzwedel is a district in Saxony-Anhalt, Germany.
The old Altmark region, included parts of the neighbouring district of Stendal. In the 10th century it was the eastern border of the Holy Roman Empire.
In the Late Middle Ages many towns were members of the Hanseatic League.
The modern district was established in 1994 by joining the former districts of Gardelegen, Klötze, Salzwedel and part of Osterburg.
Sankt Pauli
Sankt Pauli (or St. Pauli) is a district of Hamburg. About 27,000 people live in St. Pauli. St. Pauli is a district where many people go to have fun. There are theatres, cinemas, and a red-light district (around the Reeperbahn) in St. Pauli. This quarter is called the Kiez. There, there are no closing times imposed for shops and restaurants. Most of St. Pauli is different, though. In the St. Pauli quarter of Hamburg based an important German football club (Fußball-Club St. Pauli).
Anhalt-Bitterfeld
Anhalt-Bitterfeld is a district in Saxony-Anhalt, Germany. Its capital is Köthen.
This district was established by putting together the former districts of Bitterfeld, Köthen and a large part of Anhalt-Zerbst as part of the Saxony-Anhalt border reforms of 2007.
Reeperbahn
The Reeperbahn is the central street in the district St.Pauli in Hamburg. Parts of it are considered to be a red-light district, but there are also theatres and cinemas near it.
Börde Rural District
Börde is a district in Saxony-Anhalt, Germany.
The district was formed in the 2007 boundary changes by joining the old districts of Ohrekreis and Bördekreis.
Verwaltungsgemeinschaften with municipalities
Scale (zoology)