The Negro Speaks of Rivers Trivia

Langston Hughes wrote "The Negro Speaks of Rivers" on the back of a letter his father had written him. (Source)

Langston Hughes and his family moved so many times when he was a child that he later said that he had slept in 10,000 beds. (Source)

Langston Hughes worked as a steward on a ship and traveled throughout Europe, West Africa, and the Caribbean. (Source)

Langston Hughes was a newspaper reporter in Spain during the Spanish Civil War. (Source)

Hughes loved the poets Walt Whitman and Carl Sandberg. His poem "I Too Sing America" was a response to Whitman’s "Song of Myself." (Source)

Langston Hughes and the novelist Zora Neale Hurston were very close friends. (Source)