What was the dream that brought our ancestors to America? It was rebirth, the craving for men to be born again, the yearning for a second chance. With all of these ideas comes the true American dream—Freedom. This is the condition in which a man feels like a human being. It is the purpose and consequence of rebirth. Throughout the life of Langston Hughes he presented ideas in his writings that help to define his perception of the American dream.In beginning, Langston Hughes was born on February 1, 1902 in Joplin, Missouri. His father was James Nathaniel Hughes, a man who studied law but was unable to take the examination for the bar because he was black. His mother was Carrie Hughes, a woman who studied at the University of Kansas in an ongoing struggle to earn a living outside of domestic labor. Langston’s father left home to live in Cuba and then Mexico to free himself from the Jim Crow laws and Segregation. Hughes then went to live with his grandmother in Lawrence, Kansas until he was thirteen. His grandmother, Mary Sampson Patterson Leary Langston, was very prominent in the African American community of Lawrence. Her first husband was killed at Harper’s Ferry while fighting with John Brown; her second husband, Hughes’ grandfather, was a prominent politician in Kansas during the Reconstruction. During the time that he lived with his grandmother, however, she was old and poor resulting in little to eat and forcing them to rent out part of their small house. Unable to give Langston the attention he needed and his feelings of hurt and rejection by both his mother and father caused him to grow up very insecure and unsure of himself. In the second grade Langston was introduced to books and soon became fascinated with them and found it as an escape from his world into the wonderful world inside of them. At the age of thirteen Hughes went to live with his mother in Lincoln, Illinois and then Cleveland, Ohio where h...
