2. In building the longhouse, a row of forked poles was placed in the ground, between four and five feet apart. Cross poles were lashed to the forked uprights to form an arched roof. Slender poles or rafters were then secured to the roof frame, and traverse poles were added to further strengthen the overhead structure. Large pieces of bark were then tied to the frame. An outer set of poles kept the bark in place on the sides and roof. Smoke holes were built into the roof at about twenty–foot intervals. Two families shared the stone–lined hearth beneath each smoke hole.

3. At each end of the longhouse was a door with a covering of animal hide or hinged bark that could be lifted up for entering and exiting. Along each inside wall were bunks that served as beds at night and benches in the day. Corn, dried fish, and other foods hung from over head. The dwelling was compartmentalized to accommodate each family. At the front of the longhouse, over the door, carved images of clan symbols represented the families living there.

2. Langston Hughes was born in Missouri in 1902. He began to write poetry in high school and later attended Columbia University in New York. After one year at university, Hughes commenced a nomadic life in the United States and Europe. He shipped out as a merchant marine and worked in a Paris nightclub, all the while writing and publishing poetry. His prolific literary career was launched in 1926 with the publication of his first book, The Weary Blues, a collection of poems on African American themes set to rhythms from jazz and blues. His first novel appeared in 1930, and from that point on Hughes was known as “the bard of Harlem.”

3. In the activist 1930s, Hughes was a public figure. He worked as a journalist, published works in several media, and founded African American theaters in New York, Chicago, and Los Angeles. Hughes’s concern with race, mainly in an urban setting, is evident in his poetry, plays, screenplays, novels, and short stories. His poetry includes lyrics about black life and black pride as well as poems of racial protest. His major prose writings are those concerned with the character Jesse B. Semple, a shrewd but supposedly ignorant Harlem resident nicknamed Simple. Simple was a wise fool, an honest man who saw through sham and spoke plainly. The Simple stories were originally published as newspaper sketches and later collected in five book volumes.

4. By the 1960s, readers preferred themes that reflected the struggles of the times, and Hughes’s writings were overshadowed by those of a younger generation of black poets. However, in more recent decades, scholars and readers have rediscovered Hughes and regard him as a major literary and social influence. His poetry and stories remain an enduring legacy of the Harlem Renaissance, and for this reason his position in the American canon is secure.