Langston Hughes
Langston Hughes is a famous Harlem Renaissance poet who attended the School of Mines (now SEAS) at the urging of his father, an engineer, for the 1921-1922 year. Needless to say, poetry does not go well with problem sets, and he dropped out, though the admissions department likes to tout him as an alum.[1] Oh yeah, and his departure may have had something to do with institutional racism too.
His famous poem "Theme for English B" was written for a required course at Columbia:
"The instructor said,
Go home and write
a page tonight.
And let that page come out of you---
Then, it will be true.
I wonder if it's that simple?
I am twenty-two, colored, born in Winston-Salem.
I went to school there, then Durham, then here
to this college on the hill above Harlem.
I am the only colored student in my class."
