Langston Hughes was an African American writer whose poems, columns, novels, and plays made him a leading figure in the Harlem Renaissance of the 1920s. In 1925, Hughes was working as a busboy in a Washington, D.C. hotel restaurant when he met American poet, Vachel Lindsay. Hughes showed some of his poems to Lindsay, who was impressed enough to use his connections to promote Hughes’ poetry and ultimately bring it to a wider audience.