wn and his career seemed to take off.
             Shortly after winning the literary contest, Langston published his first volume of poetry, also entitled "The Weary Blues", in 1926. Hughes then made the decision to continuing studying, this time however, at Lincoln University in Pennsylvania. At Lincoln, Langston gained the moral and structural support of a wealthy Charlotte Osgood Mason. Mason began to direct Hughes' literary career and guided him as he wrote the novel Not Without Laughter. The relationship between the two only lasted a few years however.
             During the 1930's, Langston experimented in different literary genres. In the early 30's, while writing poetry to be published in New Masses, a journal associated with the Communist Party, Hughes traveled to the Soviet Union with a group of African Americans. By the middle of the 1930's however, the focus of James' writing shifted towards playwriting. Hughes' first successful Broadway playwright, "Mulatto", became one of the longest running Broadway shows.
             One of the first published poems written by Hughes, entitled "The Negro Speaks of Rivers", turned out to be among the most famous poems he wrote in his career. Eighteen year old Langston, riding on a train bound for Mexico in 1920, managed to write an inspired poem about the history of African Americans and the comparison between hardships in Africa and at home in the United States. Langston describes four different rivers in this poem. The first three rivers, the Euphrates, Congo, and Nile, are all rivers that historically flow through lands of colored people. The fourth river in the poem, the Mississippi River, is a river that flows through the deep south of the United States, traditionally a focal point for blacks in America. The comparison of these four rivers demonstrates Langston's view of the relationship between blacks in Africa and blacks in t...