The Queerest Places

Lawrence, Ks.

Langston Hughes Statue
Watkins Community Museum of History
1047 Massachusetts Street

Poet Langston Hughes (1902-1967) was born in Missouri, but his earliest memories were of living with his grandmother in Lawrence, Kansas, after his parents’ divorce (click for more on his grandmother’s house). A statue of Hughes at age 13 – the year his grandmother died and he moved in with friends of hers until his mother remarried – stands in this local history museum. Sculpted by local artist James Patti in 1975, the statue shows Hughes delivering newspapers and with a book by W.E.B. DuBois tucked under his arm.

Other tributes to Hughes, one of Lawrence’s most famous residents, include a plaque at City Hall and a professorship at the University of Kansas. The school he attended, the Pinckney School (801 West 6th Street), named its library for him in the 1990s.