Born February 1, 1902, in Joplin, Missouri, Langston Hughes grew up and was educated in Lawrence, Kansas, and Cleveland, Ohio. He briefly enrolled in Columbia University in New York in 1921, the year that he published "The Negro Speaks of Rivers" in Crisis, a journal which was edited by W. E. B. Du Bois. In 1923-24 Hughes worked as a seaman on trips to Africa and Europe.