Langston Hughes is the most famous person associated with the Harlem Renaissance and among the most influential leaders of the movement. He famously wrote about the period that “the negro was in vogue”. Considered among the greatest poets in U.S. history, Hughes was one of the earliest innovators of jazz poetry, poetry that “demonstrates jazz-like rhythm”. His works often portrayed the lives of middle class African Americans. Hughes was a proponent of creating distinctive “Negro” art and not falling for the “urge within the race toward whiteness”.