Busboys and Poets, a bookstore, gallery, and restaurant at 14th St and U Ave., is named for Langston Hughes, who worked as a busboy at the Wardman Park Hotel in the 1930s, prior to gaining recognition as a poet.
This reading took place in the expansive and beautiful Langston Hughes Room.
From the restaurant’s site:
In the early 1920’s Hughes resided in Washington DC where he worked as a busboy at the Wardman Park Hotel. Working at the Hotel, located at 2660 Woodley Road, NW, resulted in a stroke of good luck for the money-strapped Hughes. Nicholas Vachel Lindsay, the famous Russian poet, stayed there. Due to the City’s segregated policy, Hughes could not attend the poet’s reading in the auditorium. However, using the ingenuity characterized by his fictional creation, Jesse B. Semple, Hughes hatched a plan. After writing out three of his poems, “Jazzonia,” “Negro Dancers,” and “The Weary Blues,” on a piece of paper, he placed them beside Lindsay’s dinner plate one evening. As he picked up trays of dishes, Hughes saw Lindsay reading them. That night, Lindsay read Hughes’ work with his own. The next day, in local newspapers, Lindsay informed the world of his discovering a “Negro busboy poet.”
Shortly thereafter, Hughes gained nationwide fame when an interview by reporters appeared in The Associated Press.