Langston Hughes

By Elaine Magliaro

Back in August of 2013, I put together a post about the poetry of Langston Hughes for Res Ipsa Loquitor. My reason for doing so was because we had had some interesting—and at times contentious—discussions about race, racism, and bigotry in this country at that blog. We had talked about Paula Deen, Trayvon Martin and George Zimmerman, a rodeo clown impersonating President Obama, voter suppression and Jim Crow laws. Those discussions brought to mind the poetry of Hughes–a great American writer. I believe his poetry makes powerful statements about the Black experience in “the land of the free.”

NOTE: I also posted these poems at Flowers for Socrates a few months ago. Still, I decided to post them once more. I often return to my favorite poems time and again when I feel the need. Poetry speaks to me in a way that most prose does not.

Here is an excerpt from Hughes’s poem Will V-Day Be Me-Day Too?

So this is what I want to know:
When we see Victory’s glow,
Will you still let old Jim Crow
Hold me back?
When all those foreign folks who’ve waited—
Italians, Chinese, Danes—are liberated.
Will I still be ill-fated
Because I’m black?

Here in my own, my native land,
Will the Jim Crow laws still stand?
Will Dixie lynch me still
When I return?
Or will you comrades in arms
From the factories and the farms,
Have learned what this war
Was fought for us to learn?

When I take off my uniform,
Will I be safe from harm—
Or will you do me
As the Germans did the Jews?
When I’ve helped this world to save,
Shall I still be color’s slave?
Or will Victory change
Your antiquated views?

Click here to read the rest of the poem.

Here is a video of Langston Hughes reciting his poem I, Too:

And here is a video of poet Nikki Giovanni speaking about Langston Hughes and reading his poem Let America Be America Again:

Excerpt from Let American Be America Again:

O, yes,
I say it plain,
America never was America to me,
And yet I swear this oath—
America will be!

Out of the rack and ruin of our gangster death,
The rape and rot of graft, and stealth, and lies,
We, the people, must redeem
The land, the mines, the plants, the rivers.
The mountains and the endless plain—
All, all the stretch of these great green states—
And make America again!

Click here to read the rest of the poem.

The Negro Speaks of Rivers

Dream Deferred by Langston Hughes (Poetry Reading)

Langston Hughes Biography (The Academy of American Poets)

Langston Hughes Biography (The Poetry Foundation)

I’d like to recommend a book of poetry that Hughes wrote for children entitled The Dream Keeper and Other Poems. The collection contains some of his most famous poems—including Dreams, Dream Variation, April Rain Song, Minstrel Man, The Negro Speaks of Rivers, My People, Mother to Son, Merry Go Round, and I, Too.

Minstrel Man

Merry Go Round