Langston Hughes

I have three favorite poets--not that I know anything about poetry, but I know what I like. I like Thom Gunn, WH Auden, and Langston Hughes.

James Langston Hughes.

He was born in Joplin, Missouri, a member of an abolitionist family, the great-great-grandson of Charles Henry Langston, brother of John Mercer Langston, who, in 1855, was the first Black American elected to public office.

Hughes began writing poetry at around age 12, and was selected as Class Poet of his high school.
His father, thinking poet was not a job for a man who needed to earn a living, encouraged Langston to pursue a more practical career, paying the tuition to Columbia University on the grounds Langston study engineering. After a short time, however, Langston Hughes dropped out of the program; but he continued writing poetry.

He always wrote.

In 1923, Hughes traveled to Senegal, Nigeria, the Cameroons, Belgium Congo, Angola, and Guinea in Africa, Italy, France, Russia and Spain. No matter where he went, abroad or at home in Washington, D.C. or Harlem, he loved sitting in clubs listening to jazz and the blues, writing.

Jazz and the blues brought a new sense of rhythm to his poems, and in 1924 he returned to Harlem, during the period known as the Harlem Renaissance, where his work was frequently published.

"I tried to write poems like the songs they sang on Seventh Street...[these songs] had the pulse beat of the people who keep on going."

Langston Hughes was a prolific poet and writer. In the forty years between his first book in 1926 and his death in 1967, he wrote sixteen books of poems, two novels, three collections of short stories, four volumes of "editorial" and "documentary" fiction, twenty plays, children's poetry, musicals and operas, three autobiographies, a dozen radio and television scripts and dozens of magazine articles. In addition, he edited seven anthologies.

He listened to jazz and put the music in his words.

Langston Hughes died of cancer on May 22, 1967.

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Let America be America Again

Let America be America again.

Let it be the dream it used to be.

Let it be the pioneer on the plain

Seeking a home where he himself is free.

(America never was America to me.)

Let America be the dream the dreamers dreamed--

Let it be that great strong land of love

Where never kings connive nor tyrants scheme

That any man be crushed by one above.

(It never was America to me.)

O, let my land be a land where

Liberty

Is crowned with no false patriotic wreath,

But opportunity is real, and life is free,

Equality is in the air we breathe.

(There's never been equality for me,

Nor freedom in this "homeland of the free.")

Say, who are you that mumbles in the dark?

And who are you that draws your veil across the stars?

I am the poor white, fooled and pushed apart,

I am the Negro bearing slavery's scars.

I am the red man driven from the land,

I am the immigrant clutching the hope I seek--

And finding only the same old stupid plan

Of dog eat dog, of mighty crush the weak.

I am the young man, full of strength and hope,

Tangled in that ancient endless chain

Of profit, power, gain, of grab the land!

Of grab the gold!

Of grab the ways of satisfying need!

Of work the men!

Of take the pay!

Of owning everything for one's own greed!

I am the farmer, bondsman to the soil.

I am the worker sold to the machine.

I am the Negro, servant to you all.

I am the people, humble, hungry, mean--

Hungry yet today despite the dream.

Beaten yet today--

O, Pioneers!

I am the man who never got ahead,

The poorest worker bartered through the years.

Yet I'm the one who dreamt our basic dream

In the Old World while still a serf of kings,

Who dreamt a dream so strong, so brave, so true,

That even yet its mighty daring sings

In every brick and stone, in every furrow turned

That's made America the land it has become.

O, I'm the man who sailed those early seas

In search of what I meant to be my home--

For I'm the one who left dark Ireland's shore,And Poland's plain, and England's grassy lea,

And torn from Black Africa's strand I came

To build a "homeland of the free.

"The free?

Who said the free? Not me?

Surely not me?

The millions on relief today?

The millions shot down when we strike?

The millions who have nothing for our pay?

For all the dreams we've dreamed

And all the songs we've sung

And all the hopes we've held

And all the flags we've hung,

The millions who have nothing for our pay--

Except the dream that's almost dead today.

O, let America be America again--

The land that never has been yet--

And yet must be--the land where every man is free.

The land that's mine--the poor man's,

Indian's,

Negro's,

ME--

Who made America,

Whose sweat and blood, whose faith and pain,

Whose hand at the foundry, whose plow in the rain,

Must bring back our mighty dream again.

Sure, call me any ugly name you choose--

The steel of freedom does not stain.

From those who live like leeches on the people's lives,

We must take back our land again,

America!

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!

Langston Hughes