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I am a Negro: Black as the night is black, Black like the depths of my Africa. I’ve been a slave: Caesar told me to keep his door-steps clean. I brushed the boots of Washington. I’ve been a worker: Under my hand the pyramids arose. I made mortar for the Woolworth Building.
- Let America Be America Again
Let it be the pioneer on the plain. Seeking a home where he...
- Let America Be America Again
By Langston Hughes. Share. 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.
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.
Langston Hughes’ poem ‘I, Too, Sing America’ is an incredibly personal poem Hughes wrote during the Harlem Renaissance. The poem expresses how he felt like an unforgotten American citizen because of his skin color.
One of the key poems of a literary movement called the "Harlem Renaissance," "The Negro Speaks of River" traces black history from the beginning of human civilization to the present, encompassing both triumphs (like the construction of the Egyptian pyramids) and horrors (like American slavery).
The Negro Mother, although written by Langston Hughes, a man, comes to readers through the voice of a woman and a former slave. She writes to her children, challenging them to pick up the torch and carry it on, fighting for freedom and equality.
Langston Hughes was a central figure in the Harlem Renaissance, the flowering of black intellectual, literary, and artistic life that took place in the 1920s in a number of American cities, particularly Harlem. A major poet, Hughes also wrote novels, short stories, essays, and plays.
