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.
He sought to honestly portray the joys and hardships of working-class black lives, avoiding both
sentimental idealization and negative stereotypes.

As he wrote in his essay “The Negro Artist and the Racial Mountain,” “We younger Negro
artists who create now intend to express our individual dark-skinned selves without fear or
shame. If white people are pleased we are glad. If they are not, it doesn’t matter. We know we
are beautiful. And ugly too.”
This approach was not without its critics. Much of Hughes’s early work was roundly criticized
by many black intellectuals for portraying what they thought to be an unattractive view of black
life. 

Nevertheless, Hughes, more than any other black poet or writer, recorded faithfully the nuances
of black life and its frustrations.
In Hughes’s own words, his poetry is about "workers, roustabouts, and singers, and job hunters
on Lenox Avenue in New York, or Seventh Street in Washington or South State in Chicago—
people up today and down tomorrow, working this week and fired the next, beaten and baffled,
but determined not to be wholly beaten, buying furniture on the installment plan, filling the
house with roomers to help pay the rent, hoping to get a new suit for Easter—and pawning that
suit before the Fourth of July."

It was Hughes’s belief in humanity and his hope for a world in which people could sanely and
with understanding live together that led to his decline in popularity in the racially turbulent
latter years of his life. Unlike younger and more militant writers, Hughes never lost his
conviction that “most people are generally good, in every race and in every country where I have
been.”

Hughes died on May 22, 1967, due to complications from prostate cancer.
Major Themes
Music
Music, particularly blues and jazz, permeates Langston Hughes's works. Many of his poems have
an identifiable rhythm or beat. The lines read like the verses in a blues song and echo themes that
are common in blues music, like sorrow, lost love, anger, and hopelessness. Hughes frequently
alludes to music that originated during the era of slavery, using a 'call and response' pattern for
auditory effect and to create a link between the past and the present. By invoking the musical
traditions of slaves, Hughes connects himself to the painful history of African Americans.
Hughes's poetry, like jazz and blues, has a distinct and expressive tone, often depicting tales of
sorrow, alienation, and loneliness.
The American Dream
Many of Langston Hughes’s poems invoke the theme of the American Dream. In 1931, James
Truslow Adams defined the American Dream: "life should be better and richer and fuller for
everyone, with opportunity for each according to ability or achievement." Hughes, however,
addresses this concept from the perspective of the country's disenfranchised, including African
Americans, Native Americans, downtrodden immigrants, and poor farmers. He portrays the
glories of liberty and equality as out of reach for these populations, depicting individuals who are
trapped under the fist of prejudice, oppression, and poverty. Their dreams die or are forgotten in
a life defined by a desperation to survive. However, Hughes does often end his poems on a
somewhat hopeful note, revealing his belief that African Americans (and others) will one day be
free to pursue their dreams.
Dignity
During Langston Hughes's time, his African American readers felt that the poet's work directly
explored their lives, their hopes, their fears, their past, and their dreams - as opposed to the
obtuse modernism of poets like T.S. Eliot or Ezra Pound. The African American characters in
Hughes’s oeuvre embody all the complexities of life in a segregated America. He writes from the
point of view of struggling jazz musicians, frustrated dreamers, disenfranchised students, biracial
children, and so on, finding dignity in their daily struggles. Like W.E.B. DuBois, Hughes's work
calls attention to his characters' strength, endurance, and the purity of their souls. He praises their
physical beauty as well, defying the "white" standards of beauty that dominated popular culture
during the early 20th Century.
Aspiration
Hughes often writes about aspirations as dreams. He explores hidden dreams, lost dreams,
dreams regained, and dreams redeemed. African Americans, from the time of slavery to the
oppression of the Jim Crow era, were treated like second-class citizens in the eyes of the
American law. Hughes believed that this inferior social status forced most African Americans to
hide their dreams behind a protective psychological barrier. For many of Hughes's characters, the
American Dream is completely unattainable. Hughes expresses the power of dreams in different
ways throughout his work. In one poem, Hughes comments that despite the difficulty of realizing
these dreams, it is important for the disenfranchised to keep them alive in order to sustain the
will to live. In another poem, Hughes writes that if these dreams remain dormant for long
enough, then they might explode.
Racism
While Langston Hughes's tone is softer than that of Malcolm X or the Black Panthers (not
surprising, since Hughes lived in a different era), he has his own way of denouncing racism and
depicting the oppression that African Americans experienced at the hands of the patriarchal
system. He alludes to lost and forgotten aspirations, insinuating that African Americans are not
allowed access to the American Dream because of their race. In “Mother to Son,” the mother
describes the various vicissitudes she has faced, exacerbated or directly caused by the color of
her skin. In “On the Road,” one of Hughes’s best known short stories, he depicts racism as being
tied up with religious hypocrisy. Hughes is realistic about the discriminatory environment that he
lives in, but he also expresses hope that one day, the racial inequality in America will start to
even out.
Wisdom
While the word “wisdom” does not specifically occur this particular collection of Langston
Hughes's poems, he clearly alludes to its attainment in many places. Hughes shows wisdom
being passed down through generations, such as the mother who tells her son to never give up,
even when the road is hard. Wisdom is a result of experience, and can inform one's decision to
persevere in the face of adversity. Courage can lead to wisdom - there is priceless knowledge to
be gained from confronting one's demons. Finding a mode of expression for sorrow - like music
or poetry - is a form of wisdom in that a person can learn how to separate him or herself from
bad experiences.
Self-Actualization
Many of the speakers in Langston Hughes's poems start in situations of despondency and
hopelessness. One has argued with a lover, another faces discrimination, a biracial man struggles
with his identity, and so on. However, in these poems, Hughes commonly creates a narrative that
culminates in the protagonist/speaker reaching a state of self- actualization. Despite his or her
difficult surroundings, these individuals are able to find inherent inner strength, allowing them to
persevere against the odds.
 Let America Be America Again

Langston Hughes (1902-1967)

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!
 I, Too
  Langston Hughes

I, too, sing America.

I am the darker brother.

They send me to eat in the kitchen

When company comes,

But I laugh,

And eat well,

And grow strong.

Tomorrow,

I’ll be at the table

When company comes.

Nobody’ll dare

Say to me,

“Eat in the kitchen,”

Then.

Besides,

They’ll see how beautiful I am

And be ashamed—

I, too, am America.