Post by Save Your Karma on Jul 27, 2007 15:01:37 GMT -5
Deana Kalcich
Poetry
Professor Krazsewski
April 11, 2007
Universal Freedom Fighter; Langston Hughes
Langston Hughes once wrote: “Negroes- Sweet and docile, Meek, humble, and Kind: Beware the day- They change their mind.” Langston Hughes was the Negro who changed his mind. Despite his lonely and unstable beginnings Langston Hughes decided ”that there are ways of getting almost anywhere you want to go, if you really want to go.” He knew what he wanted and he made sure that he was able to follow any dream he had. He know where he had come from and the things he was excluded from because of his skin color. He had the courage to see injustice stand up against it and use it to create works of art. Hughes was able to use his experiences and his knowledge to create poetry meant to inspire people to take an active role in society to create better conditions for not only African-Americans but also for blacks worldwide.
The beginning of Langston Hughes’ life was marked with difficulty and instability. Growing up without a stable home life, due to his parent’s divorce. Until the age of 12 Hughes’ often lived with his grandparents while his mother looked for work. He did live with his mother at times during his childhood and in one such case he lived in Topeka, Kansa where he was the only Africa-American in his grammar school. At his school he was subjected to beatings from other students and insults from teachers. However, Hughes once said the experience taught him to trust the goodness of most people because many of the other teachers and students took his side in the fights (thingyinson 20). At age fourteen Hughes finally finds some stability, living with his mother and stepfather and attending Central High School which he graduated from. After his junior and senior year of high school Hughes visits his father and though he disapproved of Hughes’ writing he agreed to provide financial support for Hughes’ enrollment at Columbia University where he drops out after the first year. Enthralled with life in Harlem, Hughes remained in New York working odd jobs until he finally takes a job on a freighter and sails to Africa. Working on the freighter helps instill a strong interest in blues. He decides to stay in Europe and takes a job in a restaurant in Paris. There he listens to Jazz bands. His soulful rhythm and imitation of the work songs sung by slaves really begins to emerge in his work after he moves to Washington D.C. in 1925 with his mother. In Washington D.C. Hughes was very unhappy “I didn’t like my job, and I didn’t know what was going to happen to me, and I was cold and half-hungry, so I wrote a great many poems. I began to write in the manner of the Negro blues and the spirituals” (thingyinson 22). In Washington Hughes worked as a busboy where he was “discovered” by Vachel Lindsay. In 1929 Hughes received his bachelor’s degree. He was celebrated as a promising young poet of the generation and began publishing frequently with the support of Carl Van Vechten and the financial support of Charlotte Mason. Hughes was one of the first black writers who made a living as a writer.. In 1953 Hughes testified to Senator McCarthy’s committee that he was not a communist and never had been, when he was brought before the committee due to the sociopolitical nature of some of his poems that wrongly gave him the reputation of being a Communist. In his later years Hughes held positions at the Universities of Chicago and Atlanta. Hughes died in New York, on May 22, 1967 due to complications after surgery.
In “Mother to Son” the narrator is expressing to her son the hardships she has faced in life. She says that life for her “ain’t been no crystal stair” (Lauter 2), every moment of her life was filled with hardships and difficulties and she had no one to take her by the hand and help her up. She had to fight the whole way and will continue to fight her way up those stairs until she dies. She instructs her son to do the same. To tirelessly fight his way up those stairs of life and to never give up that climb. “Mother to Son” can be interpreted as one mother instructing her son on the trials he will face in life, but it can also be interpreted as The advice of an entire generation to the proceeding generations. The diction of the poem indicates that the speaker is uneducated, lower class, and presumably African-American through the use of “ain’t” and the unorthodox contractions. If it is presumed that the speaker is African-American the poem embodies the struggle that Africa-Americans have faced throughout history. From the very first Africans captured on Africa’s Guinea shore and sent to the America’s to today’s African American politician, all have suffered from oppression. Throughout the centuries Africa-Americans, in slavery or freed, have found strength in their circumstance through many different means such as community, religion, tradition.
In the poem “Negro” Hughes’ expresses more of the struggles that the mother in “Mother to Son” articulates to her son in a way that makes the black experience more universal. The poem is written in six stanzas each starting with a declarative statement e.g. “I am a Negro” (Lauter 1). The remaining lines of the stanzas support the declarative statement, e.g. “Black as the night is black,/black like the depths of my Africa“ (Lauter 2-3). In the second stanza the speaker declares himself a slave, and explains that “Caesar told me to keep his door-steps clean/ I brushed the boots of Washington” (Lauter 5-6). This acknowledgement of blacks in slavery all over the world in various time periods gives supports the idea that Langston Hughes was concerned with conditions for all blacks not simply African-Americans. Stanza three declares the speaker a worker, whose hands have built the pyramids and made mortar for the construction of the Woolworth Building (Lauter 8-9). The second line each stanzas two, three and five describes the conditions of blacks in various times and places while the third line pertains to a happening in the United States. The fourth stanza declares that the speaker is a singer. The stanza continues to describe the universal black experience as the previous stanza do, but instead describes the black culture that results from the described struggles, “[he has sung] all the way from Africa to Georgia/I carried my sorrow songs/ I made ragtime” (Lauter 10-13). “Negro” emphasizes the need for universal social reform.
“Johannesburg mines” describes the horrible labor practices forced upon blacks in South Africa. At a time when Apartheid is still upheld, the South African society mirrors American society when slaves were still owned and even still when Hughes was writing because of the silence that was and still is forced upon the black population. Hughes uses sheer number and the word native to dehumanize the miners that “are devoid of voice and hence political representation in the poem” (Berry 300). Hughes’ writes “what kind of poem/ would you make out of that?“ (Lauter 4) In an attempt to show that there is not a form Hughes can employ to show the gravity of the situation. He is forced to let the number speak for them. Despite advocating for better conditions than he has witnessed in his travels to Africa, Hughes also uses his knowledge of the black population in the United States and his insight as an African-American to show the silence blacks in Johannesburg are facing and uses that instance to show not only the plight of South Africans but also the oppression blacks face in the United States and even world-wide. The same silence that Hughes must fight against in his own work and in his life as a black man and poet. Though Hughes is privileged enough to be able to write poetry and through that poetry have his voice heard, he does not forget to acknowledge the repression of the African-American population as a whole. Hughes himself faces consequences due to the nature of his poetry and ideals voiced in the poetry his has been privileged enough to write. Hughes patron, Mrs. Charlotte Mason who Hughes‘ called his “godmother“ at her urging, severed ties with him because he started to write poetry that was political in nature; poetry that a “savage” poet ought not produce. Mrs. Charlotte Mason sponsored artists because she enjoyed the “primitive nature” of the art they produced she believed "the most significant manifestations of the spiritual were found in primitive, 'child races,' such as Indians and peoples of African descent, whose creative energies had their source in the unconscious" (Berry, "Black Poets" 281). When Hughes’ stopped censoring his political views she withdrew her support and broke ties with him. The lack of voice given to the native workers in “Johannesburg Mines” is very much a parallel to the silencing of the Africa-American population, both in the past and present, and the silencing of Hughes’ views in his own poetry that was pressed upon him by Mrs. Charlotte Mason.
Societies all over the world throughout the centuries have abused the people of Africa, kidnapping them from their homes, forcing them to work in horrible conditions and ingraining in them inferiority complexes. Whether native to Africa or born in a country which enslaved their ancestors, the transgressions against blacks is a problem the whole race faces. American Civil Rights activists like Martin Luther King Jr. took the words of Langston Hughes to heart and did just what Hughes warned. They changed their minds. Their actions created a solidarity that helped initiate the breaking down of injustices against blacks. While many large steps have been taken to overcome the injustices in policy all over the world, de facto prejudices still exist. The words of Langston Hughes still ring true when looking at the collective mindset of the United States, African-Americans are still very much a marginalized group in American society. But Hughes work, though fighting the injustices against African-Americans, could easily translate as a call to action for any marginalized group. At the time Hughes was writing, African-Americans were beginning to understand that it was their turn to take action and defend themselves in a social and political way. Hughes took advantage of the time that African-Americans were able to speak up for themselves and wrote poetry as a black man to inspire black people to not settle for the inferiority forced upon them. But a modern day Hughes, as a gay man, may have used his talents to fight a different fight. Society can always learn from the poetry of Hughes. His work can be transcribed to fit the oppression of any marginalized group at any time period. Langston Hughes’ fight for equality can be modified to fit any oppressed group of people, at any time, making his work truly timeless, universal, and meaningful.
Works Cited
Berry, Faith. "Black Poets, White Patrons: The Hadera Renaissance Years of L. H."Crisis July 1981: 278 -306.
thingyinson, Donald C. A Bio-bibliography of Langston
Hughes 1902-1967 . New York: Archon Books, 1972.
Lauter, Paul, ed. The Heath Anthology of American Literature. 5th ed. Vol. D. Modern
Period: 1910-1945. Boston: Houghton Mifflin Company, 2006.
Poetry
Professor Krazsewski
April 11, 2007
Universal Freedom Fighter; Langston Hughes
Langston Hughes once wrote: “Negroes- Sweet and docile, Meek, humble, and Kind: Beware the day- They change their mind.” Langston Hughes was the Negro who changed his mind. Despite his lonely and unstable beginnings Langston Hughes decided ”that there are ways of getting almost anywhere you want to go, if you really want to go.” He knew what he wanted and he made sure that he was able to follow any dream he had. He know where he had come from and the things he was excluded from because of his skin color. He had the courage to see injustice stand up against it and use it to create works of art. Hughes was able to use his experiences and his knowledge to create poetry meant to inspire people to take an active role in society to create better conditions for not only African-Americans but also for blacks worldwide.
The beginning of Langston Hughes’ life was marked with difficulty and instability. Growing up without a stable home life, due to his parent’s divorce. Until the age of 12 Hughes’ often lived with his grandparents while his mother looked for work. He did live with his mother at times during his childhood and in one such case he lived in Topeka, Kansa where he was the only Africa-American in his grammar school. At his school he was subjected to beatings from other students and insults from teachers. However, Hughes once said the experience taught him to trust the goodness of most people because many of the other teachers and students took his side in the fights (thingyinson 20). At age fourteen Hughes finally finds some stability, living with his mother and stepfather and attending Central High School which he graduated from. After his junior and senior year of high school Hughes visits his father and though he disapproved of Hughes’ writing he agreed to provide financial support for Hughes’ enrollment at Columbia University where he drops out after the first year. Enthralled with life in Harlem, Hughes remained in New York working odd jobs until he finally takes a job on a freighter and sails to Africa. Working on the freighter helps instill a strong interest in blues. He decides to stay in Europe and takes a job in a restaurant in Paris. There he listens to Jazz bands. His soulful rhythm and imitation of the work songs sung by slaves really begins to emerge in his work after he moves to Washington D.C. in 1925 with his mother. In Washington D.C. Hughes was very unhappy “I didn’t like my job, and I didn’t know what was going to happen to me, and I was cold and half-hungry, so I wrote a great many poems. I began to write in the manner of the Negro blues and the spirituals” (thingyinson 22). In Washington Hughes worked as a busboy where he was “discovered” by Vachel Lindsay. In 1929 Hughes received his bachelor’s degree. He was celebrated as a promising young poet of the generation and began publishing frequently with the support of Carl Van Vechten and the financial support of Charlotte Mason. Hughes was one of the first black writers who made a living as a writer.. In 1953 Hughes testified to Senator McCarthy’s committee that he was not a communist and never had been, when he was brought before the committee due to the sociopolitical nature of some of his poems that wrongly gave him the reputation of being a Communist. In his later years Hughes held positions at the Universities of Chicago and Atlanta. Hughes died in New York, on May 22, 1967 due to complications after surgery.
In “Mother to Son” the narrator is expressing to her son the hardships she has faced in life. She says that life for her “ain’t been no crystal stair” (Lauter 2), every moment of her life was filled with hardships and difficulties and she had no one to take her by the hand and help her up. She had to fight the whole way and will continue to fight her way up those stairs until she dies. She instructs her son to do the same. To tirelessly fight his way up those stairs of life and to never give up that climb. “Mother to Son” can be interpreted as one mother instructing her son on the trials he will face in life, but it can also be interpreted as The advice of an entire generation to the proceeding generations. The diction of the poem indicates that the speaker is uneducated, lower class, and presumably African-American through the use of “ain’t” and the unorthodox contractions. If it is presumed that the speaker is African-American the poem embodies the struggle that Africa-Americans have faced throughout history. From the very first Africans captured on Africa’s Guinea shore and sent to the America’s to today’s African American politician, all have suffered from oppression. Throughout the centuries Africa-Americans, in slavery or freed, have found strength in their circumstance through many different means such as community, religion, tradition.
In the poem “Negro” Hughes’ expresses more of the struggles that the mother in “Mother to Son” articulates to her son in a way that makes the black experience more universal. The poem is written in six stanzas each starting with a declarative statement e.g. “I am a Negro” (Lauter 1). The remaining lines of the stanzas support the declarative statement, e.g. “Black as the night is black,/black like the depths of my Africa“ (Lauter 2-3). In the second stanza the speaker declares himself a slave, and explains that “Caesar told me to keep his door-steps clean/ I brushed the boots of Washington” (Lauter 5-6). This acknowledgement of blacks in slavery all over the world in various time periods gives supports the idea that Langston Hughes was concerned with conditions for all blacks not simply African-Americans. Stanza three declares the speaker a worker, whose hands have built the pyramids and made mortar for the construction of the Woolworth Building (Lauter 8-9). The second line each stanzas two, three and five describes the conditions of blacks in various times and places while the third line pertains to a happening in the United States. The fourth stanza declares that the speaker is a singer. The stanza continues to describe the universal black experience as the previous stanza do, but instead describes the black culture that results from the described struggles, “[he has sung] all the way from Africa to Georgia/I carried my sorrow songs/ I made ragtime” (Lauter 10-13). “Negro” emphasizes the need for universal social reform.
“Johannesburg mines” describes the horrible labor practices forced upon blacks in South Africa. At a time when Apartheid is still upheld, the South African society mirrors American society when slaves were still owned and even still when Hughes was writing because of the silence that was and still is forced upon the black population. Hughes uses sheer number and the word native to dehumanize the miners that “are devoid of voice and hence political representation in the poem” (Berry 300). Hughes’ writes “what kind of poem/ would you make out of that?“ (Lauter 4) In an attempt to show that there is not a form Hughes can employ to show the gravity of the situation. He is forced to let the number speak for them. Despite advocating for better conditions than he has witnessed in his travels to Africa, Hughes also uses his knowledge of the black population in the United States and his insight as an African-American to show the silence blacks in Johannesburg are facing and uses that instance to show not only the plight of South Africans but also the oppression blacks face in the United States and even world-wide. The same silence that Hughes must fight against in his own work and in his life as a black man and poet. Though Hughes is privileged enough to be able to write poetry and through that poetry have his voice heard, he does not forget to acknowledge the repression of the African-American population as a whole. Hughes himself faces consequences due to the nature of his poetry and ideals voiced in the poetry his has been privileged enough to write. Hughes patron, Mrs. Charlotte Mason who Hughes‘ called his “godmother“ at her urging, severed ties with him because he started to write poetry that was political in nature; poetry that a “savage” poet ought not produce. Mrs. Charlotte Mason sponsored artists because she enjoyed the “primitive nature” of the art they produced she believed "the most significant manifestations of the spiritual were found in primitive, 'child races,' such as Indians and peoples of African descent, whose creative energies had their source in the unconscious" (Berry, "Black Poets" 281). When Hughes’ stopped censoring his political views she withdrew her support and broke ties with him. The lack of voice given to the native workers in “Johannesburg Mines” is very much a parallel to the silencing of the Africa-American population, both in the past and present, and the silencing of Hughes’ views in his own poetry that was pressed upon him by Mrs. Charlotte Mason.
Societies all over the world throughout the centuries have abused the people of Africa, kidnapping them from their homes, forcing them to work in horrible conditions and ingraining in them inferiority complexes. Whether native to Africa or born in a country which enslaved their ancestors, the transgressions against blacks is a problem the whole race faces. American Civil Rights activists like Martin Luther King Jr. took the words of Langston Hughes to heart and did just what Hughes warned. They changed their minds. Their actions created a solidarity that helped initiate the breaking down of injustices against blacks. While many large steps have been taken to overcome the injustices in policy all over the world, de facto prejudices still exist. The words of Langston Hughes still ring true when looking at the collective mindset of the United States, African-Americans are still very much a marginalized group in American society. But Hughes work, though fighting the injustices against African-Americans, could easily translate as a call to action for any marginalized group. At the time Hughes was writing, African-Americans were beginning to understand that it was their turn to take action and defend themselves in a social and political way. Hughes took advantage of the time that African-Americans were able to speak up for themselves and wrote poetry as a black man to inspire black people to not settle for the inferiority forced upon them. But a modern day Hughes, as a gay man, may have used his talents to fight a different fight. Society can always learn from the poetry of Hughes. His work can be transcribed to fit the oppression of any marginalized group at any time period. Langston Hughes’ fight for equality can be modified to fit any oppressed group of people, at any time, making his work truly timeless, universal, and meaningful.
Works Cited
Berry, Faith. "Black Poets, White Patrons: The Hadera Renaissance Years of L. H."Crisis July 1981: 278 -306.
thingyinson, Donald C. A Bio-bibliography of Langston
Hughes 1902-1967 . New York: Archon Books, 1972.
Lauter, Paul, ed. The Heath Anthology of American Literature. 5th ed. Vol. D. Modern
Period: 1910-1945. Boston: Houghton Mifflin Company, 2006.
