LANGSTON HUGHES’S POEMS MANIFESTING
RACIAL PROTEST
Lilis Lestari Wilujeng
Lecturer of Universitas MaChung in MALANG
Abstract: Langston Hughes has explicitly exposed himself to get involved
in the struggle through literary intermediary in the period of Harlem
Renaissance and after. Racial protest is thus assumed as a prominent mode
of his poems, beside another one, i.e. poems about black life using the spirit
of jazz and blues. He frequently spoke out against and wrote about the
institutionalized racism of government in such a powerful country as
America. Believing that a part of a poet’s job is to inform the minds of his
people, he devoted his lifetime to voice his concerns on racism and argued
passionately a belief in human equality, and a wish for color-line
brotherhood. With his rich poetic capability, nurturing generosity, warm
humor, and abiding love of black people.
Keywords: racial discrimination, protest, and equality
In the early twentieth century, racial protesting struggles
undeniably existed in the United States. Various exponents of the
African Americans, no matter what job or position they might
occupy, have been involved in the movements. Through the fields of
politics, economy, or arts (such as literature, music, theater, etc.),
they fought for equality. Their main goal was to set the African
Americans free from any racial oppression or injustices.
Langston Hughes, one of the exponents, has explicitly exposed
himself to get involved in the struggle through literary intermediary
in the period of Harlem Renaissance and after. Famous for his
versatility, he was a talented black writer, poet, playwright, and also
an anthologist. To be a poet, he realized that one out of his many
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responsibilities was to illuminate the life of his people, the African
Americans. As a partial evidence, Rampersad (1988:410) once
wrote: “There is no poem […] with which Langston Hughes does not
have some direct or indirect, personal and emotional connection.
They are not purely imaginary or contrived poems […]. They are
poems that come out of his own memories and his own life, and the
lives of people he has known, loved, and cried for, […].”
Racial protest is thus assumed as a prominent mode of his
poems, beside another one, i.e. poems about black life using the
spirit of jazz and blues (Baym, et al., 1989:1736). Trying to be
honest to himself and the world, he frequently spoke out against and
wrote about the institutionalized racism of government in such a
powerful country as America. Believing that a part of a poet’s job is
to inform the minds of his people, he devoted his lifetime to voice
his concerns on racism and argued passionately a belief in human
equality, and a wish for color-line brotherhood. With his rich poetic
capability, nurturing generosity, warm humor, and abiding love of
black people, Hughes was one of the dominant exponents in
American literature of the twentieth century (Lauter, et al.,
1990:1488).
Based on the preceding assumptions, this study is conducted to
test whether Hughes’s protest poems truly manifest the reality of
racial injustices faced by the African Americans, especially in his
era. In addition, this study is also intended to give a brief view that
racial discrimination is considered as a shameful conduct of
mankind, because its impacts on the so-called lower races are
evidently destructive, either physically or mentally. This may give a
valuable reflection to all human races that all men are created equal
and remind all of the people that racism should be banished from any
community or any nation.
Wilujeng, Hughes’s Poems Manifesting Racial Protest 194
THEORETICAL PERSPECTIVE
This inquiry is a study of poems written by an outstanding
black poet named Langston Hughes in the period of Harlem
Renaissance. To prove that most of his poems manifest racial
injustices faced by the American blacks, the inquirer approaches the
works by applying certain theoretical perspectives which enable the
readers to know the close relationship between the works of
literature with their social-historical backgrounds.
In relation to the previous proposition, Selden (1990:5) relates
literature and its contexts by posing such questions as “Is literature a
part of history? Can we know what social, economic, and other
historical processes determine or condition the production of literary
texts?”. He tries to answer those questions by writing further that
major literature does not work by directly expressing ideas or
attitudes, but by embodying an experience of life in a form and
diction necessary to convey the experience. The ‘poetic’ element in
poetry cannot be abstracted from the poem without destroying the
‘moral’ significance of the poem. His ideas resemble Guerin’s
approach to literature, that is to say, a literary work can be seen as a
reflection of its author’s life and times or the life and times of the
characters in the works. It can be an attack on the corruption in every
aspect of a certain society socially, politically, or economically
(Guerin, 1999:22). This he covers in the historical-biographical
approach. In relation to poetry, he mentions that “true poetry is
always a direct outpouring of personal feeling; that its values are
determined by the nature of the emotion which it expresses, the
standards being naturally set by preferences of the most admired
poets […]; that its distinctive effort is “to bring unthinkable thoughts
and unsayable sayings within the range of human minds and ears”
[…] (ibid. 25).
It will be much more interesting to write that those theories
represent another worth mentioning idea to approach a work of
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literature, i.e. ‘genetic criticism’. Similarly, the genetic criticism
treats how the work “came into being, and what influences were at
work to give it exactly the qualities that it has. Characteristically, it
tries to suggest what is in the poem by showing what lies behind it”
(Preminger 167 in Guerin, 1999: 311). These phrases would come
near to what is called “source study and related approaches,” in
terms that literature tends to have a sociological context, where the
work is seen as a piece of documentary evidence for the social
surroundings that gave rise to it. Additionally, this sort of literary
approach is now the province of the new historicism. It brackets
together literature, art history, and other disciplines or sciences in
such a way that its politics, its novelty, its historicality, and its
relationship to other prevailing components all remain open” (248).
Bloom, et al. (1961: v) also state that poems, written to be read,
recited, or enjoyed, may contain various implications – biographical,
historical, social, literary – which elude readers in a surface reading
of the text. All good poetry invites the participation of the readers
within reasonable limits, and they profit intellectually and
aesthetically from a stimulation that cannot be measured tangibly.
It is true that every poem does emerge from a process, one that
is shaped by the author’s motivating experience. As its concern is
with experience, it exists to bring us a sense and a perception of life,
to widen and sharpen our contact with existence. The poet selects,
combines, and reorganizes the experiences from his own store of
feeling, observation, and imagination. He creates significant new
experiences for the reader – significant because focused and formed
– in which the reader can participate and that he may use to give him
a greater awareness and understanding of his world (Perrine, 1977:
4). Furthermore, poetry also tends to be evocative, that is, it may
have the power to summon forth various ideas, emotions which the
poet thinks worth communicating. These conditions, qualities, or
Wilujeng, Hughes’s Poems Manifesting Racial Protest 196
feelings possibly lie on or near the surface of the poet’s
consciousness (Bloom, et al, 1961: 29).
Protesting or rebellious spirit representing the experience, idea,
and emotion of a literary artist often finds its voice in poetry, and a
collection of protest poems will contain a distinguished name of the
much admired American poet, i.e. Langston Hughes. Referring to a
statement of disapproval or objection, the term ‘protest’ signifies a
strong affirmation on certain issues. Some sources show that
Hughes’s central purpose in writing was “to explain and illuminate
the Negro condition in America”. The black society was the only
people he had known and grown up with. He admitted humbly that
“they weren’t people whose shoes were always shined, who had
been to Harvard, or who had heard Bach”. He used the poems to
protest and satirize the existing injustices. They dealt with social
concern – to give voice to those who had none, and to reveal the
suffering caused by white social structure.
Racism, inevitably, becomes the main concern for the existence
of the black protest. The doctrine of racism usually involves the idea
that one’s race is superior and has the right to rule others. It held that
the white race was superior to the colored, and it also has the belief
that the races are unequal in general and specific abilities (Blauner,
1972: 46). Thus, racial protest implicitly or explicitly exposed in
Hughes poems is better understood as his effort to refuse white
Americans unjust or unfair action of treatment to the black
Americans due to different races. The whites thought that they were
not related with the blacks by common descent, blood or heredity.
ANALYSIS
During the process of analysis, the writer found that Hughes’s
poems truly conveyed his profound concerns as well as indignation
against racial injustices faced by the African Americans. Thus, the
first three parts of this reporting article (1-3) attempt to expose his
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protest toward racial discrimination, the application of Jim Crow
Law, and racial lynching existing in the United States. Moreover, in
addition to the previous three discriminating issues, in his own
specific ways he rejected the ills of racism by composing poems
about race pride and African American greatest expectation which he
covered in poems about African American dreams. These last two
issues (parts 4-5) are worth-conveying since they manifest the
African American’s own pride as a race that deserves recognition
and dignified position. Gracefully, he pointed out the good sides of
his community as well as his pride as both an African-American and
an American citizen. Indirectly, both subjects signify the covert
racial protests which also distinguish the characteristics of Langston
Hughes from any other poets or authors in his era. The following
discussion is going to verify each issue more clearly.
Racial Discrimination
As stated above, the word ‘racial’ is the adjective form of the
noun ‘race’ which refers to a group of persons related by common
descent, blood or heredity. Discrimination, as a concrete form of
racism, is known as an unfavorable action toward people because
they are members of a particular ethnic group (McLemore, 1983:
108). Racial discrimination existing in the United States in the first
half of the twentieth century was thus understood as actions or
practices carried out by members of dominant group, i.e. the whites,
or their representatives, which had a differential and harmful impact
on members of subordinate group, i.e. the blacks. Hughes’s
representative poems revealing racial discrimination are found
abundant and contain the following discriminating issues.
In Employment
It is noteworthy to recall that Hughes understood unlimited
aspects of the black working-class as he spent most of his life with
Wilujeng, Hughes’s Poems Manifesting Racial Protest 198
them. To share his experience in literary intermediary, he proceeded
“Necessity” to reflect the hardship of the blacks in getting a job. This
short poem consists of merely a stanza covering twelve lines.
Speaking in vernacular language, the speaker, clearly a black man,
seems to express what he has in mind in a daily language of ordinary
person no matter what people may react if they hear what he says. In
other words, it revives the oral tradition of his people. Black English,
or Nonstandard Negro English, pervades the diction and structure of
the poem. The clear example is the case of negative sentence “I don’t
have to do nothing” (line 3). In Standard English, the sentence
should be “I don’t have to do anything” or “I have to do nothing”. In
the dialect of English considered nonstandard, when there is an
indefinite pronoun or article, the negative may be realized on
indefinites as well as the auxiliary of the verb (Wolfram, 1984: 226).
This type of double or multiple negation is characteristic of all types
of nonstandard English dialects, including Black English. Later on,
this particular phenomenon will occur in several other representative
poems.
The opening line, only a word Work?, can be interpreted as a
short interrogative statement to respond a question of another person
as “Don’t you have to work today?” or the questions alike. The
second up to fourth lines inform the readers that he has no job. He
has no significant daily activity but eats, drinks, stays black, and later
on, if time comes, dies. He stays in a little old furnished room, very
little that he ‘cannot whip a cat without getting fur in his mouth’. His
life is even more difficult as ‘the landlady can overcharge this little
poorly furnished room’. He realizes that he has to be capable in
affording his life, but the condition of the society does not give him
enough opportunity to get a decent job. The imagery in lines five to
seven is touching, since the readers can imagine as well as sense the
room’s lack of fresh air. The furniture is perhaps not only out of
date, but also very dirty. Supposed the inhabitant wants to throw
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away a cat outside his room by whipping it, its fur can fly
everywhere around the room. How stuffy the room is. Every person
on earth surely has necessities that he has to fulfill. Normally, he will
work to afford all of them; he has to hold an occupation. Thus, there
is an ironic correlation between the idea in the title with the content
of the whole poem because the persona still has to fulfill his needs of
life while being an unemployed. Or else, it is a basic ‘necessity’ for a
human being to work for his life. If this necessity cannot be met
during his life, the futility of his life is obvious enough.
The previous bitter episode can be equated with what the
speaker of “Puzzled” tries to tell. Through this poem, he represents a
community living in Harlem, a central area of the blacks in New
York City. When one talks about Harlem Renaissance in the early
twenties and a decade onward, this place was an earthly heaven for
the blacks. But for the period after the Great Depression, when
Harlem Renaissance evaded, Harlem became ‘the edge of hell’.
Looking back to the past, the speaker reminds the readers about the
dark history of slavery, of deceitful promises of the whites toward
the black’s freedom, and of the suffering the slaves faced. For him,
there was no difference between the condition of the blacks in the
period before and after the slavery abolition. Unfairness still
happened to this so-called subordinate community.
Being ‘puzzled’, the character asks a question of no
satisfactorily ready answer. Harlem reminds him of deadly white
treatments toward the blacks. Up to the ‘present’, they still suffer
economically. Sugar, bread, cigarettes, and probably some other
staple food became more expensive. Having been jobless, certainly
they suffer even more. The ‘only’ reason mentioned by this character
was that because they were colored, a matter having nothing to do
with universal requirements for a man to get a job. The word
‘remember’, mentioned four times, reflects the meditating actions of
the speaker. First, he remembers the past slavery, then he finds out
Wilujeng, Hughes’s Poems Manifesting Racial Protest 200
the poverty of his community. Third, he knows the joblessness of his
people, and finally, despite his community’s painful experiences, he
tries to encourage himself and others to have a progressive step
ahead. Apart from uncertainty in his life, he wants to make his life
different and do something to get the betterment of life.
Enriching the view of the black’s problem in employment, the
poems “Brass Spittoons” and “Laughers” verify the jobs the blacks
usually hold. “Laughers” mentions not less than fifteen kinds of
occupations given to them, such as dancers, dish-washers, elevatorboys, ladies’ maids, cooks, waiters, nurses of babies, number writers
and the like. All of those terms refer to lower class occupation with
low wages. None of them conveys a dignified position requiring high
or sophisticated skills, for instance company directors, managers,
pilots, lecturers, doctors, and so on. This perhaps becomes a mockery
of the whites’ basic consideration about the blacks, i.e. they are lazy,
dirty, smelly, will not work unless they have to, do not know what to
do with money when they get it, and have low mental ability
incapable of anything but menial work.
Hughes actually did not merely intend to convey the kinds of
black’s occupation through a bare and shallow poem, but he also
willingly exposed the toughness and courage of his very people
through a pointed ironic expression of ‘loud laughers’ and a
personification ‘in the hands of Fate’. “Laughers”, a title and word
repetition, denotes a group of amused people in a joyful situation,
but with a modifying adjective ‘loud’, ironically the reverse phrase
may connote the people laughing on the outside but crying on the
inside. Their cry bears the burden of a very long disastrous period.
Personifying ‘Fate’ by endowing it with human quality, i.e. having
hands, the poet describes the mighty power that rules the black’s life.
The combination then suggests that they face their impoverished
destiny, but behind that also have endless dreams of having better
life. They enjoy everything that they have by still singing, dancing,
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and having fun, though deep in their heart they mourn for undeniably
bitter condition.
As a magnifying glass, a poem entitled “Brass Spittoons” gives
the information of black’s life in details. This poem tells about a
character whose job is cleaning hotel spittoons. A job of no
importance, he has some more responsibilities of the so-called
disgusting activities everyday, i.e. cleaning the steam in hotel
kitchens, the smoke in hotel lobbies, and of course the slime in hotel
spittoons. This becomes the part of his life. Such a job was held by
many blacks in various different cities as Detroit, Chicago, Atlantic
City, Palm Beach and probably many more. Those areas have
become the primary directions for the blacks during the great
migration from southern farms to northern and western cities. The
salary could not even be expected much: two dollars a day, whereas
he has to afford all the necessity of the family, namely, buying shoes
for the baby, paying the house rent, providing money for gin on
Saturday and church on Sunday. An exclamatory remarks My God!
uttered by the speaker makes us realize that it needs a miracle for
this low-wage man or boy to afford all of the above expenses.
Hughes, however, did not forget to expose the spiritual touch of his
people by adding the following lines in the poem:
A bright bowl of brass is beautiful to the Lord.
Bright polished brass like the cymbals
Of King David’s dancers,
Like the wine cups of Solomon
Hey, boy!
A clean spittoon on the altar of the Lord.
[… … … … … … …]
(32-37)
An alliterative statement ‘A bright bowl of brass is beautiful to
the Lord’ and a biblical allusion of King David and Solomon bring
Wilujeng, Hughes’s Poems Manifesting Racial Protest 202
about an idea that the blacks did not want to ignore their Christian
values of gratifying God no matter what hardship of life they had to
face. This becomes more intense in the paradox ‘A clean spittoon on
the altar of the Lord’. A spittoon, despite being brightly polished, is
still a container to spit into; the one that even the owner or ‘spitter’
might refuse to clean. Paradoxically, this container is brought to the
altar of the Lord, the Great Creator, or God, the Highest Supreme of
the World. Thus, the boy bringing the spittoon to the altar of the
Lord reflects that in spite of his humble circumstance he is still able
to give a sincere gratitude to Him. A nickel, a dime, a dollar; two
dollars a day; that is the only thing he can offer in his life.
As a free verse, similar to most of his representative poems
analyzed in this thesis, this poem is uniquely more rhythmical than
ordinary prose. It denies itself regular metrical or rhyming patterns
and its variants which signal traditional verse. Hughes, presumably,
intended to isolate words, phrases, or clauses according to cadence as
well as to mood or image, and to inform the reader how the lines or
phrases are to be delivered. Inevitably, this sort of poem is both more
subjective, since it truly expresses the speaker’s personal emotion or
feeling, and more flexible, in terms that it is not limited to certain
patterns of rhymes, rhythm, or numbers of lines. Thus it differs from
its traditional counterparts such as sonnet, blank verse, rhyme royal,
or the like.
In Social Life
In social perspective, Hughes performs intricate lives of the
blacks, i.e. in being a mulatto, a threatened black man, Negro
mothers talking to their children, a poorly jailed black tenant, and an
only black guest in a white dinner party. “Little Old Letter” is a
poem of four stanzaic quatrains rhyming xaxa. Containing a racial
threatening issue in American society, it reveals a black character
just having found an anonymous letter. In details, he mentions that
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the time is in the morning, the letter is not very long, less than one
page, but the content scares him to death. Obvious enough, the
identification of the sender is not clear. The reader thus can imagine
the kind of letter he has received. By writing ‘You don’t need no gun
nor knife’ (the second line of the last stanza), Hughes wants to
emphasize that a superficial matter, like an anonymous letter, can
change a person’s life; can make somebody wish he were dead. It
was widely known that such white racial organization as the Ku
Klux Klan had threatened many blacks through destructive actions.
Hughes, depicting the threatening moment of a person getting a
racial anonymous mail, is capable to arouse the emotion of the
readers in a direct tone and simplistic choice of words. People are
invited to recall the principles of certain racial organizations
embodying cruel values of humanity. As an example, to protect,
defend, aid, and assist the life of American whites in Southern States
(Maryland, Virginia, North Carolina, South Carolina, Georgia,
Florida, Alabama, Mississippi, Louisiana, Texas, Arkansas,
Missouri, Kentucky, and Tennessee), the Ku Klux Klan had
interrogated its prospective members by asking at least ten questions,
two of which (the fifth and sixth ones) are:
5th. Are you opposed to negro equality, both social
and political? (sic)
6th. Are you in favor of a white man’s government in
this country?
(http://www.toptags.com/aama/docs/kkk.htm 8 March 2002)
This way of recruiting members leads to the idea that they
opposed colored people, in this case the blacks. The terror tactics
they conducted were usually aimed at intimidating the blacks into
political or social submission.
A poem entitled “Cross”, resembling “Mulatto” at a certain
extent, centers its point in the confusing life of a mulatto. Mulatto
Wilujeng, Hughes’s Poems Manifesting Racial Protest 204
itself is known as a person who has one parent of black race and one
of white race. Inevitably, in Hughes’s period, a mulatto ran a quite
difficult life owing to his uncertainty of the exact race he belonged.
As a persona, the character is described to be a little bit confused of
his own identity. To be a white person, probably he is not fully
accepted by the white father. He cannot curse his father as he may be
proud of being half white. He cannot either curse his black mother
since she is the one who has given birth to him. Perhaps he does not
really want to be a part of black society owing to its hard
consequences. Being a black man means hardship in life. Sharpened
by the interrogative ending, neither fully black nor white, he lives in
confusion.
Similarly, as the title suggests, “Mulatto” also brings about the
conflicting situation between black community with the white one.
In the form of conversing lines, the poem can be treated as having
the mulatto and the white characters, added with the mood and
setting of the event. The first line, and some more italicized ones,
reflect the content of their conversation. The mulatto wants to get an
admittance for his identity as a mulatto, the son of black and white
parents. He wants to know his position in society. Unfortunately the
white parent does not want to accept and admit him as a son. The
cacophony ‘Like hell!’, a harsh sounding diction uttered by the white
man, represents his disgust toward his mulatto son. He also thinks
that the blacks, including the woman giving birth to the mulatto,
mean nothing to him. “What’s the body of your mother?”, repeated
twice, or “What’s a body but a toy?”, give a signal that black women
or wenches are only the sexual objects of the white men. Besides, in
Georgia, intermarriage in the period of Jim Crow laws was
prohibited. The rule was that it would be unlawful for a white person
to marry anyone except a white person. Any marriage in violation of
this section shall be void. Interestingly, the interrogative statement
“What’s a body but a toy?” can also be interpreted differently. This
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may be a hard effort to console the abandoned woman and her
mulatto son. Being mortals, some day they will surely die. At this
time, they will not need their body any more. This body will be
buried or burnt, and their soul will lead ‘another life’ in ‘another
world’.
The lines that are not italicized lead the reader to have a
vicarious sense impression on the setting time of the poem.
Supplementary details have immediate sensuous, imaginative effects
upon the stanzas, which are expository and dramatic, which set the
mood and tone: they also clarify the intention of a story-telling
figure. The following lines can be the existing examples creating a
vivid imagery of the situation:
Georgia dusk
And the turpentine woods.
One of the pillars of the temple fell.
[… … … … …]
The Southern night is full of stars,
Great big yellow stars.
O, sweet as earth,
Dusk dark bodies
Give sweet birth
To little yellow bastard boys.
(2-4, 3136)
Thus, the time is in the evening, when the dark sky acts as the
large background of bright stars. On purpose, Hughes’s independent
clause ‘The Southern night is full of stars’ and phrase ‘Great big
yellow stars’ take the function of emphasizing the inevitable
existence of the whites in Southern states. The ‘yellow’, as a
modifier of ‘stars’, symbolizes the brighter skin of the whites, and
also that of the bastard boy. Georgia, one of Southern states
employing slavery, witnesses the anguish of the blacks in the poem.
Wilujeng, Hughes’s Poems Manifesting Racial Protest 206
Concerning with the words ‘the night’, Hughes frequently used it as
a symbol for the beauty of his people, the darker brothers of the
universe. Night does not always reflect hopeless darkness and
disaster.
Anaphorical phrases and rhyming ends of “A nigger night / A
nigger joy / A little yellow / Bastard boy” (emphasis added) make the
poem more soothing if recited aloud. The aim of the anaphora, a
form of verbal repetition, is to give emphasis or to make a progress
through varying a partially repeated word or phrase. ‘A nigger’,
repeated twice, becomes more emphatic, and the words ‘joy’ and
‘toy’ contain the same soothing sound or rhyme. The intensity will
be less if Hughes merely wrote “A nigger night and joy” in one flow
of a line.
Irony appears when the reader contradicts the experience of the
little yellow bastard boy and its mother with the previous anaphora.
Every woman and her family will be in distress to know that the
child is rejected by its father. Despite dissatisfaction, the Negro
people welcomed the newly born baby, a mulatto, without any
objection that it is the son of the white; that it is a bastard, an
illegitimate child whose parents are not married to each other.
The poet, in the view of the blacks, used ain’t as a particular
dialect’s way of negating verbs in the past tense. This colloquial
expression cites the feature of Black English. Largely concerned
with the depicting of Negro life in America, Hughes did not run
away from the cultural aspects of the blacks. He attempted to lift the
everyday language of his people into a more poetic and valuable
expression.
“Ballad of the Landlord”, following the style of “Mulatto”, is a
largely comic poem about a black tenant threatening violence unless
his rights are honored. He quarrels with the landlord because of
having problems with his shack. A week before, he told the landlord
that the roof had sprung a leak, and the steps were broken down.
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This man is enraged since the landlord refuses to honor the tenant.
Even the landlord asks him to pay his debt, ten dollars. Furious of
this man’s arrogance, the tenant threatens to box the landlord so that
he yells and asks the police for help. Hyperbolically, he says that the
tenant is trying to ruin the government and overturn the land.
Immediately the policeman comes and arrests the black person.
Right after that, the reader is invited to know what happens to the
person in the police station. Jailed, the black farmer becomes the
headlines of the press. He is imprisoned because of his lack of
money to hold the bail, whereas the landlord is still free from any
accusation.
Injustice is the issue Hughes humorously protests in this poem.
The unjust act, the unfairness, the inequality, or the violation of the
rights were frequently experienced by the American blacks. The
tenant actually becomes the victim of the landlord’s discriminating
attitude and greed. He is not treated justly because of being colored,
ignorant, and poor. Therefore, Hughes unceasingly attempted to be a
good folk poet voicing the aspiration of the blacks.
The aforementioned poem might easily lead the careless reader
to fall into the consideration that this is funny or gay. Perhaps the
surface is funny or gay, but the heart of the matter is tragic; a subtle
blending of tragedy and comedy. It is a tragedy in terms of the
existing racial injustice, and comedy in terms of the ridiculous style
of delivering the narrative poem. Such poem is an exquisite art and a
difficult one, so is the following “Dinner Guest: Me”.
In the fall of 1961, Hughes got invitations of various receptions
and dinners. Mostly held by white people, no wonder that the dinner
parties were attended by many important whites. For all his periodic
discomfort, Hughes seemed to have no real desire to decline these
more formal invitations. He clearly enjoyed dressing up and stepping
out in style, away from Harlem for an evening. With his gift of
conversation and laughter he was an excellent dinner guest.
Wilujeng, Hughes’s Poems Manifesting Racial Protest 208
Rampersad (1988: 342) informs that once Hughes satirized his
position at all-white dinner party in “Dinner Guest: Me”.
Understanding the essence of the poem, the reader will agree with
Rampersad’s statement that the poem is a satire, which according to
Bloom, et al. (1961: 163) is basically critical of men or mankind for
their moral, mental, and political foibles, or simply for their manners.
The satirical poem usually exposes hypocrisy with the aim of
correction.
Almost in one flow of utterance, the character who becomes
the only black guest of the party descriptively conveys the
circumstance he is facing and the politeness of the white guests in
murmuring “I’m so ashamed of being white.” He does enjoy the
evening in an excellently furnished room which is full of delicious
food and tasteful wine. Satirically, however, he claims himself as
‘The Negro Problem’ (line 2). Apart from the whites’ politeness, he
is still a representative of Negro problem in the United States. It is
possible for him to be politely wined and dined in an all-white party,
but it cannot erase the sorrowful destiny of the other blacks.
Exquisitely as well as humorously he arouses the sensible morality
of the readers by writing:
To be a Problem on
Park Avenue at eight
Is not so bad.
Solutions to the Problem,
Of course, wait.
(19-23)
Those lines remind the reader that a dinner party, symbolizing
a social gathering and a cheerful situation full of happy and dignified
people, cannot wipe out the racial darkness and difficult boundaries
between American blacks and whites. The blacks still have to wait
for the solution of the racial problems up to the unknown period of
time under the oppression and domination of wealthy whites.
209
Regarding the contribution of black women, Hughes’s poetry
makes room for the experiences of women. In the analysis of
“Mother to Son” and “The Negro Mother”, one can explore the way
he turns women’s experiences into emblems of the AfricanAmerican experience. Produced in almost the same tone, both poems
voice the personal, emotional thought of the Negro mothers
disclosed to their children. This disclosure is about their unceasing
struggle of reaching the goal, i.e. to step out of racial injustices, to
gain their freedom, to experience a full human right. In an illiterate
speech of a black woman, e.g. the use of “I’se been a-climbin’ on, /
And reachin’ landin’s” (lines 9-10), the mother in “Mother to Son”
implores the son to keep moving forward, to keep making progress
so that their race will not be left behind. Her sorrow hopefully
becomes the fertilizer of the blacks’ future Promised Land. In selfreliance, poverty should be substituted by prosperity, and the
oppression should be replaced by freedom.
Identifying herself as the one climbing a stair of unbearably
anguished life, this woman states that the stair is not a crystal one.
Metaphorically, it suggests the poor condition of the blacks as a
whole. Their life is still in ignorance, in darkness, as dark as their
skin color. To magnify the detailed sorrow of her people, the
character says that the path she always steps on is full of tacks and
splinters, bare without carpet. Tacks, splinters, and a bare floor
without carpet truly manifest the kinds of oppressions done by the
whites, such as raping, jailing, lynching, segregating, whipping,
beating, and some more racial injustices. Nevertheless, she never
gives up struggling. She is still climbing, reaching the top of the
American racial mountain in order to get racial equality, to fight for
integration. She hopes that the descendants will not fall, will never
be trapped into profound despair.
This stout and courageous attitude is also shown by the woman
character of “The Negro Mother”. Similarly, her long tiring walk is
Wilujeng, Hughes’s Poems Manifesting Racial Protest 210
expected to nourish the dream of her children; to become the torch
for further free stand. The lines of the poem themselves are able to
communicate the heartbreak and all at once the expectation of the
black old generation in order that the young will keep on moving and
make the dream come true.
Different from the previous mother character, she speaks in a
literate language. Instead of Black English dialect, this poem, in
rhyming couplets, employs a more formal language. The diction,
otherwise, is still highly connotative. For example, all her
experiences can be regarded as the distinctive view of the AfricanAmerican historical humiliation, harassment, and abuse for ‘three
hundred years in the deepest South’. Fortunately, the dream that God
puts in their soul is as stainless as steel.
Hughes persisted that the women contributed much for the
struggle to gain the glory of the black community. Together with the
other members of the community, they bore desperate life during the
periods of slavery, reconstruction, Jim Crow laws, and even the
‘present’. They saw their children and husbands sold away, worked
day and night in the field, yielded the cotton and the corn, but were
beaten and mistreated for their lifetime devotion.
In a distinguished approach of humanity, the poet bears no
hatred. In the voice of a woman character, he believes in universal
brotherhood of mankind. Addressing the whites as ‘brothers’ in line
49 is a vital sign for his preceding gracious touch of a non-violent
protest. In relation to the importance of the usable past, he proposed
that past time could be a preliminary step for further progress.
In Education
Racial discrimination in education also existed in the period of
Hughes’s life as a folk poet. Mu’in (2001) has mentioned that this
discrimination was employed in several educational aspects such as
educational fund, facilities, programs, opportunities, and teacher’s
211
salary. Through a slightly different perspective of viewing the
discrimination aspect, Hughes overtly protests the poor educational
opportunity of the blacks in “Theme for English B”.
A typical environment of a school activity, the instructor is said
to give the students an easily done assignment at home, and they
have to submit it the day after. He also gives information how to
produce a good passage, i.e. by being honest to himself so that the
idea will flow easily. An only colored student in his class, the
speaker realizes that this easy task for others may become a very
difficult one for him. The process of finishing the task will not be as
simple as it seems. A twenty-two and colored student of a college, he
finds the impossibility of producing a good passage when he is not
honest to himself. If he denies the color line problem faced by his
community, the page will not be true.
Finally, he decides to be true by writing down what he has in
mind frankly. He knows that it may offend his white instructor. He
only thinks that this will be his opportunity to expose his indignation
toward the employment of racism in his surroundings. A colored
person, he always believes in having an equal right of being a good
citizen. As normal person as the whites, he likes to eat, sleep, drink,
be in love, work, read, learn, understand life, have a pipe for a
Christmas present, or listen to records such as Bessie, bop, or Bach.
It is not a coincidence that he mentions Bessie, a black woman
outstanding as a blues singer, bop, a new spring of jazz, and Bach, a
European classic composer widely known among the whites. Beside
its soothing alliterative effect, the line is used to speak out that
nothing is excessive in his way of appreciating as well as enjoying
life. The whites are also fond of the same things.
Creatively, in addition, he writes a complicated statement “I
guess being colored doesn’t make me not like / the same things other
folks like who are other races.” In a more simple diction and
structure, the statement can be paraphrased into “Being colored
Wilujeng, Hughes’s Poems Manifesting Racial Protest 212
doesn’t make me different from the other folks or races”, and it may
contain the idea that all races are created equal. It is assumed that, in
doing this, Hughes wants to show to the readers, the whites in
particular, that the logic of his people is as sophisticated as others.
He expects a lot that his work will not be valued merely based on his
skin color. The virtue of a person will come out of his good and
sincere deeds instead of heredity. He longs for equality in America.
The blacks and the whites should hand in hand build the country.
The quotation of “You are white -- / yet a part of me, as I am a part
of you. / That’s American.” evidently shows his expectation. They
have to learn one another without considering the age, position, or
race. In a strong determination, he concludes the page by convincing
himself “This is my page for English B”.
Indirectly, this poem uncovers the limited opportunity of the
blacks in education. The black character is proven to be the only
colored student in his class. Sometimes this student gets indecent
treatments from the instructors. In an aching consciousness, he
writes “Sometimes, perhaps you don’t want to be a part of me / Nor
do I want to be a part of you.” Being truly indignant of the
educational problem faced by the black, the speaker tries to convince
all races in the United States that they can share knowledge.
Education, as an important way of improving the capability of the
people, is believed to be an effective intermediary for cross-culture
understanding, in this case between American blacks and whites.
The Application of Jim Crow Law
One goal to promote the absurdity of racial segregation is done
by Hughes through his poems protesting the application of Jim Crow
Laws. Jim Crow, named for a minstrel show character, was first
heard of in 1877, right after the Reconstruction period of the Civil
War. They were late-19th-century statutes passed by the legislatures
of the Southern states that created a racial caste system.
213
After Reconstruction, the blacks and whites often rode together
in the same railway cars, ate in the same restaurants, used the same
public facilities. The emergence of large black communities in urban
areas and of significant black labor force in factories presented a new
challenge to whites Southerners. Increasingly, the whites could not
deal with the thought that blacks were their equals. Newspapers
taunted and people began to think that Negroes were criminals and
acted improperly toward the white citizens.
One cause of the Jim Crow Laws could have been the Plessy
vs. Ferguson case, when Justice Harlan considered ‘separate but
equal’ was constitutional. In this case, the issue was public
segregation on transportation. The high court rulings led to a
profusion of Jim Crow Laws. By 1914 every Southern State had
passed laws that created two separate societies; one black, the other
white. Blacks and whites could not ride together in the same railroad
cars, sit in the same waiting rooms, use the same washrooms, eat in
the same restaurants, or sit in the same theaters. Blacks were denied
access to parks, beaches, and picnic areas; they were barred from
many hospitals. In other words, what had been maintained by custom
in the rural South was to be maintained by law in the urban South.
The application of Jim Crow laws is also well known as racial
segregation, referring to the act of separating and isolating members
of a racial group from the main body (Kitano, 1985: 61). Hughes’s
“Merry-Go-Round” and “Freedom Train” become the two of his
most effective poems to express the stupidity and the heartbreak of
racial segregation.
Brilliantly, “Merry-Go-Round” shows not only the poet’s
emotive power but also his considerable technical skill within the
bounds of aesthetic simplicity. In this poem, spoken by a “Colored
Child at a Carnival”, he assumed the voice of a small child. The use
of merry-go-round to pose the existence of Jim Crow laws
effectively sharpens the absurdity of the segregation in the South. In
Wilujeng, Hughes’s Poems Manifesting Racial Protest 214
a merry-go-round, one will never find the front or back parts. Every
riding horse will return to its previous position since this
entertainment works by moving around. Innocently, the child asks
the ‘Mister’ to show the Jim Crow section in this entertaining
vehicle. He is afraid of making a mistake, namely, riding the horse in
an area strictly provided for white children. Living Down South,
known as the land of ‘separate but equal’, he is accustomed to know
his inferior position. This time, he finds difficulty in determining the
position he has to take. In the segregated transportation, he has to sit
in the back.
Another satire on segregation is “Freedom Train”. A quite long
poem, consisting of various sectional stanzas, it becomes the
explosion of the poet’s underestimation of Jim Crow transportation.
The stanzas comprising various numbers of lines versify the rhyming
couplets. Completely enough, it contains the detailed aspects of
racial segregation in the South. In resemblance with the other poems,
in a vernacular language, the character tells that he has read, heard,
seen, and waited for the existence of Freedom Train. Every day, they
have faced the negative impacts of the Jim Crow laws. In Dixon, the
trains were all segregated, and the back door was provided for the
entrance of the blacks. Signs of FOR COLORED or WHITE FOLKS
ONLY were familiar in various places. The engineer, or high
position, was held by the whites, the blacks were the porters. In
Mississippi, not all of the citizens got a right to board the train. In
Birmingham station, the white and black folks get aboard to different
direction, based on the existing racial marks of COLORED and
WHITE. As if to denounce to the discourteous and uncivilized
treatment of blacks on buses and trains as a situation absurd and
stupid, the character recites:
Will his Freedom Train come zoomin’ down the track
Gleamin’ in the sunlight for white and black ?
215
Not stoppin’ at no stations marked COLORED nor
WHITE,
Just stoppin’ in the fields in the broad daylight,
Stoppin’ in the country in the wide-open air
Where there never was no Jim Crow signs nowhere,
[… … … … … … … … …]
No Mayors and such for which colored can’t vote,
And nary a sign of a color line –
For the Freedom Train will be yours and mine!
(49-54, 56-58)
The blacks were excluded from all formal activities. They
gradually lost jobs in government, which they gain after the Civil
War. Whites owned the land, the police, the government, the
courtrooms, the law, the armed forces, and the press. The political
system denied blacks the right to vote. The Jim Crow laws seem to
the poet the most antiquated and barbarous thing on this continent,
and should be broken up immediately. In his own words he said, “I
do not understand how one can expect any Americans to ask merely
for half-democracy, half equality (or whatever word you want to
use).” He insisted, “We, too, are citizens, soldiers, human beings –
and we certainly don’t like Jim Crow cars! Would you?”. Freedom
train is hollered by Hughes through this poem to represent his hope
for racial equality and the abolition of segregation laws.
Racial Lynching
Racial discrimination in the United States also resulted in racial
lynching. Derived from Col. Charles Lynch who made a practice of
punishing people without due process of law, lynching means
unlawfully hanging or otherwise killing a person by mob action
(http://www.bartebly.com/65/ly/lynching.html 4 April 2002). Thus,
hanging or killing a black person by white mob action because of
Wilujeng, Hughes’s Poems Manifesting Racial Protest 216
race prejudice and without any fair trial is the main idea of racial
lynching in the United States. Prejudice, an unfavorable opinion or
feeling before the right knowledge, thought, or reason, is closely
related to discrimination, and both are often present in the same
situation.
Factually, between 1882, when reliable data were first
collected, and 1968, when the crime had largely disappeared, some
3440 black men and women were lynched, mostly because of their
outspokenness, in the aftermath of race riots, and of other presumed
offenses against whites. A report by John Edward Bruce entitled
“The Blood Red Record: A Review of Horrible Lynchings and
Burning of the Negroes by Civilized White Men in the United States
1901” (http://www.toptags.com/aama/events /bloodred.htm 4 May
2002) informs that the crime of lynching runs back to the period of
reconstruction and back beyond that to the earlier history of the
United States. He argues that this conduct was barbarous, wicked,
brutal, and cruel. In torturing Negro criminals, they saturated them
with oil and afterward burnt these people at the stake. Sometimes,
the blacks were sent to speedy death at the end of a rope or with a
bullet to the brain.
Meltzer (1985:11) once wrote that Hughes was really offended
by the lynching of the blacks in Southern States. His own suffering
was not anything unique or special. He could read every week in the
Topeka Plain Dealer about beatings, whippings, jailing, and lynching
in the big headlines that scared him half to death. This deeply sad
thought he expressed in his following statements: “How could
anyone dare go down South? You might be lynched the minute you
stepped off the train.”
It is quite certain that he was touched by the circumstance, and
afterward driven to produce a poem entitled “Song for a Dark Girl”
in 1927. This work comprises a stanza of twelve lines in irregular
rhyming pattern. The particular phrase ‘Way Down South in Dixie’,
217
repeated three times in lines 1, 5, and 9, shows the setting place of
the ‘event’. Notably, the phrase is informed as the last line of Dixie,
the popular minstrel song which became the rallying cry of Southern
patriotism during and after the Civil War. Ironically, on this occasion
Hughes used the line as the cry of the blacks owing to racial
lynching. It becomes an attack for its stereotypes of slavery and
black life.
To the American blacks, the phrase down South means a lot.
Many great blacks admitted that down South was closely related to
the expression down home which meant the farm, or as Jo Jo
Williams, a blues singer brought up in the rural South, explained,
“the word down home, it mean back to the root, which mean where it
all start at, this music, the blues and the church music, and so far as I
can understand, it came from the country, the fields and the shacks
and the towns that weren’t but wide spaces in the highway” (sic)
(Titon, 1994:3). In ironic attitude, Hughes lifted up the refrain in
order to expel the fact that many of the black migrants of the north
always thought back to family, friends, and old times down South. It
is impossible for a person to leave a culture behind. Frankly
speaking, the land of lynch law was also the land of fish fries and
barbecues, good music and getting religion, long talks and deep love,
the feel and the smell of soil and farm.
In the first person point of view, the speaker, obviously a dark
girl, mourns for the death of a young lover. The act of lynching is
interpreted from “They hung my black young lover / To a cross
roads tree” (lines 3-4). The body is bruised high in air. This suggests
the loneliness and saddest moment of the victim’s soul, the lover,
and perhaps the family. Also, it describes the position of the victim:
between heaven and earth. Then the ‘I’ asks Jesus a ‘racial’ question
in lines 7 and 8. The reader will be startled by the word white in “I
asked the white Lord Jesus / What was the use of prayer”. In
Christianity, everybody on this earth is allowed to pray since prayers
Wilujeng, Hughes’s Poems Manifesting Racial Protest 218
signify the breath of life, the food of the soul, and the way to
communicate with God. Jesus, the Christian Lord, was born into a
Jewish family, as to Hughes a white race. By writing such lines, he
wanted to mock whether Jesus (the ‘white-skinned’ God), as the
Creator of human kind and the universe, also takes the race into
consideration in answering the prayers, in blessing His creatures.
The poem, therefore, can be a harsh attack on religious hypocrisy. It
is true that once Hughes asked, “Can it be that most American white
folks have no hearts and no souls?”. He said further that he was
really puzzled about this, theirs being a Christian country, but with
so many people who were not Christ-like toward their darker
brothers. Profoundly heartbroken, he cannot feel the warmth of love
any longer. Metaphorically through the last two lines, Hughes
exposed the futile existence and the shallow meaning of love for
those who are under oppression.
The poem, short, subjective, emotional and in blues spirit,
illuminates the evil conduct of the whites. Supposed to be spoken by
a single speaker, it is addressed to all dark girls, boys, men, and
women who have suffered from the whites’ mistreatments. To keep
the dark episode of a brutal experience alive in his aching
consciousness, Hughes squeezed the blacks’ sorrow into the blues
lyricism since it was above all a way of feeling. The grievances are
transformed into a personal but meaningful expression. It reflects the
result of his meditation and then expresses his feeling concerning
this unpardonable act of lynching. He protested the horrible method
of the whites’ jurisdiction, i.e. by ignoring due process of law, which
according to him would disgrace the Christian civilization.
Race Pride
Pride means feeling of satisfaction arising from what one has
done, or from persons, things, etc. one is concerned with; self
respect; knowledge of one’s worth and character (Hornby, 1985:
219
662). Race pride in this thesis thus is defined as the feeling of
satisfaction arising from what the group of hereditary community has
done. The term contains self-respect and the knowledge of the race’s
worth and character. If a person wants to convey his race pride, he
will expose every enchanting characteristics and worthwhile values
belonging to his people. This attitude may represent his way of
showing the other races that, as a race, his race group also has
peculiarity, needs to be respected, and to be treated as equals.
As admitted by several critics, Hughes poems were mostly
about his emphatically and unashamedly independent mind of being
black; free from self-pity, and resounding in its success as a
representation of the lives and thoughts of the black American mass.
Achieving distinction in poetry, Hughes pointed out race as the
central subject of his works – the beauty, dignity, and heritage of the
blacks in America. In “I, Too”, written in 1925, he proudly confesses
his integrity as the darker brother of the American whites who has
the right to sing America, to own the country, to live decently side
by side with his white counterparts. A single speaker, but acts as a
Negro representative, he yearns for the better tomorrow. Although
critics sometimes faulted him for dwelling on negative aspects of the
African American experience, in this work there is an optimism
rising above unpleasant realities:
“I am the darker brother … /
They’ll see how beautiful I am … / I, too, am America”. He himself
preferred to show the world a brightly smiling face. He once said
that the Negro image deserved objective well-rounded (rather than
one sided) treatment, particularly in the decade of a freedom
movement in which all of the blacks could take pride. They possess
within themselves a great reservoir of physical and spiritual strength
to which poetry should give voice.
“My People”, almost similarly, verifies his race pride in an
insightful, proud confession of being a black. Making use of
language figuration, he compares the beauty of his people with that
Wilujeng, Hughes’s Poems Manifesting Racial Protest 220
of the night, the stars, and the sun. First, their dark faces are as
beautiful as the night. The night connotes the silence, the period of
meditation and purification, the opportunity to take a rest, the
occurrence of moonlight and stars as the representation of beauty
itself, and above all the time prospecting the coming day. The dark
skin is not a matter to be humiliated. In a more logical perspective,
the darker the skin, the stronger it can prevent from the heat of the
sun. Second, their eyes are as bright as the stars, a mirror of their
peaceful mind and surviving hopes. Occurring in the night, the stars
can brighten the darkness. Third, their souls are as beautiful as the
sun. Rising every morning, it motivates people to start their wholeday activities. Connotatively, it also performs the discipline of his
people. But its heat can burn anything close to it, similar to the
blacks’ determination in defending themselves from any offenses.
Many evidences, previously explored in the third chapter, proved
this. It is quite interesting to know that Hughes was not trapped into
the adoration of the white’s standard of beauty, i.e. blonde hair, blue
eyes, white-skin. Implicitly he implied that God created the blacks
with their own positive and negative sides, as also owned by other
races.
African American Dream
America for thousands of people was, is, and will be the land
of many appeals. History has witnessed that many Europeans, then
Africans and Asians came to this country with the expectation of
gaining prosperity. Different from the coming of Europeans and
Asians to America, most of the Africans crossed the seas under their
master’s oppression. They were forcefully brought to this land as
slaves. Fettered tightly by the white domination, they could not set
themselves free from poverty, either mentally or physically.
Whereas the other free races, especially the whites, kept
holding their expectations and covered them into the emblem of
221
American Dream. The success myth, introduced by the Founding
Fathers, was later popularized by the efforts of Benjamin Franklin.
The Franklin image of the hard-working, early-rising, selfdisciplined, and ambitious adventurer engaged the public
imagination. The “land of opportunity” assures the mind of all
Americans so that they become thirsty for prosperity. Virgin land,
rich resources, the possibility of progress, all provide scope for
further enterprises.
One exemplified romance of the American dream is ‘from
rags-to-riches’, meaning that poor people can successfully be rich if
they work hard to realize their ideals. Success is a requirement
Americans make of life. Because it seems magical, it can be
considered the due of every free citizen, even those with no notable
or measurable talents. The citizen may justly and perhaps even
logically ask – if the whites can make it, why not me, the African
American?
Related to the verification above, Hughes’s quest for African
American dream is the central issue in this part. The reality whether
the blacks follow the popular thought of American Dream or they
have their own independent and distinctive ideals becomes its main
concern.
The exposure of one’s dream can provide a way of getting
recognition from others. Considered as a subordinate race group for
years, the blacks come to the point of awareness about their having
greatest expectations. Motivated by this idea, Hughes skillfully
delivered the African American dreams through the three
representative poems entitled “Harlem”, “Let America Be America
Again”, and “I Dream a World”. He did it as a covert racial protest.
To African Americans, Harlem denotes the perception of life as
both a triumph of hope and a deepening crisis. Since the emergence
of Harlem Renaissance, the black experience has been brought
clearly within the general American cultural history. Harlem became
Wilujeng, Hughes’s Poems Manifesting Racial Protest 222
a crossroads where blacks interacted with and expanded their
contacts internationally. Profited from a spirit of self-determination,
the name, more than the place, became synonymous with new
vitality, black urbanity, and black militancy. Nevertheless, the
negative implications have been clear. The blacks, unlike other
immigrants, had no immediate past to celebrate. Slavery is regarded
as the scar and defect that are not easily erased from the blacks’
mind.
Hughes, however, revived the African American dream and
hope once existed during Harlem Renaissance in the poem entitled
“Harlem”. Opened and ended by posing questions, the poem is quite
difficult to interpret. Readers will not easily grab the intention of the
poet in asking “What happens to a dream deferred?”. Some critical
questions about the poem’s content might occur, such as “What is
the dream the poet refers to?” or “Why might it explode rather than
dry up?”. The result of the analysis exposes that “Harlem” has close
relationship with Hughes’s other poems, the two of which are “Let
America Be America Again” and “I Dream a World”. The dream the
poet refers to, and the answer of some more questions can be found
in those poems.
“Let America Be America Again”, a definite statement of his
attitude to his country, gives space to understand Hughes’s view
about America and African American dream. He emphasizes his
permanence of place in the nation. This land America belongs to him
as well as his people. Naturally, they love it – it is a home. They try
to look at it with clear, unprejudiced eyes. Yet America is a land
where, in spite of its defects, the voice of democracy is still heard;
freedom, though poorly applied, still rings its bell. Hughes realized
that America was a land of ‘transition’. He knew it was within their
power to help in its further change toward a finer and better
democracy than any citizen had known before. The American
223
Negroes, through this poem, believe in democracy. They want to
make it real, complete, workable.
With grace, Hughes repeatedly reminded all population of the
United States about the vice of racial injustices and inequality, but
without ill judgment to particular figures. He did not blame anyone
for the embarrassing circumstance of racism. He, on the contrary,
invited all to rebuild the country as expected by the Founding
Fathers. America for years has been internationally known as the
people of paradox. Possibly, Hughes was willing to give correction
for the seamy side of the New World. Belonging to the Indians,
African Americans, Irish Americans, Polish Americans, English
Americans, as well as later immigrants, America is admitted as a
melting pot, later on well-known as salad bowl, country. The
homeland of the free and prosperity is owned by the people endowed
with “certain unalienable rights” and “among these are Life, Liberty
and the pursuit of Happiness.”
Perfected in “I Dream a World”, Hughes’s African American
dream becomes more universal. He did not restrict himself to the
United States only. In direct tone, he dreamed of a world “where
nobody will scorn others”, “where love will bless the earth”, and
“where black or white will share the bounties of the earth”. Greed,
wretchedness, and avarice will no longer exist. Joy pervades the
mind of all mankind. Shortly speaking, these are the dreams Hughes
refers to in “Harlem”. His convincing view enables his readers to
interpret the African American dream, which mythically means the
success, the uplifted condition from oppression (poverty) to freedom
(wealth). He insisted that the ‘lost period’ of African American life
needed to be recovered. Instead of dry up, fester, run, stink, or crust,
the dream deferred will explode. The African American dream will
never disappear since it is rooted to the soul of every black folk.
Wilujeng, Hughes’s Poems Manifesting Racial Protest 224
CONCLUSION
The movements protesting racial injustices have evidently
existed in the early twentieth century, following the era of the black
struggles during the nineteenth century. Widespread revolts were the
direct result of the seamy side of human manipulation, in this case
the whites toward the blacks, especially in Southern states. The
Americans of African origin have affirmed strongly toward every
form of racism. Not merely in the forms of economical or political
practices, literature has been taken into consideration as an effective
weapon to blunt the force of racism. Langston Hughes, through
literary intermediary, proves this. Solidifying his reputation in
Harlem Renaissance, obviously he translated the very features of the
era, i.e. voicing their hopes, their frustrations, their dreams, their
need to be socially free from the oppressed situation. He refused to
differentiate between his personal experience and the common
experience of black America. Admitting that a poet could not run
from his own cultural roots, he wanted to tell the stories of his people
without personalizing them, so the reader could step in and draw his
own conclusions. Through these writings, he reaffirmed a belief in
the political potential of African American poets.
In Hughes’s view concerning race relations, whites and blacks
alike had to set about establishing a new relationship. He knew that
the attempts to crave out a place for the blacks in a white-dominated
America have been taken, but he observed that the practice was still
capable of arousing emotions and conflicts. The white race deems
itself to be the dominant race in this country. And so it is in prestige,
in achievements, in education, in wealth and in power. In the view of
the Constitution and in the eye of the law, however, there is in this
country no superior, ruling class of citizens. The US Constitution is
colorblind, neither knows nor tolerates classes among citizens.
In short, Hughes’s poems manifesting racial protest signify a
reaction, a response of a poet toward racial injustices happening in
225
his surroundings enforced by the white racists. They teach the
readers how to refuse and fight against such treatments. The
struggles conducted by the African Americans in the United States to
gain full equality during the first half of the twentieth century show
that no one in this world can endure the humiliated and horrible life
inflicted by racism.
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