All Men are Created Equal:

Langston Hughess Opposition to Discrimination

Against African Americans

By Reidun Kornelie Mork




A Thesis presented to the English Department
the University of Oslo
in Partial Fulfilment of the Requirements
for the Master degree
Spring Term 2005







TABLE OF CONTENTS

Preface 3
Introduction 4
Chapter I.
Worship and Persecution: The Ordeal of the Artists 16
Chapter II.
Proletarians Unite: The Financial and Working Conditions of the Blacks 45
Chapter III.
Separated as the Fingers, United as the Hand: Education and Segregation 69
Conclusion 88
Bibliography 92
Abbreviations 95



2

Preface


When I was first acquainted with Langston Hughes, what struck me as his most prominent
feature was the stamina of his will to revive and preserve the dignity of his race. He never
seemed to have chosen the easy way out of any situation, or to allow himself to be abstracted
from his task. He refused to imitate the life style of white people, although his complexion
was light enough to allow him to pass for a Mexican or a Latino. In his effort to identify with
the blacks he regarded himself as all black, and used all his talents and his energy to better the
situation for African Americans. In this thesis I have examined to some extent the reasons for
this attitude, and given a few examples of how he went about to achieve his aim. His
production is so huge that it was necessary to concentrate on a small section of it. I have
chosen a selection of articles from his column in the Chicago Defender, a few of his poems,
and the history book Black Magic. To pinpoint the development in the African Americans
cause, I have concentrated on the segregation policy, and the different stages of the practice of
it. I have tried to depict the historical background, and to give an account of the current event
that spurred his articles or his poems. In this way I have attempted to show the progress in the
blacks fight for equality, and in the gradual abandonment of segregation. In this process I
have employed the method of New Historicism, and viewed the text in the context of the
cultural conditions of its time of production. It seems very appropriate in this case to see the
making of a text as an interactive process, the text being both a product and a producer of
cultural energies and codes (Abrams 183). I have chosen three fields to look into. Chapter I
concentrates on the African American artists and their performances in theatres, clubs, and
cafes. Chapter II is about employment and the financial conditions of African Americans, and
Chapter III deals with education.

3


Introduction.


Langston Hughess literary production has a wide range, and according to the critics the
variety is just as notable in quality as it is in genre. There seems, however, to be a general
consensus that his artistic values were of an undisputable high quality. The dissension appears
to stem from his lack of ability to make the sufficient effort to hone his tool into brilliance.
J ames Baldwin, when reviewing Selected Poems (1959), gives vent to his frustration in The
New York Times Book Review of March 29, 1959, as follows: Every time I read Langston
Hughes I am amazed all over again by his genuine gifts, and depressed that he has done so
little with them (Critics 37).
Baldwin is not the only one to hold this opinion. Hughes seems to have slackened over
the years. His first poems were welcomed with jubilation, and his blues and jazz poems still
tower in the world of poetry. However, he obviously had his ups and downs all along. As
early as in 1931, hoping to publish a book of verse with the publisher Alfred A. Knopf,
Hughes sent a collection of poems to Carl Van Vechten for approval. VanVechten told him
that he found the poems to be insignificant, and that they would mean a decline from his
earlier achievements, The Weary Blues and Mulatto. He actually told Hughes: I
shouldnt wonder if you are pretty nearly through with poetry (Rampersad 197). Still,
Hughes sent the manuscript to Knopf, who rejected it. One of the editors, Bernard Smith,
made an interesting observation: The non-racial lyrics were neither distinguished nor
important, all the best poems were in the section devoted to racial protest. . . . After the high
quality of Not Without Laughter the book would be an act of retrogression (Rampersad 197).
At about this time, in 1932, Hughes is known to have exclaimed to Claude McKay: Ive
4

never felt so un-poetic in my life. I think I shall write no more poems. I suppose I am not
miserable enough. I usually have to feel very bad to put anything down and terrible to make
up poems (Rampersad 172). Also according to other critics, the genuinely good poems are
all to be found in connection with his early period. In 1949, in his review of One Way Ticket
in theSaturday Review of J anuary 22nd, Saunders Redding is merciless in his condemnation:
It is a tribute to Langston Hughess earlier accomplishments that his reputation continues
undimmed by verse which of late is often jejune and iterative. Intellectual recognition of the
thinning out of his creativeness is inescapable, but emotional acceptance of the fact comes
hard. An old loving admiration simply will not die (Critics 31). He calls the volume stale,
flat and spiritless and continues: The reason for this dull level of lifelessness has a simple
explanation. Hughes harks back to a youthfulness that is no longer green. He has long since
matured beyond the limited expressive capacity of the idiom he uses in One Way Ticket. . . .
While Hughess rejection of his own growth shows an admirable loyalty to his self-
commitment as the poet of the simple, Negro common-folk, the peasant, the labourer, the
city slum-dweller-, it does a disservice to his art. And of course the fact is that Langston
Hughes is not now, nor ever truly was one of the simple common people (Critics 31).
The way I interpret this statement is that Hughes has not been paying attention to the
development in African American society. The accusation seems to be that when he continues
to employ oversimplified symbols, idioms, and words in general, he is suggesting that the
African Americans are in the same position in 1949 as they were in the 1920s. To put it
bluntly, he is accused of being totally out of touch, as if he himself has grown, but does not
recognise progress in his favourite subject, African Americans. Two years later, in 1951, in
The New York Times Book Review of May 6th, Babette Deutsch states that she finds the same
limitations in Montage of a Dream Deferred. After having praised Hughess gifts as an artist
writer, she continues: Yet the book as a whole leaves one less responsive to the poets
5

achievements than to the limitations of folk art. . . . His verse suffers from a kind of contrived
naivet. . . . It is a pity that a poet of undeniable gifts has not been more rigorous in his use of
them (Critics 32; italics mine). On the same page Babette Deutsch claims that he is a
popular singer because he has elected to remain one (Critics 32; italics mine).
If this is the case, it suggests either that Hughes is condescending, or that he remains
loyal to his vocation. In my opinion, the latter is the case. At an early stage of his career
Hughes deliberately chose the voice of the oppressed, the dialect of the lower-class blacks, to
convey his message. He is also the person who accused Countee Cullen of wanting to be
white, because he preferred to be called just a writer, not a black writer. Hughes himself
wanted very much to be black, in fact, it is amazing how strong this urge was, taking into
consideration how small an amount of his origin actually was African American. Both his
grandfathers were white and one of his grandmothers was a Native American. Still, his
outburst when he saw Africa for the first time rejects all but his black blood: My Africa!
Motherland of the Negro peoples! And me a Negro! (The Big Sea 10). Negro or not,
Hughess poems are a tribute to the black race, in form as well as in content. His most popular
form he found in the black music, the blues and jazz. This music is derived from African
American song, the basic instrument of illiterate people to express all kinds of feelings. The
blues in particular conveys something archetypal, authentic, and powerful. It embraces body
and soul, pain and pleasure, and it appears to be created by an ability to live, enjoy, and suffer,
which the white man seems to have civilized away. Hughes transferred this music into poetry,
and in doing so, he acknowledged his background and demonstrated his main project, to show
the world that African Americans have a dignity of their own, and do not have to adapt to
the ways of white folks.
If this colloquial style seemed out of place in his later period, it was mostly his poetry
which suffered from it. His Simple stories were highly valued, and in contradiction to
6

Saunders Redding in his review of One Way Ticket mentioned above, Carl van Vechten
claims that Hughes really belongs in black society: He is so completely at home when he
writes about Harlem that he can be both careless and sloppy, he says, and continues: In his
Simple books he is seldom either, and Simple Takes a Wife is a superior achievement to the
first of the series, Simple Speaks His Mind (Critics 33). The Simple stories, being a kind of
philosophy about general human matters, undoubtedly served their purpose in providing the
black audience with a face, an individuality, a suffering, contemplating person. If one wants
to trace the progress in the black peoples struggle for equality, however, his articles, also in
theChicago Defender, are a better source, due to the fact that he there comments directly on
current events.
Hughes has been called one of the more controversial names in the history of
American poetry (CP 3). To be controversial requires strength, and Langston Hughes does
indeed stand out in the crowd as a very determined and strong young man. While the attitude
expressed by most of the African American society in the early 1900s tended towards
assimilation, Hughes wanted whole heartedly to preserve the heritage from earlier generations
and restore the dignity of black Americans. He thought ill of those who imitated the life style
of the white majority, and in The Big Sea he expresses this feeling: The better class
Washington colored people . . . were in the whole as unbearable and snobbish a group of
people as I have ever come in contact with anywhere. They lived in comfortable houses, had
fine cars, played bridge, drank Scotch, gave exclusive formal parties, and dressed well, but
seemed to me all together lacking in real culture and good common sense (Miller 14). He
also said: The irony is that these blacks accept and mirror the absurd values of the American
main stream, which segregates blacks even as it praises their exoticism and primitivism
(Miller 14).
7

Hughess pride in his African origin may well have had something to do with his
father. They were poles apart, and it might be suggested that his dedication to the black
struggle was partly triggered by his fathers attitude to suppressed people in general. Hughes
writes in The Big Sea: My father had a great contempt for poor people. He thought it was
their own fault that they were poor. He added: My father hated Negroes. I think he hated
himself, too, for being a Negro (J emiexxiv). Needless to say, Hughess relationship with his
father was very difficult, and J emie states that he was close to suicide the summer of 1919,
during his stay with him (xxiv). Langston was seventeen at that time. Opposing his father
would be the natural reaction of any seventeen year old, so in this way his father may well
have been an influential factor in the forming of young Langstons convictions. Faith Berry
seems to agree with this view. She says about The Negro Speaks of Rivers: It emerged in
part from thoughts about his father, whose racial attitudes Hughes found so different from his
own(24). The strongest impact, however, appears to have been his Native American
grandmother. His delight in her is obvious in the following: You see, my grandmother was
very proud, and she would never beg or borrow anything from anybody. She sat, very much
like an Indian, copper-colored with long black hair, just a little grey at places at seventy, sat in
her rocker and read the Bible, or held me in her lap and told me long, beautiful stories about
people who wanted to make the Negroes free, and how her father had apprenticed to him
many slaves in Fayetteville, North Carolina, before the war, so that they could work out their
freedom under him as stone masons. And once they had worked out their purchase, he would
see that they reached the North . . . She was the last surviving widow of J ohn Browns raid . . .
Nobody ever cried in my grandmothers stories (The Big Sea 17).
Another factor in the process of finding his vocation was his time at Columbia
University. After arriving in New York to start his education there, he had a week before
8

classes started, and he spent it getting acquainted with Harlem. Berry says: There was still a
mixed racial community in 1921, but it was already called the Negro Capital of the world. . .
Langston Hughes was fascinated: I wanted to shake hands with them, speak to them! (27).
He also was impressed to find that famous black artists whom he had read about in the black
press, lived in his neighbourhood. The fact that he could actually meet them on the street
thrilled him immensely. It is not difficult to understand his fascination with Harlem. Here,
obviously was a community where one actually embraced and applauded black people, a
place to be if not proud of being black, then certainly not ashamed either. And the
atmosphere! Berry confirms this comprehension of the young mans state of mind: At age
nineteen, Hughes was much taken with the myth of Harlems exoticism as any white person
during the nineteen twenties. His youthful impression of a gay, rollicking Harlem outweighed
any realization that it was a community whose growing economic and social problems were
causing it to emerge as a ghetto. But he learned (28).
In sharp contrast to his time spent in Harlem, stood his existence at the university. He
was not comfortable there. At first, it turned out that the university authorities had not
realized, at the time, that they were assigning a room at the dormitory to a coloured person.
This was generally not done, and on his arrival they were reluctant to admit him. It was a bad
start, and things did not improve. Nothing seemed to agree with him. He found his subjects,
except for the English Literature, boring. In addition, Berry calls his assignment as part of the
reportorial staff at The Spectator, the Columbia University newspaper, an unpleasant joke.
He was asked to cover the fraternity beat and social events, but Afro-Americans were not
welcomed into fraternity hours or at social functions (29). These factors obviously also
contributed to the decision he made at the end of the academic year. He then left the
university and moved to Harlem to spend all his energy on his literary endeavours. The
experience of this period, feeling so at home in black society and so out of place among the
9

whites, must have influenced and strengthened his determination to identify with, and engage
himself in, the black struggle.
When Zell Ingram and Langston Hughes returned from Haiti in 1931, they had an
encounter with a lady who was going to be of the greatest importance to Hughess attitude
towards the African Americans. The two young writers were received by Mrs. Mary McLeod
Bethune, also called Americas leading Negro woman, at her home in Daytona Beach.
Here, in 1904, she had founded the Daytona Normal and Industrial School for Negro Girls.
This formidable lady hitchhiked with them to the North, to the young mens delight. What
luck for us, Hughes would recall of an encounter so timely as to be almost providential.We
shared Mrs. Bethunes wit and wisdom, too, the wisdom of a jet-black woman, who had risen
from a barefooted field hand in a cotton patch to be head of one of the leading junior colleges
in America, and a leader of her people. At the crucial moment, on his return to the United
States, he had found the perfect figure to counteract in his mind the still unvanquished image
of godmother. Big-boned, black-skinned, and dynamic, at once both commanding and
maternal, Mrs. Bethune seemed to personify for Langston, in this pivotal moment of his life,
what their race might be, and he himself might be in his relationship to it (Rampersad 211).
This remarkable lady had set out, at the age of twentynine, with one dollar and fifty cents as
her sole monetary possession, and founded her school. The institution grew quickly, and she
soon found herself to be the focus of black society in Daytona. She was a brilliant organizer,
and prominent black leaders were quick to recognize her. Rampersad tells us: Appointed first
by Calvin Coolidge, then by Herbert Hoover, to the National Child Welfare Commission,
she gave advice to both presidents on race and education, - eventually she would serve five
presidents in this way (212). Where segregation was concerned, it was not tolerated on the
campus of Daytona Beach. Mrs. Bethune solicited support from white people, both locals and
visitors, and at least on one occasion she organized a protest against the Ku Klux Klan. It was
10

she, too, who set Hughes on the track of reading tours, which was to become his main income
over several years. You should go all over the South with your poems, she urged him. People
need poetry (Rampersad 212). She obviously was of great significance in young Langstons
carreer as a poet.
Whatever caused it, Hughes turned to the roots of black life and black culture for
themes as well as for the techniques to express them. In retrospect it is inevitable to regard
him as a pioneer in advance of the cultural movement in the 1960s and 1970s, when
everybody went ethnic and the black people marched for their rights. His message, like
theirs, was: We shall overcome.
Pride is a key word with Langston Hughes. It is when exposing the proud black woman
and the proud black man he hits his white audience the hardest with the insanity of treating
these people like inferiors to themselves. The Negro Speaks of Rivers is his most
outstanding testimony to the pride he felt in belonging to the black race (CP 23). It is also
evidence of his conviction of his project at an early stage of his life. He wrote it at the age of
seventeen right after his graduation from high school in 1920, on the train to Mexico to spend
that disastrous summer with his father. It is a fascinating scene; here is this young man, a rare
mixture of genes, not particularly dark-skinned, sitting by a train window and being given
these powerful words, acting as a medium to talk on behalf of black Americans.
The Negro Speaks of Rivers is a tribute to the black man, not to a sad mulatto like
himself, and it is a powerful manifestation of the significance of the black people in the past.
The poem implies that the black mans wisdom and strength is derived from his long
coexistence with nature and God. The river, the symbol of eternity, deep, ever flowing and
mysterious, has transferred to the black man its immortality: my soul has grown deep like the
river. It indicates that he was present at the first of our known cultures, the river-cultures at
11

the Euphrates and the Tigris, and then follows his ascent throughout history, towards ever
greater skill.
First he uses the image of the primitive tribe member, asleep in his humble hut by the
river Congo, perfectly contented in his unpretentious existence. At the next stage of his
progress, the Negro is shown as the proud and capable constructor of one of the worlds
wonders. Now he is not sleeping by the river. He is placed above it, overlooking it to find a
site for his masterpiece. I looked upon the Nile/and raised the pyramids above it.
After having situated the Negro in such an elevated position, the poet does not have to
spell out to the reader the abhorrence of the act of making the Negro a slave and treating him
like cattle. He only emphasizes the stupidity and the cruelty of it by telling us that eternity
rejoices when the injustice is undone: I heard the singing of the Mississippi/and Ive seen its
muddy bosom burn all golden in the sunset, when Abraham Lincoln freed the slaves. The
repetition of the phrase My soul has grown deep like the river turns it into a warning:
Remember my worth. I am as good as you are. Perhaps better.
J emie tells us: The poem is related to Zora Neal Hurstons judgement of the mythic
High J ohn de Conquer, whom she held as a symbol of the triumphant spirit of the black
America: that J ohn was of the Be class, Be here when the ruthless man comes, and be here
when he is gone (103-104). By making the black man present from the earliest times and
emphasizing his presence through the stages of history, Hughes assures his readers that the
black man also will survive for the future, and again restore his dignity and power. The
repetition of the personal pronoun at the beginning of four successive lines places the subject
of the black man in a universal position, strikingly emphasizing his worth:
I bathed in the Euphrates
I built my hut near the Congo
I looked upon the Nile
I heard the singing of

12

This poem proved to be of great significance to Hughess career. He sent it to J essie
Fauset. I took the beautiful dignified creation to Dr. Du Bois, Fauset recalled, and said:
What colored person is there, do you suppose, in the United States who writes like this and is
still unknown to us? (Watson 53). Du Bois published it in his magazine, The Crisis, the
organ of the National Association for the Advancement of Colored People, the NAACP.
W.E.B. Du Bois was regarded as the forefather of the Harlem Renaissance, and the
magazine, which was founded in November 1910, was the magazine that paved the way for
the Renaissance (Watson 17). It had a large readership, about 95,000 in 1919, mostly
middle class. Consequently, the effect of Hughess first publication must have been to give
him a flying start as a spokesman for his peoples rights. Du Bois had high aspirations for the
black race: They combined progressive race-politics, (African-Americans should develop
their own institutions, write about their own experience, embrace pan-Africanism), and elitist
uplift, (Howard University, domestic property, Dunbar Apartments). The block of socially
aspiring Negroes about whom Du Bois wrote was known as the Talented Tenth and derisively
known as the dicties. . . Du Bois predicted: The Talented Tenth rises and pulls all that are
worthy of saving up to their vantage ground (Watson 18-19). Being included in this circle
gave Hughes an excellent vantage point to realize his poetic vocation. The Negro Speaks of
Rivers paved the way to his position by making his audience listen when he spoke. One of
the most significant departments in which he let his voice be heard was the practice of
segregating blacks and whites in their everyday life.
The segregation policy was mostly a southern phenomenon, and to trace its roots it is
necessary to go all the way back to the civil war.The reason for the extreme hostility towards
blacks in the South, much more prominent than in the North, is to be found in the
environment and the climate of the two parts of the continent. The South was ideal for the big
tobacco and cotton plantations, where great numbers of unskilled labour were needed. Thus
13

the South came to build its economy on black slaves, and succeeded to the point that they
wanted to break out of the Union. The North with its industrial areas was constantly fed with
cheap white labourers who never made it on their own beyond the first harbour, so slavery
was never practised to the same degree there. They never became dependant upon it. So,
when Abraham Lincoln needed help to defeat the rebels of the South, he could afford to make
the emancipation of the slaves his main aim, in order to get much needed assistance from
Europe. When the South was finally defeated in 1865, it did not mean just a surrender. It
marked the end of a culture. After four years of war the South lay with broken back. The
people were starving, the fields ruined, the big plantation houses plundered or burned down
by passing Northern troops. On top of it all the Southerners were told that their slaves, who
they had previously regarded as so much property, now were their equals in all respects. To
expect this society of abrupt and forced equality to function from day one would have been
extremely nave. There is a limit to the amount of injustice, rightly felt or not, a society can
take before it erupts, and the government in Washington had to soften the blow to mitigate the
hatred from the population in the South. This was done by sanctioning the bill of White
control of the South. The Southerners interpreted this as a permission to treat the blacks any
way they wanted. Since they could not take revenge on the federal government for all their
losses, they took out their hatred on the blacks, and dared the federal government to interfere.
One way of manipulating the justice system was to prohibit black people from the jury
system, and even though the Supreme Court had established their right to act as jurors, this
right was very seldom put into practice. The legal system was slowly and gradually changed
by complicated manoeuvres and sanctioned by the laws of the city or state. In this way the
prohibitions were made legal, and the segregation became the everyday way of life. The
penalty for violating the laws was often death, and many African Americans gave their lives
to save their dignity. At the beginning of the twentieth century, conditions became desperate.
14

In 1905 a conference was held, instigated by Andrew Carnegie, and including black leaders
such as Booker T. Washington and W.E.B. Du Bois. They made a resolution to press for
absolute civil, political, and public equality. In 1910, the National Association for the
Advancement of Colored People was formed, and the NAACP charter was signed by several
prominent persons, including Du Bois, J ane Addams, and Lincoln Steffens. Its agenda was
straightforward: To secure the basic citizenship rights guaranteed by the 14
th
and 15
th

amendment to the United States Constitution. Most specifically this meant an end of all
segregation laws, a right to equal education, and a guarantee of the right to vote (To Make
Our World Anew 377-382). Their fight was an uphill struggle though, and the civil rights
proved to be even more difficult to obtain than the political rights.
This is the reality Langston Hughes was born into. In 1909 he was seven years old. In
1919, at the age of seventeen, he wrote The Negro Speaks of Rivers, and in 1944 we find
him still going strong about his theme: equality and respect. He ran at that time a column in
the Chicago Defender. It is only a small part of his production of that period, but it was very
useful in his effort to reach white people with his claims for the blacks. Ruth Reese says about
his Simple figure: He was a spokesman whom from day to day told about what the Negros
felt and meant, seen from the little mans sad platform, in a sublime form of humorous
wagging (197; translation mine). The part about Simple occupied about a third of Hughess
column in the Chicago Defender, and it proved to be a huge success. According to Reese it
made white people start reading the Chicago Defender and thereby made them susceptible to
his comments on current events. Inevitably it also strengthened his reputation as a writer, and
helped bringing attention to the rest of his production.



15


Chapter I
Worship and Persecution: The Ordeal of the Artists


J ustice
----------
That J ustice is a blind goddess
Is a thing to which we blacks are wise.
Her bandage hides two festering sores
That once perhaps were eyes.(CP 31).

J ustice was first published in Amsterdam News in April 1923. At that time Langston
Hughes worked as a mess boy aboard the Oronoke. It was anchored at J ones Point, a few
miles south of West Point, to serve as mother-ship to the Bellbuckle and the West
Hassayampa. Rampersad tells us that he was very productive during this period. After he had
recovered from his disappointment when he learned that the ship was going nowhere, he
found the surroundings and his shipmates, being of many nationalities, inspiring (Rampersad
61).
He was twenty-one years old, and according to the records, eager for life and adventure,
bursting to fight injustice as he had experienced it so far. As this was before his trip to the
South, where he was confronted with really hateful segregation for the first time, this poem
can be read as a testimony from a young soul, an outburst of frustration from one who still
expects life to be just, one who is not yet worn out by a lifetime of maltreatment.
Like most of his racial poems, J ustice conveys a serious message. To picture justice
as a goddess is nothing new, and she has often been accused of blindness. What makes this
poem so visual, and thereby powerful, is the third line, imagining her eyes as festering sores
behind her bandage. The vivid picture of a piece of cloth, soiled by the rotten liquid from
16

the sores, across the face of the noblest symbol of democracy, hits the reader hard. It indicates
not only malfunctioning in society, it claims that the society is in decay. The poem is
universal. There is only one word to classify it as a racial protest, the word black in the
second line. Except for that single word the poem could have been written about any field of
injustice, or any group of oppressed people, or any particular incident. However, it is, as we in
our days recognize, the undisputable truth about the conditions of the black people in the
U.S.A. at that time. There was no justice for African Americans in 1923, in any field of
existence, in the nation whose creed it was that all men are created equal. They were
discriminated in every possible way. They were, for instance, abused as persons even as they
were celebrated as artists. They were the last to get a job and the first to loose it, and their
chances of getting an education were strictly limited. This could hardly be called democracy,
and J ustice is one of Hughess first attacks on the lack of democratic practice in the U.S.A.
Hughess poems Childrens Rhymes is somewhat related to J ustice:
Whats written down
for white folks
aint for us a-tall
Liberty and J ustice-
Huh-for all.(CP 390).

All though J ustice and this jingle share the same theme, the failure of democracy, the latter
has singled out the targets of the unjust treatment. By naming the white folks as the
fortunate ones, Hughes places their opposite, the blacks, as the maltreated. The achievement
of this alteration is immediately revealed. The evasive, all embracing accusation in J ustice
leaves the reader with too much to cope with. Yes, we agree, life is not just. That is the way of
the world, and something that everybody experiences sooner or later. This is knowledge so
old that we have idioms in our language to describe it. In this light there does not seem to be
much we can do to remedy this state of affairs. In Childrens Rhymes, though, the injustice
has been narrowed down to something we actually can do something about. Hughes pinpoints
17

the situation of the African Americans, and thereby makes it everybodys responsibility. The
reference to the written words elevates the issue to the highest level of authority, and the very
foundation of the nation. Brown refers to this time as when certain notion of liberty, justice,
and equality were cited, justified, and of course, written down, in various guises, in the
Declaration of Independence and later in the Constitution of the United States(CLC Vol. 10,
281). What Brown calls the ironic ambiguity of the verse is expressed in the third and the
fourth line: aint for us a-tall / Liberty and J ustice. A society which excludes a whole group
of its members from their constitutional rights is neither liberal nor just. As Brown phrases it:
In this way the white Americans failed their own ideal, and denied themselves the substance
of those libertarian ideas that have been enshrined in the sacred rhetoric, and history, of the
American Revolution (CLC Vol. 10. 281). In this way the American society is inflicting
damage upon itself. It is the same accusation as the line festering sores in J ustice
indicates, only more precise.
The form, too, of the Childrens Rhymes, increases the impact of the message. In
choosing the children as speakers, Hughes reveals that the injustice has penetrated all levels of
the black community. It can be seen as an indication that the practice has become so common
that the children chant about it in accompaniment to their play, without reacting to the content
of the words. Brown is of a different opinion, though. He calls their chanting knowing sneers
about nonexistent liberty and justice (CLC Vol. 10, 281). However, the effect is the same. If
Hughess intention is to demonstrate political consciousness and bitterness in the children, the
accusation is just as hard.
The oral style and the dialect in the verse serve to underline the identity of the speaker .
In phrasing the last two lines as direct speech, Hughes forces the reader to meet the speaker
face to face. One is left with an image of the black man or the black child turning and walking
away in disgust at the white mans deceit: Huh-For all. On the whole, the choice of words
18

and the layout of the verse seem deliberate and well planned. The comparison between the
two poems seems to confirm Bernard Smiths statement above, that all the best poems were
in the section devoted to racial protest. Although J ustice is very striking in its clipped and
simple form, it seems to be the product of a moments inspiration, received and written down
with no further pondering. If Hughes had really worked on it to perfect it, he would have
rewritten the second line. The word thing is a sloppy expression in almost any context, and
should be avoided in such a short poem, where every single word carries great significance.
This might be an early sign of the characteristic which in later years brought critics to accuse
him, as mentioned above, of a laziness that led to lack of perfection in his works.
On the other hand quite the opposite could be the case. Hughes was very determined,
determined to achieve better conditions for his race, and the size of his production bears
witness to that fact. Nevertheless, it seems obvious that he may have gained in quality if he
had reduced the quantity of the works which were steadily streaming from his pen. It is hard
to alter ones natural inclinations, though, and Hughes was in a hurry, always on the run,
seeking new places, new challenges, and new ways to fight for his conviction, fighting the
injustice he saw practiced in his surroundings every day. The poems J ustice and Childrens
Rhymes include all aspects of existence. In my opinion they can serve as an opening
declaration, a base for Hughess exploration of all the different departments where the blacks
were suppressed and scorned. One of these departments is the realm of the entertainers.
The importance of the artists in paving the way to equality between the races can hardly
be overestimated. The written word in all its variations was naturally a most efficient tool, and
poets and authors and journalists certainly made their contribution. Still, black music, with its
playing and dancing and singing artists, took a shortcut to the hearts of the whites. The
Harlem Renaissance is perhaps the most striking example of this fashion, and it was here, in
the realm of entertainment, that segregation came to its most absurd display. The exoticism of
19

the black arts were in strong demand among the white population already in the 1920s,
when the white middle class invaded the cafes and clubs in Harlem. In those early days it was
unimaginable to regard the black artist to be anything close to equal to his white spectators.
He was simply an underling with a rare gift, a monkey with one amazing trick, who was
allowed to appear in the proximity of his white audience only as long as he was good at this
trick of his. The fact that the trick, the captivating power and disturbing appeal in the blues
and jazz, was the result of generations of suffering and agony, was not recognized. In the
Langston Hughes Reader, we read: The Blues! Songs folks make up when their heart hurts,
thats what the Blues are. Sad funny songs too sad to be funny and too funny to be sad.
Thus one of the characters in the Negro play, DONT YOU WANT TO BE FREE?, at the
Harlem Suitcase Theatre, defines the Blues. Then he goes on to say: Colored folks made up
the Blues. . . . We made em out of being poor and lonely, and homes busted up, and broke
(Reader 159). This misery is heartbreakingly clearly expressed in Hughess opening poem of
his first volume, The Weary Blues, published in February 1926 (CP 50).
The speaker of the poem is describing a singing pianist who plays on Harlems Lennox
Avenue. The atmosphere is vividly created through the carefully chosen words, which lull the
reader into the lazy rhythm of the blues: Droning a drowsy . . . Rocking back and forth to a
mellow croon. . . By the pale dull pallor of an old gas light. The image of the ebony hands on
the ivory keys becomes a dramatic reminder of the contrast between the conditions of the
blacks and the conditions of the whites. R. Baxter Miller says: Where poetic images exist, as
part of human language, they necessarily contribute to emotive and moral discourse. For the
Black American and social poet, they intensely reconfirm the tension between the pictured
world (American Dream) and the real one (racial lynching) (Critics 109). Even the poor
piano is moaning, and the piano players stool is rickety. It is altogether a miserable life. The
speaker of the poem shows his indignation at the treatment of the piano player when he says:
20

He played the sad ragged tune like a musical fool. This gives associations to the Fool of
kings and noblemen in earlier times, who had to pay homage to his master in order to survive.
Still, that fool often had to be very smart to be able to act his part sufficiently, and was in fact
more often than not in a position to manipulate his superiors. Perhaps our piano player, while
entertaining the white people, is a potential threat, despite his subdued position. The thump,
thump, thump went his foot on the floor could indicate that. He may not be conscious of it
himself, but his misery, which is so agreeably expressed to the whites, is a time bomb. History
shows that there is a limit to how long injustice can be inflicted, and endured, before the
mechanisms of equality tip the balance. The piano player tells the reader: Aint got nobody
in all this world/and I wished that I had died. Finally he sleeps; like a rock or a man thats
dead, all worn out by his effort to satisfy his audience until the dawn of day: The stars went
out and so did the moon.
The melting together of form, technique and theme in this poem is quite unique.
Expressed through the blues, the theme, which is the piano players misery, becomes the pain
of the artist and the pleasure of his audience. This technique serves to expose very clearly the
immense abuse which is taking place. The picture of the white Americans applauding the
black Americans despair is a harsh reminder to society that something must be done about
such unfair conditions. They persisted, though, for decades to follow.
In 1967 Langston Hughes, together with Milton Meltzer, published Black Magic: A
Pictorial History of the African-American in the Performing Arts. In the foreword to the 1990
edition Ossie Davis calls Hughes recording secretary to the tribe, and states that he
considered it his job to keep the tribe together. He continues in pointing out Hughess way
of always reminding African Americans of the importance of their arts. The dancing and
singing and all the black entertainment he says, is the only field in which the blacks are in
control of the whites. He calls it an island of self-sufficiency set in a sea of almost universal
21

doubt (Black Magic foreword). This makes sense. In fact, in retrospect it is hard to imagine
any other spearhead sharp enough to pierce the invisible but seemingly impenetrable partition
between blacks and whites. In this respect Langston Hughess contribution is unique, and
Black Magic with its combination of facts, photographs and exciting story telling is yet
another example of Hughess engagement in the blacks cause, and of the diversity of his
production. Davies recognizes the significance in exhibiting the proud history of the black
arts. He says: Our art, to us, was always, and still is, a form of self-assertion, a form of
struggle, a repository of self esteem that racism, J im Crow, and the Ku Klux Klan could never
beat out of us the only authentic history that black folks have in America, because we made
it ourselves (Black Magic foreword).
On the flyleaf of the book Milton Meltzer tells us that it was to have no dedication, but
right after it was finished and before it could be published, Hughes died. Meltzer says: I
think now, that the artists who played and sang and danced in the many works he created for
them, and the audience to whom he gave such joy, would want to see the book dedicated
To Langston, with love.
In the chapter called Boulders in the Path in Black Magic, Hughes tells a tale of
situations which would have been ridiculous except for the personal tragedy they frequently
involved. When touring the country, black artists had to suffer all kinds of humiliations. In
1937 the black jazz singer Bessie Smith, known as Empress of the Blues, died after a car
accident, near Clarksdale, Mississippi. Rumour has it that she died because she was refused
admittance to the hospitals close enough to save her life, because they were for whites only.
By the time she arrived at the nearest black hospital, she had bled to death. Bessie Smith was
regarded as the greatest jazz singer of her time by the black society. After her death she was
canonized by all, blacks and whites, and the way she died became a heavy argument against
segregation. Segregation of the audience was quite common, of course. The blacks were most
22

often exiled to the top gallery, ironically called Nigger Heaven. Worse still, in some places,
like at the National Theatre in Washington, blacks were prohibited from entering. All black
casts were popular, but mixed casts could not perform. In some cases this turned into absurd
situations. Hughes says: Colored concert artists could not use their regular accompanist if the
pianist happened to be white (as was Kosti Vehanen with Marian Anderson), or else the
pianist must be hidden behind a screen (Black Magic 282). This scene implies a degree of
self delusion among the whites verging on insanity, and one cannot begin to comprehend the
bitterness it must have created in the heart of this one of historys greatest singers. Sometimes
following the restrictions would not be enough. When giving a concert in his home town of
Birmingham, Nat King Cole was knocked down and nearly dragged from the stage by two
white ruffians because they knew he had an integrated orchestra (Black Magic 282). In his
case, it did not help that it was hidden behind a screen. This was as late as 1956.
Thirty-one years earlier, in 1925, Hughes wrote and published The J ester, describing
the conditions of the performing artist. According to Hughess article in the Chicago
Defender of September 23, 1944, the audience had started to mingle as early as that. Hughes
is describing the situation at the famous Club Zanzibar at that time as follows: Negro
customers are usually led straight to the raised platform running around three sides. They are
never put on the center-side facing the stage until the side seats are full, then maybe a few
dark folks spill over onto the main level (Chicago Defender 53-54). He ends his piece in
putting forward what seems the only sensible suggestion: Since white and colored people
dance all over the same dance-floor there, and jitterbug and bump all up against each other,
and nobody seems to mind it in the least, the sensible thing, it would seem to me, for the
management of the Zanzibar to do, would be to let people of any color sit anywhere, and stop
putting that chocolate band of humanity all around the walls (Chicago Defender 54). Blacks
23

and whites dancing together. This seems to be a major improvement, at a rather early stage in
the process.
For the artists, however, matters had not improved as late as 1956. At first this seemed
an odd observation, but as Hughes tells us, it was only on the dance floor this social
intercourse took place. Considering this fact, we land on the seemingly only possible
explanation. Once again the white race and the black race are united in celebrating an art
form, and the power of the arts becomes more significant than ever. Here are the couples on
the dance floor, intertwining in their mutual pleasure in the dancing, perfectly equal, perfectly
at ease in each others company. The wall of segregation has vanished in thin air, or at least
been hoisted to the skies in order to allow this interlude, this short truce. Then the music
stops, and the wall comes crashing down again. The blacks and the whites go to their allotted
stations, the blacks to form their humble chocolate band around the walls, the whites to
claim, as a matter of course, their privileged places in the centre. The same farce is taking
place in the theatre. The artists on the stage captivate their audience who give themselves over
in the appreciation of the performance to the point that artists and audience are one body in
the sharing of the art. Then the curtain falls, and the segregation is re-established. I think this
is another evidence of the significance of the entertainers in the fight for equal rights. They
were the fore runners, but they also were the ones who experienced the irrationality and the
ordeals of the practice most tangible on body and soul.
In contrast to The Weary Blues, which pinpoints the piano player in all his misery,
The J ester embraces entertainers in general (CP 56). This entity, which no society can
function without, has been treated with various degrees of respect during the history of our
civilization. In ancient Greece, the actors/entertainers were celebrated like half gods, both
those who displayed their performing skills on the stage, and those who demonstrated their
physical strength and endurance in the sports arena. In ancient Rome, the gladiators literally
24

fought for their lives, killing wildly in desperation to please their audience in order to survive
themselves. Hughess jester, however, is, like the piano player in The Weary Blues, a direct
reference to the Kings Fool as we know him from Shakespeares hand. The Kings Fool did
not have to kill to survive. His battle was of a different character, as his life depended upon
his masters favour. He therefore had to dedicate his whole existence to please the king, to
make him laugh, to amuse and entertain him. In order to obtain this he had to humiliate
himself and relinquish all his feelings of dignity. So has Hughess black jester been forced
to do. He has become the dumb clown of the world.
The opening image is a neat description of the perfect artist. It depicts an individual
without individuality, playing whichever part that pleases his audience at a given time,
suppressing his own personality in order to survive. He is the professional pleaser, on the
stage of life :
In one hand
I hold tragedy
And in the other
Comedy

All though the poem obviously is aimed at describing the situation of the performing artists, it
can very well be read as an image of the blacks position in general. In line 6, 7, 8, and 9
Hughes is scornful:
Laugh at me!
You would laugh.
Weep with me!
You would weep.
.
Of course they would laugh, he seems to say. Not with me, but at me, regardless of the quality
of my situation, tragedy or comedy. You would weep is also ironical in my opinion. What
he actually is saying is: As if you would weep! As if you could care less! This is the closest
he comes to an attack, except for the accusation that his superiors are silly men.
25

J ust as Holbergs servants often are allowed to outwit their masters, Shakespeares fool
is frequently given the upper hand in the struggle for power and influence over his
surroundings. Acting the idiot, the fool often is equipped with a quick mind and a shrewd
intelligence, qualities that were necessary to survive in the complicated, precarious life at
court. Hughes refers to this fact at the end of his poem. Once I was wise, he says, and the
final line places our jester in an even worse position than his ancestors when it reads: Shall I
be wise again? This indicates that the fool has lost his capacity for manipulating his
surroundings, and is now reduced to playing the part of the pathetic pleaser.
It is interesting to note that the end of the poem was written differently in Opportunity
in December 1925. Back then it appeared as follows:
Shall I
Be wise
Again?

(CP 627). What he is actually asking here is: Shall I be respected again? Shall I ever regain
the power which I once had? Hughess jester does not regard himself as stupid. The line I
am the booted, booted, fool of silly men indicates that it is his superiors who are at fault,
because they are not able to recognize his values. It only takes their awakening to enable him
to claim his rightful position in society. The way in which this phrase was emphasized in the
first publication indicates its significance. It also naturally leads to the scrutiny of the line
above, and to the realization of the marked break in form:
Once I was wise
Shall I
Be wise
Again?
These four lines constitute the two last lines in the later editions. Put together they form an
iambic pentameter in the best European tradition. They serve as an exclamation mark in
question form to close the poem and leave the reader just a tiny bit disturbed. Here Hughes
seems to have deliberately been mixing traditions in order to obtain a striking effect. Richard
26

K. Barksdale tells us in his Hughes:His Times and His Humanistic Techniques that by 1920,
what seems to me a line of assimilation, rather than integration, of black artists was taking
place in the white artistic society, as already referred to above. The creed was that by adapting
Western techniques and practices, black writers, painters and sculptures would be admitted
into a racially integrated society. It went so far as to even Europeanize the so-called spiritual
and sorrow songs of the slaves (Critics 94-95). This was the tradition Hughes refused to adapt
to, the tradition Countee Cullen followed to the extent that Hughes accused him of wanting to
be white. Still, in The J ester he seems to have made a compromise, and I find the effect
striking. These closing lines become almost rhetorical in their quest. Regarding the jester as a
person it is indeed rhetorical. Wisdom is not a thing you can have, and loose, and regain. The
jester does not need an answer. He is simply establishing the fact that he has lost his worth.
Thereby the question gets this rhetorical ring to it. This quality is transferred to the image
which the jester personifies, the image of the underestimated black source of amusement in
the superior world of the white, there for them to treat as their mood dictates. There is nothing
to indicate any change in his situation in the foreseeable future, and the last lines turn into a
hopeless sigh rather than a question to be answered.
What caused the change in later editions can only be guesswork on my part. I would not
rule out the possibility that Hughes himself made the alteration, knowing his urge to oppose
the European influence. The form of the rest of the poem is very casual, however, and
different from his folk tradition poems or his blues and jazz poems. It is simply a description
of the existence of the Black J ester, hopeless as it is, with this somewhat detached question
in the closing whether matters will improve or not in the future.
I find the atmosphere of the poem to be somewhat resigned, which I do not think was
Hughess intention. This seems to be one of his poems which lacks the finishing touch. As
mentioned before, the only parts of the text which serve to engage the temper of the reader is
27

the bit of sarcasm in line 6, 7, 8, and 9, and the closing. It would have gained by some of his
famous irony. Nevertheless, it is an accurate description of white American attitude towards
black Americans in general in the early 1900s, and because of the theme of entertainment, it
comes naturally to focus on the artist as the speaker in the poem.
In 1955 Lena Horne called off a Miami Beach engagement because the hotel in which
she was going to sing refused to register her for a room. The world wide celebrated, almost
worshipped blues singer Billie Holiday, who held her fame and popularity until the day she
died in 1959, is given a whole paragraph in Hughess book: Billie Holiday in Lady Sings the
Blues describes her long bus tour with the Artie Shaw Band. Many of the restrooms along
the highway were labelled FOR WHITE ONLY. I got to the place were I hardly ever ate, slept
or went to the bathroom without having a major NAACP-type production. . . I got so tired of
scenes in crummy roadside restaurants over being served. . . Some places they would not even
let me eat in the kitchen. Some places they would. Sometimes it was a choice between me
eating and the whole band starving. I got tired of having a federal case over breakfast, lunch
and dinner (Black Magic 282). 1955, and still a long way to go. In order to illustrate the
many setbacks in the fight against segregation, we will go back in time for about a decade.

Wheel about and turn about
An do jist so
An ebery time I wheel about
I jump J im Crow . . . (BlackMagic 16).

A little slave boy singing this refrain and cutting capers on a street corner, so the story goes,
caught the attention of an intinerant actor-singer named Daddy Rice. . . Anyhow, he picked
up from this little black boy both his song and his dance, and with it Rice became famous.
Daddy Rice blackened his face like the little colored boy and dressed in rags when he sang
J ump J im Crow. . . . Another entertainer, performing in burnt cork, David Emmet, borrowed
the song from Rice and, as one of the first full time minstrel men carried it with acclaim
28

throughout the country. J ump J im Crow thus became the cornerstone of what was to be for
eighty years Americas most popular form of entertainment, the black faced minstrels (Black
Magic 16-18). Later on Hughes goes on to inform us that The Virginia Minstrels were the
first blackface show to play in New York. It opened in 1843 on the Bowery, and it was
headed by the same Emmet (Black Magic 20).
Here we learn that in 1843, eighteen years before the outbreak of the Civil War, and
twenty two years before the abolition of slavery, black art was publicly cheered. One might
argue that this was merely white men in disguise, but according to Hughes, even the real
blacks enjoyed the same kind of celebration, at least as early as the 1850s, A New England
colored group, the Luca Family father, mother, and four sons were a singing sensation on
tours throughout the North before the Civil War. According to newspapers the Lucas were
received with the wildest enthusiasm in Boston in 1853 (Black Magic 28).
Hughes does not tell us anything about how the artists were treated off stage, but it is
general knowledge that they were received in the homes of some political celebrities at this
time, sometimes with the purpose to build a case against the South and have a moral excuse,
in addition to the political urge to keep the union intact, to wage war against that region.
However, one would have expected some progress in the integration of the races in a hundred
years, even in the rigorous South. When we contemplate the contents of Billie Holidays
testimony of 1955, this seems not to be the case. In between these dates we find Hughess
poem Minstrel Man,(CP 61), also expressing the misery of the performing artist. The fight
for equal rights seems to be a loosing battle. Still, results are not always immediate, and
Minstrel Man surely is a reminder of the fact that a considerable part of Americas human
beings existed under conditions unworthy of a democratic society.
Minstrel Man was first published in Crisis in December 1925, and in The New Negro
(CP 628). Here too, as in the case of The J ester, the editor has been busy with his pen, and
29

the alterations in this case have a stunning effect. Rampersad tells us that in The New Negro,
the last lines of both stanzas ended with periods (So long. and I die.). Line 12 ended with a
comma (My inner cry,). The question marks were added for the The Dream Keeper, New
York: Knopf 1932 ( CP 628). To demonstrate the difference between the two editions I
would like to reproduce both versions of the poem.
Because my mouth Because my mouth
Is wide with laughter Is wide with laughter
And my throat And my throat
Is deep with song Is deep with song,
You do not think I You do not think
Suffer after I suffer after
I have held my pain I have held my pain
So long. So long?

Because my mouth Because my mouth
Is wide with laughter Is wide with laughter
You do not hear You do not hear
My inner cry, My inner cry?
Because my feet Because my feet
Are gay with dancing Are gay with dancing
You do not know You do not know
I die. I die?




It is quite interesting to observe how the alteration of three grammatical marks changes the
relationship between the speaker of the poem, the minstrel man, and his audience. In the first
edition the minstrel is deliberately hiding his pain because, it seems, he does not want his
audience to recognize his misery. This attitude could only be dictated by pride, and that
concurs perfectly with Hughess display of the black artist in some of his other works. The
minstrel appears simply to be registering the mood of a situation in his thought. The poem
thereby becomes a mental dramatic monolog, summing up the state of affairs. There is no
accusation involved. Since the minstrel is so clever at hiding his suffering, he cannot, and, so
it seems, does not expect his audience to pity him or to take action to help him better his
position. The regular rhythm and stress on the four iambic feet which combine line one and
30

two and line three and four into two sentences, help underline the unbroken train of thoughts
that is running through the minstrels mind. The poem can also be seen as a whole.
Undisturbed as it is by grammatical marks it is possible to perceive it as a general knowledge
and acceptance of his position, in the minstrels mind.
The second edition reveals a plaintive and accusative person. His accusation can be
interpreted in more than one way. It can be understood as scorn for the audiences stupidity
and blindness to a simple fact, or as mere incredulity. In the latter of the two, the accusation
becomes even fiercer, because this notion implies that the audience is pretending not to realize
the pain behind the minstrels thin varnish of gaiety. In fact, they are fully aware of it, and it
does not bother them. His incredulous complaint may even be read to convey the suggestion
that his pain is adding to their pleasure. All in all, the speaker of the poem emerges as a
subdued and humiliated character.
Which is the most appealing of the two is a subjective decision. Which one is the most
in Hughess spirit is also hard to tell. However, I would suggest the 1925 edition. My
argument is that although his characters are often plaintive, they always seem to
counterbalance this quality with a sense of pride, this inheritance from former glorious times
that are so vividly illustrated in The Negro Speaks of Rivers. The 1932 editions speaker
does neither convey any sense of pride, nor any suggestion of the threat or danger of revenge
as a result of the suppressers idiotic underestimation of his qualities. He simply is beaten,
almost erased from the realm of humanity, as the last line indicates:
You do not know
I die?
In a way, the suggestion that they ought to have known and ought to have done something
about it, situates them above him and places him at their mercy. In the first edition,
though, they are too stupid to even notice his misery. The minstrel is simply establishing the
fact that they are going to loose their source of pleasure, a very valuable entity, because of
31

their own shortcomings. Thereby he places himself not only at the same level as them, but
above them. This sense of pride, whether it is being expressed through humour, irony, or right
out scorn, is a feature which I find to characterize Hughess racial poems like a hallmark, and
it is, in my opinion, the most powerful element in this section of his works. That is why my
assumption is that this first edition is closest to Hughess heart, and that the alterations in
1932 were made at the suggestion of the editor. In any case, these alterations can be read as
another proof that the conditions of the minstrel artist entertainer had not improved in the
interval between the two editions. In fact, they seemed to have declined in the hundred years
and more between Billie Holidays ordeal in 1955 and the success of the Luca Family in
1853. In order to understand this development, or lack of progress in the blacks struggle for
equality, it is necessary to take a closer look at the general conditions in American society at
both periods.
In the year 1800 conditions were about to improve for the slaves in the upper South.
As it dawned on science that the blacks were not some kind of half-beasts, white Americans
began to cultivate a bit of guilt towards the practice of slavery. This, together with the slaves
urge for freedom, led to a slackening of chains, both literally and imaginative. One of the first
freedom fighters, Gabriel Prosser, actually planned an armed revolution. His aim was to free
all slaves, march toward Richmond, and make Virginia a black state (To Make Our World
Anew 169). His chance of success was obviously small, but the fact that such an action was
even considered is a testimony to the spirit and hope among black Americans at that time.
Then there was a disastrous setback, caused by Eli Whitneys cotton gin. This invention
turned cotton into the countrys principle export crop, and the production increased rapidly:
In the year 1790 The south produced only 3,135 bales of cotton.
By 1800 this figure had grown to 73,145 bales. . . . On the eve of
the Civil War production peaked at 4.8 million bales. If ever
circumstances conspired against a people, it was the coming
together of the cotton gin, fertile land, and world demand. Once
this happened, slaves who might have been set free by debt-and
32

conscious ridden Chesapeake planters were instead sold to the
planters of the cotton growing Lower South. Cotton sealed the faith
of slaves and slavery. . . . The sale and transportation of black people
within the united states thus became big business
(To Make Our World Anew 170-171).
From these facts we may deduce that by the time of the Luca Familys success, the
attitude among white Americans was that the black Americans were well under control. They
were still just so many hands, and their worth was only judged by their usefulness. They did
not represent any kind of threat to the whites supremacy. The entertainers could safely be
cheered as a few chosen, picked to please and amuse the white population.
In 1956, however, the background is changed altogether. Slavery has been abolished for
almost a hundred years, and every day of that century the claim for equality has persisted. The
black people are no longer confined to the role of serving the whites. We find them in high
positions in most departments in society. Near the end of WWII Adam Clayton Powell, J r.,
one of black Americas most conscientious spokesmen and an effective congressman for
Harlem, declared: The black man continues on his way. He plods wearily no longer he is
striding freedom road with the knowledge that if he hasnt got the world in a jug, at least he
has the stopper in his hand. . . . He walks conscious in the fact that he is no longer alone, no
longer a minority (To Make Our World Anew 445). No longer subdued by law, no longer a
minority, in stark contradiction to the situation in 1800, the black population has now grown
into a threat to the white domination of society.
It is an established fact that fear constitutes aggression, and in this case it may bee seen
as the direct cause of the hatred which was demonstrated towards the touring artists in the
lower South. It is a nature-given instinct to fight for the best position in the pack, and human
beings are no exception in that matter. The white audience had no choice but to kowtow to the
brilliance of the black performers. Even if they had not appreciated their art, which they
sincerely did, they would have had to submit to the fact that many of these artists were
33

celebrated all over the world. Their significance on the stage was undisputable and could not
be touched. Still, they were not divinities, they had to eat, and then they were back to the
normal position as blacks among whites and could be put in their place. My opinion is that
this diehard resistance against equality was carried out by extremists, and against their own
best convictions. There is no way that anybody could have claimed that this behaviour was
decent or just. It was an attack in a weird kind of self-defence against the inevitable current of
events. In Black Magic Hughes refers to Ethel Waterss book His Eyes is on the Sparrow,
where she tells about some experiences from her touring days down South. In Atlanta, she
once had to leave the town in an old horse cart under the cover of darkness. The reason for
this hasty departure was that she had a dispute with the white owner of the theatre she was
performing in, over the tuning of a piano. As a consequence, he had her followed by the
police, and gave orders that she should not be allowed to buy a railway ticket. In Macon, also
in Georgia, she tells that the body of a lynched boy was thrown into the lobby of a colored
theatre as a warning to other Negroes not to be uppity(282). These incidents, in all their
insanity, can in my opinion only be seen as the desperate acts of irrational rage caused by
plain fright. In the end they probably served the blacks better than any protest, by making
them martyrs to their cause.


Trumpet Player
----------------------
The Negro
With the trumpet at his lips
Has dark moons of weariness
Beneath his eyes
Where the smoldering memory
Of slave ships
Blazed to the crack of wips
About his thighs.
34

The Negro
With the trumpet at his lips
Has a head of vibrant hair
Tamed down,
Patent leathered now
Until it gleams
Like jet
Were jet a crown.

The music
From the trumpet at his lips
Is honey
Mixed with liquid fire.
The rhythm
From the trumpet at his lips
Is ecstasy
Distilled from old desire

Desire
That is longing for the moon
Where the moonlights but a spotlight
In his eyes,
Desire
That is longing for the sea
Where the seas a bar glass
Sucker size.

The Negro
With the trumpet at his lips
Whose jacket
Has a fine one button roll,
Does not know
Upon what riff the music slips
Its hypodermic needle
To his soul




But softly
As the tune comes from his throat
Trouble
Mellows to a golden note. (CP 338).

One of the most internationally celebrated black artists in the early and midtwentieth
century was the trumpet player Louis Armstrong. Born in 1901, he was Hughess
contemporary, and he was world famous for the sound of his golden instrument. In
35

combination with his raucous, bruised voice, his trumpet brought the themes of the blues and
the jazz brilliantly home to his listeners. He is generally estimated to be the most influential
person in the history of the blues and the jazz. During his time he published more than 1500
gramophone records. Most of them became classics. He had a particular gift for renewal,
without changing his simple style and naturalness, and his performances were always full of
joy and inspiration. Armstrong was accused, in his time, of being too obliging to the whites.
Later on, his behaviour was judged to be a technique of survival. The fact is that he took some
brave actions against segregation in his hometown, New Orleans. Segregation laws were not
abandoned in New Orleans until 1965. Long after that, the greatest trumpet player in New
Orleans was said to be the white Al Hirt, not Louis Armstrong.
1
All in all, it is difficult to
imagine a more likely source of inspiration for Hughess poem Trumpet Player than Louis
Armstrong.
When I first read this poem, my immediate impulse was to place it in the blues-and-jazz
category. Then I realized that I was being mislead by my associations to Armstrongs face and
the sound of his trumpet. The theme most definitely is the blues and jazz, and the poem is a
declaration of the amount of suffering and deprivation it takes to create such heartrending and
beautiful music. The form, though, is of quite a different character. The slightly broken
pentameter and the uneven end rhymes add another dimension to the poem. When Hughes
employs this old European tradition in his expression, he lifts and broadens the message out
of the confinement of the African American community. It makes the reader envision the
speaker of the poem as a representative of a far larger audience, a white man indeed, paying
homage to the black artist and his art.
The first stanza describes the entire history of the African Americans misery. It takes a
lot of pondering and many readings to grasp the entire content of this stanza. By a trick of the

1
www.carlpetter.comtextsarmstrong.htm
36

tense of the word blaze, Hughes adds generations of time to his description. If he had used
the present tense, it would have pointed directly to the eyes of the trumpet player. That would
not have made sense. After all, nobody is whipping him. The phrase the smoldering
memories of slaveships / blazed takes us back to the time of those who actually remembered
the root of the evil, the capturing in their home country and the enslavement in the new world.
So, the memories of the slaveships and of former greatness and fall is the link between the
first slaves and the generations to follow. When they were beaten and whipped, they were
reminded of the wrongdoings their people had suffered, and their minds blazed with anger and
resentment. This is the inheritance of the trumpet player. This is the burden he has to bear. In
addition to his own humiliations, he has to carry with him those of all his forefathers. He is
mentally battered and bruised by it, and this weariness it is that is shown like moons/beneath
his eyes.
The succession of the stanzas seems a bit out of place. Stanzas number two and four
share the same theme, and so do stanzas number three and five. It is not beneficial to the flow
of the poem to part them. The obvious reason why Hughes has done this is the connection
from stanza three to stanza four, by the repetition of the word desire. This repetition is
significant in its efficiency to build up to and emphasise the sense of longing in stanza three.
So, facing the choice, one would rather sacrifice the continuity than this effect.
As for stanzas two and four, they both deal with the description of this particular human
being, who is the result of a process which has been going on for hundreds of years. In stanza
two there are two words which immediately stand out as significant, the words tamed and
crown. At first they seem to be unquestionable opposites. The word tamed gives
associations to a wild animal, crown to a human being at the peak of civilization.
Indisputably, the two words signify bottom and top, or rather beginning and end, of a line of
development. The question here is whether this development qualifies to be called a positive
37

progress. One could argue that the consequence of civilization has, at all times and in all
cultures, meant the proportional degeneration of human ability to survive without it. One can
question if it is profitable in the long run to become dependant upon all the wonderful
achievements civilization brings. The answer appears to be negative. All civilizations known
in the history of mankind follow the same pattern. At first they develop slowly, then more
rapidly, and finally they end in destruction.
The fact that the white mans society has forced the black man to slick back his hair in
order to conform does not mean that he is diminished. Hughes seems to imply that even after
centuries of oppression and persecution, the black man is still in possession of his ancestors
pride. Even when he is forced to change his appearance, he carries the sign of his humiliation
as a crown. So, they have not managed to tame him. It is only on the surface he has adhered
to their ways. He has kept his own values intact, far more precious than those of the whites,
Hughes seems to claim. So, the two words do not describe opposites, because actually, there
has been no change! The word tamed then becomes a mockery of the whites, who think
they can break the black mans pride just because they have managed to make him straighten
out his vibrant hair.
On the other hand, Hughes could be referring to what Peter Bruck calls the cult of the
primitive black that many white took for granted in the 1920s (BLC 1060). In that case it is
not as if he is praising the human pride of the trumpet player. He is rather lamenting the fact
that the black man, the wild spirit, has been caged. This puts him in a pitiful position. He
becomes a regrettable object, just as misplaced as a wild animal behind bars. Regardless of
point of view, this becomes a discussion of identity. The significance of identity seems to be
an underlying theme in much of Hughess poetry. In this poem, too, identity is a key word, the
identity of the proud black.
38

The longer I studied Hughess works and his public statements, the more clearly there
appeared a certain ambivalence in his attitude towards black people and black culture. There
seems to be a great number of contradictions in his utterances. On the one hand he praises the
ebony ancestor as his own, like in The Negro Speaks of Rivers. On the other hand there is
his reaction towards his patroness, Charlotte Mason, or Godmother, who found that he was
not exotic enough in his works. He said, after their break up was a fact: She wanted me to be
primitive, to know and feel the intuition of the primitive. Unfortunately, I did not feel the
rhythm of the primitive surging through me, and so I could not live and write as though I did
(BLC 1060). Nevertheless, Hughes is avid in his praise of the primitive, and this is perhaps
not a contradiction after all. He almost seems to have a fascination with black history and
culture, which is also demonstrated in his urge to be recognised as black. In box 492 of
Hughess personal papers at Yale University in New Haven, I found a folder marked Notes
on a Lecture on Africa/1930 J an. Here he says: I look upon Africa as the last sanctuary of
the human race, as the last sanctuary of animal life, and the last of human peace. Luckily it
has not been touched by the white man, . . . that most destructive of all forces . . . You feel the
earth spirit, which is very different from the human spirit.
2
This goes a long way to explain
the nature of his attraction. It seems as if the reason may partly be found in his mixed blood.
The fact is that it makes him a spectator to the realm of blackness. He is white enough to be
attracted to the exoticism of it, and not black enough to belong. The whites too, are drawn to
the primitive aspects of the black arts. It thrills them because it is strange and exotic, and
perhaps also because it corresponds with something humanly archetypal deep down in their
soul, something that materialism has almost managed to cultivate away. At the same time,
proud as they are of their splendid civilization which has allowed them to remove themselves
from nature, they can despise the same primitivism in the blacks. They have obviously lagged

2
The Beneicke Rare Book and Manuscript Library
39

behind in the struggle of progress, and are positioned on a lower rung of the ladder of
evolution.
In order to contradict this view, Hughes seems to attempt a reversal of this fixed order.
He appears to claim that the development of western civilization is a decline, not a progress.
He, being both black and white is in the position to judge, and by his worship of black culture
he certainly makes clear his preference. His appreciation of the blacks goes to the extent that
he tries to renounce his white blood. Nevertheless, it is his white blood that pays homage to
his lost values. Those values are the primitive, or perhaps archetypal sides of his origin which
the white man has lost on his way to material glory. Hughes himself verifies this claim. In a
letter to William Dickens, dated Oct. 13, 1931, he expresses concern about his ability to reach
his black audience: In many cases the context, too, of Negro books, has been uninteresting or
displeasing to a large part of the race. They have not cared for jazz-poetry or low-down novels
and one cant blame them since they know such things all too well in life (BLC 1057). I
think this statement speaks for itself. It both confirms the necessity of being an outsider to
appreciate black culture and the artistic display of it, and places Hughes firmly as an outside
admirer, however much he wants to identify with the blacks.
Stanza four of Trumpet Player could have been written by one of the great romantic
poets of the 1800s. Phrases from a poem by Yeats, from his early and thereby romantic
production, The Stolen Child, also springs to mind:


Come away, O human child!
To the waters and the wild
With a feary, hand in hand,
For the worlds more full of weeping than you can understand.

( Norton Anthology of English Literature 2090).
This is what our trumpet player desires. However, he has to make do with the
substitutes that civilization has provided him with. He is a true representative of the romantic
40

idea that mans place is in nature, and that civilization degenerates him and makes him
unhappy. The phrase longing for the moon has a double impact, since this is an expression
we use to describe a situation where the object of the desire is unobtainable. What he gets
instead, is a poor compensation for the real thing. On the one hand there is the, at that time,
unexplored, mystical part of the infinite universe, with all its connotations of wonder, longing
and mysticism. Also it reflects the basic condition of our existence: the sun. On the other
hand, there is this small bulb of intense, artificially constructed light, not illuminating half of
the planet Earth, but restricted to a small part of the room. In addition to this, it is not merely
insufficient. It directly bothers him. Everybody knows what a spotlight in his eyes would
feel like. In this case it serves as a symbol of civilizations damaging effect on human nature.
The image of the bar glass as a replacement for the sea is just as strong. The word sucker
indicates that the trumpet player is seeking comfort for his misery in the glass, read alcohol.
Instead of basking in the freedom and space of nature, he consoles himself with a pain-
killer which enables him to forget his sorrows for a while.
Stanzas three and five are focused on the music, or rather on the effect it has on the
listener. The images employed here are directly related to the speakers senses. Through them
Hughes transfers to the reader a vivid experience of the taste of honey and a sensation of
liquid fire in his blood. The listener is also the recipient of the result of the trumpet players
sufferings through the rhythm. The image he uses to describe the rhythm is not, like the
former two, of a physical quality. The ecstasy/Distilled from old desire is telling us about
the spiritual state of the artist. In this way he includes all sides of a human being, body and
soul, in an interaction between the music, the artist who performs it, the listener, and the poet,
who is transferring it into beautiful poetry.
In stanza five the trumpet player is promoted to the position of a medium. The music is
personified, and becomes an active entity in the process of the performance. The trumpet
41

player is depicted as a tool, unaware of what is taking place, as the jazz pierces his soul and
brings out a golden note.
The repetition of the word lips throughout the poem is another factor which leads the
readers associations to Louis Armstrong. He was nicknamed Satchmo, derived from
satchel mouth, a phrase very suitable to describe his prominent lips. It is also general
knowledge that he suffered from lip cancer for many years. Hughes must have been aware of
that, considering the similarity in their life spans. In my opinion, this fact adds to the degree
of suffering of the medium who transfers the message of the blues and jazz.
In May 1957, Hughess all-Negro show Simply Heavenly opened at the 85
th
Street
Playhouse. Although other plays had been performed continually and without incident until
then, the Fire Department now got very busy, with almost daily inspections. There was no end
to the violations now found, which had not been discovered while the other plays were on:
The steps to the womens dressing room were declared too narrow. The dressing
room was closed, so the women had to costume themselves in the toilet. Then
the stairs to the balcony were pronounced too narrow and the balcony had to be
closed, thus cutting off a portion of the box revenue. . . . Finally the Fire
Department stated that the building, a fraternal lodge hall, should have had (in
the years before) a ten thousand gallon water tank on the roof for fire
prevention. The astonished owners of the building were ordered to install one
forthwith. They thereupon gave up and asked the Simply Heavenly company to
vacate the premises, since the landlords could not afford so expensive an
installation simply to accommodate a new theatrical tenant (Black Magic 290).

The play tried to survive on other stages for a while, but in the end it dissolved and was taken
off. Simply Heavenly went on stage in August 1957. It is an interesting fact that in J uly the
same year Hughes was praised in a musical reading of his poetry, called A Part of the
Blues. The text on the photograph on a newspaper clipping reads: Celebrated The
contemporary author Langston Hughes
3
In my opinion this demonstrates the changes that

3
The Beneicke Rare Book and Manuscript Library, box 571
42

were taking place in society in this period. 1957 was the year when Congress passed the Civil
Rights Bill, a development obviously not welcomed in all camps.
Simply Heavenly was an all black show, so evidently the actors in that case were all
in it together, but it is generally agreed that among the performers there was very little
prejudice and intolerance. Hughes claims: Artists had their own civil right bills in their hearts
long before Washington began to make laws about it (Black Magic 282). Their solidarity was
evident from the beginning of the twentieth century, when the Actors Equity Association was
formed in 1913.This association made a great contribution to the struggle toward
democratization of every area which effected artists, from the stage to the treatment and
security when they were touring. The last page of this chapter in Black Magic is a description
of the acts of solidarity the association performed in order to obtain equal rights for blacks
and whites. The strength of the commitment of the members is exemplified in the boycott of
the National Theatre in Washington. Hughes tells us: The 54-year-old Equity, (in 1967), with
about 12,000 members, resolved in 1947 that no actors belonging to the Association should
perform in the National Theatre in Washington after May 31, unless its policy of not
admitting Negroes were dropped. At that time no legitimate theatres in Washington admitted
colored spectators. . . . It was Ingrid Bergman, Swedish star of stage and films, who brought
the J im Crow theatre situation in Washington to a head (Black Magic 288). After an incident
were black veteran soldiers were turned away at the door of the theatre, Miss Bergman
together with the all-white cast scheduled to play at the theatre the following week, petitioned
Actors Equity to issue a ruling forbidding its members to participate in future productions in
Washington theatres (Black Magic 289).
It is not likely that Hughess choice of examples is accidental. Great names have great
impact in all areas, and in collecting such outstanding artists as Bessie Smith as victim and
Ingrid Bergman as sympathizer, Hughes makes his point very clearly. To my mind Black
43

Magic is a severe attack on segregation, and a huge contribution to the blacks cause. Poetry
does not have a large audience, while factual prose gets through to everybody. However,
history reading can be extremely boring if it is reduced to the reeling off of dry facts. Not so
this book. I join my voice with Ossie Daviss in the foreword: Black Magic is not only about
art, it is itself a prime example of that art in actionthe storytellers art: Langston chuckling
to himself at what he found like Brer Rabbit with a pencil sniffing out, hunting it down,
digging it up, putting it away; chuckling over the living history of a people, keeping it in the
back of his mind all those many years, then finally setting it down in this book (Black Magic
foreword). Also, Hughess involvement in the artists problems, and his excitement Davis
calls it his wonder at the artists great achievements, is continually giving colour and spice
to the texts. The careful cataloguing of the artists performances, on stage and off, together
with the delightfully selected pictures, bring the artists to life and stir the readers sympathy
and, if he is white, his feeling of shame about the past. In 1967 it must have been a firebrand,
a firebrand of comfort to the blacks and of enlightenment to the whites. It is also a testimony
to the fact that Hughes never tired of his task. The examples in this chapter, from The Weary
Blues in 1926, via his article in the Chicago Defender in 1956, to Black Magic, his very last
work, in 1967, establish that his engagement endured throughout his life.







44


Chapter II
Proletarians Unite: The Financial and Working Conditions of the Blacks
The bees work
Their work is taken from them
We are like the bees
But it wont last
Forever. (CP 172).


In a chapter about the employment and the economic conditions of African Americans it
seems inevitable to start where it all began, with slavery. Americans disagree on the origin of
chattel slavery in the first British colonies. Some assert that the free blacks enjoyed the same
terms as the black bondsmen for decades long before slavery was instituted. Others hold the
opinion that slavery began as early as in 1619, a year before the Mayflower landed the Pilgrim
Fathers on American soil. In a letter to Sir Edwin Sandys, J ohn Rolfe reported that in late
August, 1619, a Dutch vessel had arrived at Point Comfort with not anything but 20 and odd
Negroes, which the Governor and Cape Marchant bought for victualle(Black Americans 66).
However, misunderstandings may have occurred, because the reporters at the time failed to
distinguish between the buying of a service and a persons body. They make the conclusion
that in 1619 neither Negroes nor English bondservants were owned as chattels in
Virginia(Black Americans 66). The first official distinction was made by an act of the
Virginia Assembly in 1639, which stated that all persons except Negroes should be armed.
This was the first of a long train of statutory discriminations that would ultimately make of
the Negro a slave (Black Americans 67). The next stage of the progress was life servitude. In
the 1640s and 1650s it is certain that some blacks served for life and others did not. In 1660
two acts of the Virginia Assembly make it apparent that they were favourable towards the
practice, and also inclined to encourage increased importation of blacks. The reason for this
45

was obviously that black labour grew rapidly more important to the tobacco planters in
Virginia.
The final stage in the process of enslavement was the question of who should own the
children of a life-servant. Pondering this, one realizes how desperately important it was to
all parties. If the children were to follow the course of nature and automatically belong to their
parents, that would mean that each new generation was born free. It would also provide the
blacks with some degree of power and better their status. You cannot be a totally subdued
individual if you parent free children. Freeborn children would also mean hope for the future.
This was not in the interest of the slave masters, and consequently steps were taken to prevent
it. Another important issue in the matter was the miscegenation. A sexual relationship
between a white woman and a black slave was almost unheard of. On the other hand, it is an
established fact that white men took black women as their mistresses, or simply used them as
they pleased. What, then, would be the status of the child of such an alliance? The problem
was settled by the Virginia Assembly in December 1662, as they declared: Whereas some
doubts have arisen whether children got by any English man upon a Negro woman shall be
slave or free, Be it enacted. . . that all children born in this country shall be bond or free only
according to the condition of the mother. By this legislation lifelong servitude was made self
perpetuating; the children of slaves being property in the same manner as the natural increase
of life stock or other chattels (Black Americans 69).
The working conditions of the slaves were extreme in every manner. They were
deprived of the natural opportunity to profit from their ability to work, because their work
power was not theirs to sell. It belonged to their masters. An even worse consequence of the
slaves position was that they also lost the power to decide what was going to happen to their
body. It, too, was their masters possession. Many would hold the opinion that the ultimate
degradation to a human being is to lose control over the most private and precious part of
46

ones person, ones sexual life. This was the position of the slaves. They were there to use and
abuse as the mood took their master. The tragic result of some of those relationships is the
theme of Hughess poem Mulatto. It appeared first in the Saturday Review of Literature on
J anuary 29 1927, and is part of the volume Fine Clothes to the Jew:



I am your son, white man!
. . .
A little yellow
Bastard boy. (CP 100).



These are the first and the two last lines of Mulatto, and they give a full explanation of the
conflict. The mulattos position was in fact even more difficult than the blacks. Being neither
black nor white, they did not truly belong in either camp. They were rejected by the black
people because they were partly white, and by the white people because they were partly
black. The speaker in Hughess poem is in the worst thinkable position. He is even rejected by
his own family, or at least part of it. Hughes is obviously not referring to contemporary
conditions. This is a reminder of the maltreatment of the African Americans in the past.
Mulatto has the shape of a performance, a kind of call and response between the
white father and his illegitimate son, and between the illegitimate and his white brother. This
dialogue is overlying a symbolic description of the environment in which the action is taking
place. The first call in the first line, I am your son, white man, is an accusation and an
appeal at the same time. He is accusing his father of bringing about his miserable position,
and appealing to him to better it. The setting is The Deep South, where segregation and
exploitation of the blacks were the most severe. The mood of the poem is created by the
description of the surroundings where the son was conceived: Georgia dusk . . . the moon
47

over turpentine woods . . . the sent of pinewoods . . . the Southern night is full of stars. This
is where the shameful act was performed: One of the pillars of the temple fell.
The temple is the social structure, and it has been disturbed by white having sex with
black. Hughes is obviously ironic here, suggesting that the white man is committing sacrilege
by degrading himself with a black woman. The outcome of this despicable union is the little
yellow boy, the little yellow star. This little yellow star is not alone, though. The Southern
night is full of them, a fact which indicates strength in numbers and a warning of danger. The
image of the star also brings associations to the J ews, who have been persecuted throughout
history. Even to indicate such a similarity is a strong accusation towards a society which is
founded on the idea of liberty and equality. At the same time, the symbol of the star tells us
that he is a splendid thing, this little yellow boy. In this way, he uses the same symbol to
elevate the worth of the mulatto, and remind his readers of how merciless society can be. The
response to the speakers call is given in the same blunt manner: You are my son!/ Like
hell! The finality in the rejection is emphasized by the use of an exclamation mark instead of
a question mark after son. The claim thereby is treated as an absurdity, and a flat denial is
the only response it deserves. Both the call and the response illustrate a cold, hard, matter of
fact every day life. This serves to emphasize the poets description of the warm, sensual, and
heavily scented nights. Hughes gives us the perfect surroundings for love and passion. Then
he adds abuse and contempt to one part of the couple, and pain and humiliation to the other.
The plural of the bodies of nigger wenches, and the position against black fences, depicts
a scene of one-sided, loveless lust. In this manner the gravity of the misdeed stands out even
more clearly.
At my first reading of the poem I was a bit displeased with the sentence what is a body
but a toy, without being able to pinpoint what was wrong with it. When I learned from the
footnote of Collected Poems that it had not appeared either in the earlier version in the
48

Saturday Review of Literature or in Fine Clothes to the Jew, I took a closer look. This time
the effect was clear. By using the expression a body without painting it black to the reader,
Hughes is generalizing, and thereby draws the concentration away from his theme, the abuse
of black women. The speaker, the abuser this time, could even have been talking about his
own body as a toy to bring him pleasure. The fact that it is repeated only increases the
damaging effect. It seems all the more surplus since Hughes later on in the poem hits his
target precisely with an almost similar sentence: Whats the body of your mother? Then the
poet goes on to give us a summary of what this is all about in four lines of mockingly cheerful
rhythm and rhyme:
A nigger night
A nigger joy
A little yellow
Bastard boy.
This is nothing to take at all seriously. Both the action of the white man, and the result of it,
can be dismissed with a shrug of the shoulders. The fact that he is condemning his own flesh
and blood to a life in misery is not admitted, or perhaps not even considered.
The third voice in the call and response dialogue is the white brother. Here Hughes
comments on the perhaps most appalling condition of the mixed children of the earliest times:
the presence of their white siblings. Let us picture a plantation in the Deep South, and assume
the theme of Mulatto to be dealing with conditions before the Civil War. At that time the
working conditions and the economic status of the son would have been at bottom pitch. If
he was a field hand his life would consist of sweat and toil and no prospect whatsoever to
better his position. His working conditions presented an insurmountable hindrance. He would
hardly get a glimpse of his white brothers and sisters. His complexion would give away his
origin, though, and probably cause him trouble even among his black family members.
However, the son would be in an even more appalling position if he was among those who
where picked to serve in the house or in the stables. There, although half of him was a product
49

of his white fathers genes with all which that implies, he would be obliged to serve his
siblings as a mere slave. Watching their often luxurious life, he would have to bow and adjust
to their moods. The effect of such a position on a persons psyche is inconceivable to us.
Hughes tells us what he is going to experience, if he dares to suggest kinship:
Naw, you aint my brother
Niggers aint my brother
Not ever
Niggers aint my brother
The fact that this was accepted behaviour in a society which proclaimed equality for all its
members seems like a demonstration of the human potential for hypocrisy and self
indulgence. The ironic witticism that all men are created equal but some are more equal than
others appears to be an appropriate description of reality. However, even if the mulatto in the
poem is told to: git on back there in the night / you aint white, Hughes gives him the last
word. The poem ends with a demand: I am your son, white man!/A little yellow/Bastard
boy.
In his Symbolizing America in Langston Hughess Father and Son, Dolan Hubbard
discusses Hughess views on the mulatto and the culture of race in Father and Son. As an
introduction to the essay he gives an account of how Hughess great-grandfather, a white man
fell in love with one of his slave-girls, freed her, married her, and acknowledged the four
children she bore him. As a consequence, the whole family was ostracized. Although their
marriage was technically illegal, they were buried side by side like man and wife on the farm.
Hubbard deduces that Hughess fascination with the mulatto and the treatment of his
characters are dictated by his ancestors. This seems quite logical. Not only was his great-
grandfather, Ralph Quarles, a pioneer in his own way, both his grandfather, Charles Langston,
and his uncle, J ohn Mercer Langston, were distinguished educators and politicians. Hubbard
maintains that being a descendant of one of the more prominent black families in the
50

nineteenth century America had the consequence that he continually explored his dual
ancestry (CLC Vol. 108, 314).
While Mulatto has a general appeal and could be situated within a time span of more
than a century, the short story Father and Son is placed in the 1930s. It thereby points its
critical finger directly to the authorities of that period. The setting is the Norwood plantation
in South Georgia with all the classical ingredients: the Big House, the workers quarters, and
the blacks, singing as they toil. This appears to be conditions very much the same as a
hundred years ago. However, there have been changes, and at first glance they appear to be
major. The workers are no longer slaves. They are free to leave whenever they choose. Surely,
this represents a revolution in American society. Perhaps even more revolutionary is the fact
that the patriarch up in the Big House is actually providing for his mixed children. He even
sends them to college. A slight scratch on the surface, though, reveals the fact that the
alterations are superficial. The field workers, however free they may be on paper, are working
just as hard. These are the 1930s, and with the depression at hand the fighting for jobs would
plunge wages to ground level. To be able to eat you had to struggle to find a job and then stick
to it for dear life. So much for freedom. Whereas Norwoods behaviour to his mulatto
children is concerned, it works smoothly as long as it is not put to the test. When his son Bert,
obviously enlightened by his stay at Atlanta college, claims what he means is his birthright,
his father refuses to acknowledge him. Hubbard says: The colonel cannot publicly
acknowledge his black children; to do so would be tantamount to undermining the credibility
of the system that empowers him, and which has shaped his image of himself (CLC Vol.
108, 315). Hubbard goes on to declare that Hughes in Father and Son attacks the romantic
view of the South. He demands that the Civil War was not fought for a noble and just cause,
and it is time to stop worshipping the heroes from that conflict. He points out that the South is
existing upon an outdated economic system, one that no longer can sustain itself, and
51

conveys Hughess message to be that: The apologists for this ideology do not acknowledge
the violence that it takes to make the system work for the few while the many suffer in
silence (CLC Vol. 108, 315).
So, what Hughes is actually conveying to his audience is that the South is still
dependant upon the working force of the poor and oppressed black population. The South was
founded on black labour, and has to relay on it for the duration of its culture. Seen from this
angle, it becomes clear why the politicians in the South were so desperate to maintain the
segregation policy. Black people had to be reminded of their inferiority all the time during
their everyday life, even when they were taking a bus ride or visiting a public toilet. That was
the only way to avoid a revolt.
Far worse than to be obliged to work too hard, as has been the blacks lot so far in this
discussion, is the prospect of being deprived of the opportunity to work altogether. Out of
Work was published in Poetry in April 1940, in the aftermath of the Depression. Hughes had
some personal experience with the problem of getting a job. After leaving university he had to
fend for himself since his fathers allowance depended upon his continuing his studies. He
started to answer adds for any kind of work he could do, all in vain. He tried for jobs as a bus
boy, waiter, handyman, and clerk, but soon realized that unless the notice specified
coloured there was no use in applying. He later wrote about this period: Experience was
proving my father right. On many sides, the color line barred your way from making a living
in America (Berry 32). After temporary employment on a truck farm on Staten Island, he
found himself in a seemingly futile search for a job. He reached the point that he feared that
he simply might not get work at all. Berry says: His Harlem landlady a strongly maternal,
amiable, optimistic Negro woman, named Mrs. Dorsey could not reconcile him to the
situation, but she encouraged him daily not to give up (Berry 33). This is interesting because,
as Berry also says, Mrs. Dorsey inspired him to write Mother to Son.
52

A decade later, in 1931, Hughes focused on the financial crisis that was gripping the
country. Even though his opinions were rather radical, they were well founded on the
disastrously high level of unemployment among African Americans. An Urban League
study showed that With a population only a quarter Negro, half the unemployed in Huston
were black; in Little Rock, Arkansas, blacks formed twenty percent of the city but more than
half of the unemployment, in Memphis, almost twice as many blacks as whites were without a
job (Rampersad 214). On arriving back in the North after his trip to Haiti in 1931, Hughes
had in mind to write another novel. This national crisis, however, challenged his social
conscience, and he decided to follow Mrs. Bethunes advice and make a reading tour to the
South. His aim was to create an interest in racial expressions through books, and to do what I
can to encourage young talent among our people (Rampersad 214). In between his return to
New York and his departure for the South, Hughes made a marked move to the far left. His
change of attitude was so discernible that he was accused of having joined the Communist
Party of the United States. This accusation he had to face, and he strongly denied it for the
rest of his life (Rampersad 215). Given the no discriminating ideology of communism,
Hughes was bound to be attracted by it. Truly, some of his poems from that period are rather
red, or at least radical. In Tired he actually calls for armed revolution: Let us take a
knife/and cut the world in two/And see what worms are eating/At the rind (Good Morning
36). In September, 1932, his poem Good Morning Revolution was published in New
Masses:
Good Morning Revolution:
Youre the very best friend
I ever had.(Good Morning 3).

These opening lines of the poem are obviously a proclamation of a dedication to a cause.
Revolution is a general expression. However, since the one which took place in the USSR
53

was the most recent in time in 1932, Socialism or Communism immediately springs to mind.
The personification of the revolution adds to the impact of the statement. The definition of a
friend is someone who would do almost anything for you and never let you down. By
pronouncing the revolution as his best friend, Hughes is indicating that it has already proved
its worth. It also commits Hughes to be just as faithful to the revolution as it has proved, and
will go on proving, to be to him. If Hughes really had reservations about Communism, as he
later claimed, he most certainly does not display it here. Here he seems to kowtow to
Communism as a solution to all the problems and injustice of his own society. Given the
background, this is quite a natural reaction. As already mentioned, what caught Hughess
attention most prominently during his trip to the USSR was the apparently non-existing race
discrimination. He naturally came to give the ideology of that society the credit for such
conditions. As it had taken an armed revolution to bring these conditions about, he saw that
as a means to change the status of the African Americans as well. In addition to being a
challenge to rebel, the poem is, in a subtle way, a protest against segregation. It could be read
as an indirect appeal to white workers to show solidarity to black workers.
From the dialect he employs in the poem, I deduce that the speaker is not black. His
verbs are almost all in the correct tense. There is only one exception, the you was in line
nine. If he wanted to depict a black speaker he would have confused the verbs in a more or
less deliberate manner. The abbreviations and the ellipsis are also modest. He uses them in
vacationin (line 22),and in hangin (line 15), but he writes everything, (line 35 and
42), morning (line 41 and 46), and greetings (line 49) correctly. He has double negative
in line 29 and 30: Me I aint never been warm in winter / Me I aint never known security
. However, he is correct in line 17: And aint got a damn thing in this world. The rest of
the abbreviations and touches of dialect indicates a white man from the working classes. In
fact it is even almost too educated to be representative of a person from the floor, the
54

stereotype of a working man. He certainly does not emerge from the poem as black. In this
way, Hughes is ignoring the colour line, simply by pretending that it does not exist. A
worker is a worker, he seems to assume, whatever complexion he might be. They have to
stick together if they are to succeed in their struggle for better conditions. He refuses to
recognize the facts of the statistics, the fact that society is divided in three major parts where
work is concerned. Instead of facing the reality of the division into bosses, white workers, and
black workers, he talks as if there are just bosses and workers. The workers, the
buddies, have in their power to take over society if they join forces. The suggestion of
this union also implies the certainty of equality between black and white. Hughes demands
that white workers admit that fact, recognize their opportunity, and act.
I find that in this attempt to uniform his speaker in order to make him a universal
representative, Hughes gets his claws clipped. There is no edge to his message. We have
heard it all before, and we are tired of it. He even goes as far as to quote Marxs definition of
social power: All the tools of production (line 42). Somehow, this is not Langston Hughes.
Faith Berry is of a different opinion, though. In the introduction to her collection of Hughess
long hidden revolutionary poems Good Morning Revolution, she demands that: The works
were collected as evidence of some of the best writing ever done by Hughes (Good Morning
xiv). Arnold Rampersad does not agree with this. He states that the most prominent of
Hughess poems, such as The Negro Speaks of Rivers and Mother to Son, could not have
been written under the Communist aesthetic. He also claims that Hughes fails in his attempt to
combine revolutionary rage with his vocation to fight for the blacks. He calls the result not a
poem, but ideology, tempered and sharpened into slogans (CLC Vol. 108, 296). His opinion
is that in this process Hughess identity is lost, and he draws the conclusion: Only Hughes
could have written The Negro Speaks of Rivers, but given the right mixture of radical rage
55

and literary adroitness on the part of the writer, Good Morning Revolution could have been
written by almost anyone (CLC Vol. 108, 296).
From the way he handled this part of his production, one can deduce that Hughes was
not quite comfortable with it. Saunders Redding establishes the fact that Hughes refused to
read his revolutionary poetry at many occasions when it would have been most appropriate to
do so. He leaves to Faith Berry to explain why (Good Morning ix, x). She, on her part, refuses
to accept that it was because of his acknowledgement of poor quality. The publishers are the
ones to blame, she says. At the time, the editors and the critics shared the opinion that this part
of Hughess production did not fit his popular image. They put it down to bad influence at a
time when many American writers were moving toward the left in reaction to the rise of
Fascism in Europe and the malfunction of Capitalism at home. It was regarded as an isolated
phase of his earlier career (Good Morning xi). It is a fact, though, that some of his most
radical works came into being alongside his popular work. On this foundation Berry suggests
that: The phase actually lasted as long as he lived (Good Morning xi). However, in order to
be able to make a livelihood out of his writing, he had to oblige to his publishers and keep
these works out of the main focus of his audience. In an attempt to remain faithful to his
principles he contributed this part of his production to small, insignificant magazines. To let it
dominate his image would have cost him too dearly, and perhaps tongue-tied him altogether,
Berry seems to imply (Good Morning xii). Among Hughess diaries and notes from his trip to
Russia and China in 1932-33, I found an interesting sheet of typed text. It read:
Russian friends were always asking how I could be so interested in the workers
without belonging to the party. . . . I explained too, that my being a Negro, and
90 % of the Negroes being workers manual workers further propelled me
to the workers cause. But you are an intellectual, theyd say. Well, I would
answer, Negro intellectuals are in the same boat as the rest of their people.
Roland Hayes sometimes sings in places where he couldnt buy a ticket to his
Own concert if he were outside in the lobby and not on the stage.
4


4
The Beneicke Rare Book and Manuscript Library
56

This seems to me to be a proof of his relaxed attitude towards Communism. To him it
obviously was just another approach to his original and everlasting goal: better conditions for
the black people. It presumably would not have cost him too much agony to renounce his
radical works.
In an essay published in 1986, Arnold Rampersad suggests another reason why he did
this. He argues that the leftist critics failed Hughes. While his revolutionary poems were too
radical to be appreciated by the bourgeoisie press, to the leftists they were not radical enough.
He states that Hughes craved the approval of the left from the very start of his career. He was
introduced to the movement as early as his Central High School years, between 1916 and
1920. Nevertheless, he had nothing published in the radical press at this early stage of his
commitment. Rampersad says: The point here is that Hughes probably did not try the
Liberator before he had reached a certain proficiency as a poet. The leftists at the Liberator,
however, made clear what they thought of his work by rejecting all of it (CLC Vol. 108,
293). The fact is that Hughes had been published for four years and had become some kind of
a notability, before a genuinely radical journal accepted any of his works. It is to be found in
the Communist Workers Monthly in March 1925. Rampersad questions the motive for this
embrace. He suggests that the Workers Monthly simply was getting on the Hughes
bandwagon and concludes: Established names can be drawn to the leftist journals; for
reasons that are probably not hard to understand, the journals themselves often seem
incapable of growing their own (CLC Vol. 108, 293). Even if the leftist press did accept his
works on and off from then on, they continued to criticize his lack of radicalism. Rampersad
tells us that the line I am afraid of this civilization in the mouth of a person in one of
Hughess poems caused the radical poet J ames Rorty to accuse Hughes himself of being
afraid. The reviewers radicalism overwhelms the poet and often overwhelms poetry
57

itself, Rampersad says, and the last comment is a reprimand. One wonders how, under such
harsh conditions, any poetry gets written (CLC Vol. 108, 293).
Luckily, the conditions did not put Hughes off writing poetry. Despite repeated
rejections, accusations of being of a petty bourgeois upbringing, and later, an intellectual,
all this placing him on the outer edge of your class of the working class, his pace never
slowed (CLC Vol. 108, 294). What happened was that he turned more radical every year,
perhaps in an effort to please his leftist critics. He obviously wanted very much to be
recognized in that camp. Whatever the reason may have been, he came to write some of the
most radical pieces of verse ever written by an American, and finally he was appreciated by
the leftists. According to Rampersad, when Lydia Filatova wrote an article in International
Literature about LANGSTON HUGHES: American Writer in 1933, he came away, in her
final analysis, with flying colors (CLC Vol. 108, 294). How totally dedicated he was to
revolutionary ideology is demonstrated by a letter to his friend Prentiss Taylor: Never must
mysticism or beauty be gotten into any religious motive when used as a proletarian weapon
( CLC Vol. 10, 295). Furthermore, this statement seems to be a direct reaction to Filatovas
contemptuous condemnation of the religious poems in Fine Clothes to the Jew: The
soporific action of religion, with its gospel of non resistance, largely accounts for the
difficulty of spreading Communism among the masses of Negro toilers. Hughes in religious
ecstasy complains to heaven, sings about white wings of angels, and seeks solace in prayer
(CLC Vol. 108, 294). Quite a broadside, which obviously had its effect. After finally being
accepted by the left, Hughes found himself rebuked by his former admirers. Blanche Knopf
refused to publish his revolutionary poems and Carl Van Vechten predicted that he would
grow to be ashamed of them.
Whatever the reason was, the fact is that he did reject this part of his production.
Rampersad does not go as far as to claim he was ashamed of these poems, but he does admit
58

that it is rather interesting that he did not include them in his Collected Poems. Interesting?
It does not seem as if he had much of a choice if he wanted his audience to keep on listening
to him. Whether his radical commitment was a phase or not, the poetry from that period did
not serve his cause. In retrospect it seems only to have been a delay, and it hampered him in
his work for years to come. It would have taken a fanatical Communist to continue on the
radical course if he knew it would cost him his reputation as a writer. Although Hughes
obviously was intoxicated by Communist ideas at their first encounter, his later behaviour
proves that he was nothing of the kind. He willingly enough denounced his Communist past
to the McCarthy Committee in 1958. Hughes was first and foremost a black poet, fighting for
the rights of the black people, and thereby the black worker. His ambition to integrate black
workers and white workers and conform his style to leftist demands at the same time reduces
the impact of his message. His voice is drowned in the voices of the masses, too similar to
theirs to be distinguished from the crowd. Somehow the black worker gets lost in the
multitude of rebellions on the globe. Good Morning Revolution! qualifies as an easily read
demonstration of this approach, and the failure of it.
After this scrutiny of his, in my opinion, least successful techniques, I will now
concentrate on the field in which he is regarded to be the number one, the blues and jazz
poems:
I walked de streets till
De shoes wore off my feet
I done walked de streets till
De shoes wore off my feet
Been lookin for a job
Sos that I could eat. (CP 217).

Out of Work is a perfect representative of Hughess blues poems. The structure of the six-
line stanzas, the beat of the syllables, and the plaintive theme makes it a classic. It brings to
mind Blind Willie J ohnsons penetrating lament, with the simple guitar as the only
59

accompaniment. Blind Willie J ohnson, whose voice is now on its way to outer space aboard
the Voyager as Voice of the Century on earth, just in case there is somebody out there to
listen. This is yet another reminder of how significant the blues form was to Hughess
success, and how ingenious his choice was. The association to the realm of blues music that
automatically struck the reader would multiply the impact of the written word considerably.
Out of Work is adhering to the most consistent form of the blues. Rampersad tells us about
that form: This is a three-line stanza, in which the second line restates the first, and the third
provides a contrasting response to both (CLC Vol. 108, 310). At first glance this seems to
disqualify Out of Work in the way proclaimed above, considering the number of lines. In
reading it through, however, one realizes that even though it consists of six lines, it has only
three sentences:


I walked de streets till de shoes wore off my feet.
I done walked de streets till de shoes wore off my feet.
Been looking for a job sos that I could eat.


So far it confirms well to the blues. The last sentence, however, is a little dubious.
Rather than a contrasting response, it seems to be a natural and concluding part of the
monologue. Nevertheless, it sounds genuine enough, and the language confirms that this is a
black person speaking. The first, and most pin-pointing detail, is the omission of the voiced
sound of the finite article. I walked de streets till/de shoes wore of my feet. (line one, first
stanza), and So I went to de WPA, (line one, second stanza). This practice is consistent
throughout the poem. It is also a hallmark of the black dialects, and rules out all possibility of
the speaker being white. The second suggestion is an error in the tense of the verb, and it
appears in the second line of the first stanza. I done walked is almost artistic in its
determined neglect of grammatical rules. At first glance it is not quite clear what is wrong.
60

One could, for instance, wish for a had in addition to the done. That would transfer the
sentence to a more common feature of the black dialects, the duplicity of construction both in
negation and in statement. After a closer look, though, we realize that our anticipation has
lead us astray. All we have to do is swap the done with a have to make the sentence
grammatically correct. However, it must have taken a long line of deduction to replace an
auxiliary in the present tense with another in the past tense. It really seems like an artistic
innovation, and this kind of alteration in grammar is a characteristic of the African American
dialects. Another feature, not so characteristic of the black dialects, though, is the double
negative. We find one in line one, stanza two: I couldnt find no job. The Lawd in the
first line of the first stanza, and the ellipsis in lookin, ( line three stanza one), and livin
(line one stanza four) complete the picture.
In an inexplicable manner these alterations seem to represent an enrichment to the
expression of the poem rather than a limitation. In his essay from 1989 Arnold Rampersad
refers to Ralph Ellisons word about the language of the blues. Ellison states that it is
a transcendence of those conditions created within the Negro community by the denial of
social justice (CLC Vol. 108, 310). If that is the case, the language is most appropriate in the
mouth of the speaker in Out of Work. In his book The Legacy of the Blues, Samuel
Charters asserts that it was a rich, vital, expressive language that stripped away the
misconception that the black society was simply a poor, discouraged version of the white. It
was impossible not to hear the differences. No one could listen to the blues without realizing
that there were two Americas (CLC Vol. l08, 310).
Hughes has said that The mood of the Blues is almost always despondency, but when
they are sung, people laugh (CLC Vol. 108, 310). The reason for this phenomenon is quite
obvious in most of Hughess blues poems. It is the speakers laughing not to cry approach
to his ordeal which makes the audience respond in this manner. The situation is so bad it
61

becomes ridiculous. So the speaker is laughing at the madness of it all, and inspires his
audience to do the same. Out of work displays this technique to the full. It was written in
the aftermath of the Depression, and the speaker has worn his shoes off looking for work. The
WPA, the Works Projects Administration, a Depression era job program, tells him that he has
to stay in town for a year and a day before he can get any kind of employment:
A year and a day, Lawd,
In this great big lonesome town!
A year and a day in this
Great big lonesome town.
I might starve for a year but
That extra day will get me down.
The absurdity of this statement, that 365 days would be all right and 366 impossible, suggests
the same kind of absurdity as in the WPAs regulations. In this way the rules are reduced to a
laughing matter. Nevertheless, the person in the poem is proclaiming his own destruction,
brought about by that extra day. Therefore, in the disguise of an ironic understatement, it
becomes a dramatic criticism of society. The extra day seems to be a symbol of the devilish
methods the system puts into practice in order to oppress the poor. The little, black man
admits that society is going to achieve its aim, but by giving the admission the form of a joke
he emerges as the victor. His spirit is capable of mocking his miserable prospect. The impact
of the dialect is excellently demonstrated in this poem. It gives the speaker a face and a
suffering soul. Through six lines of apparent everyday talk Hughes picks his words carefully
and makes the self mocking, ironic humour a strategy to reveal depths of despair.
The ingenious simplicity of Out of Work is striking when it is compared to the clich
ridden, bombastic shouting of Good Morning Revolution. Here the blues form is presented
at its best. Rampersad tells us that this technique was the result of a process which stretched
over five years. From 1922 on, Hughes started to engage with the blues in his poetry. First
from a distance, then gradually closing in. It was not until 1927, in Fine Clothes to the Jew
says Rampersad, that he wrote in the form itself. Thus he acknowledged at last the full
62

dignity of the people who had invented it (CLC Vol. 108, 311). In 1940, when Out of
Work came into being, he had had more than a decade to polish his technique. The poem is a
testimony to that fact. It also is an appeal to the leaders of society to make an effort to change
the statistics of black unemployment.
In 1986 J ohn O. Hodges published an essay in which he discusses the alleged
inconsistency in Hughess writing. He starts off by pointing to Hughess impressive
production, both in range and quantity. Then he claims that the very bredth of Hughess works
would inevitably provoke the same variety in comment from his critics. Thus he explains that
some of his contemporaries called him the poet laureate of the Negro people, while to
others he was the poet low rate of Harlem. The most peculiar fact, he adds, is that that kind
of contradictory remarks were often made by the same critic at different times. Hodges
concludes as follows: What this reveals, it seems to me, is something about the allusiveness
of an individual whose writing often exhibited a surface simplicity that belied its true
complexity (CLC Vol. 108, 290). Hodges also puts forward the significance of the turbulent
times which coincided with Hughess career as a writer. The rapid changes, both in the world
in general and in the situation of the African Americans, was the direct reason for the variety
in Hughess works. Hughes could not allow himself to confirm to one style as a hallmark.
What he needed, says Hodges, was a flexible and dynamic idiom and tone to deal with the
many inconsistencies, paradoxes, and wide mood swings in the lives of the people he
celebrated in his various writings (CLC Vol. 108, 290).
The poem Black Workers, which is quoted at the beginning of this chapter is to be
found in Faith Berrys collection of neglected poems, Good Morning Revolution (11). In all
its simplicity it represents a third form of poetry Hughes employed to convey his message. It
is different from both the blues form and the free verse of his most radical production. In
contradiction to Good Morning Revolution, it does not shout. There are no quotations to
63

strengthen its impact, no heavily striking metaphors or artistic twitches of language to strike
the reader. All it has in common with Good Morning Revolution is the message. Hughess
only trick in this case is the comparison to the bees. Oddly enough it seems to suffice. The
picture of a beehive, swarming with activity comes easily to mind. In addition the bee, like the
ant, is renowned for its interminable toil. The image of the product of this toil snapped away
from the worthy workers of the hive gives vivid associations to centuries of unjust treatment
of black workers.
But it wont last
Forever.
It is just a statement of a fact, as if some divine mechanism which could not be stopped was
already set in motion. There is no need to shout. The outcome is inevitable. It is only a
question of time. The eloquence of this short phrase makes it a good example of the
simplicity that belies the true complexity in many of Hughess works. This poem was written
in Hughess most revolutionary period. All though it obviously is inspired by his Socialist
acquaintances, the title states that it is representing the black workers specifically. Spoken in a
calm and trustworthy manner, it is an assurance that the present conditions are going to
change for the better.
More than two hundred years earlier, similar words were spoken to the blacks. In the
year 1800, as mentioned above, Gabriel Prosser also planned an armed revolution to free the
slaves. By then it had begun to dawn on the slave owners that the blacks were human beings
like themselves, not some kind of a mixture of a savage and a child, as Cecil Rhodes once
phrased it. As told before, Prossers aim was to make Virginia a black state (To Make Our
World Anew 169).
In 1933 the demand for a revolution was stronger and more widespread than ever
before in history. The mere mentioning of workers and workers rights was in 1933
synonymous with Communism. This is probably the reason why Black Workers was found
64

among Hughess unpublished works. As already mentioned above, his Communist
sympathies caused him a lot of trouble. On his reading tours he was often met with hostile
demonstrations, and he was ostracized by certain parts of society. All though this poem gives
associations all the way back to the days of slavery, long before any such thing as
Communism was preached, Hughes presumedly found it safest to keep it from the scrutiny of
his critics. In addition comes the fact that if one removes the title the poem becomes universal
and all the more threatening to the bourgeoisie. Being forced to abandon a substantial portion
of his production meant a tangible setback in Hughess career. As the role of the black people
has been the workers role all the way along, it must have hampered Hughes considerably to
be forced to watch his tongue on this subject. The concealment of such a low voiced and
seemingly innocent poem as Black Worker is a testimony to that condition.
The last poem to be discussed in this chapter, Negro Servant, carried no dangerous
political message (CP 131). Its theme was well known and need not be hidden from the eyes
of the ruling classes. The setting, in Harlem, restricts the theme to the black problem. The
worker this time is depicted as the perpetual servant, whose only purpose has been to make
the living easier for the whites, ever since the slave days of his ancient forefathers. This has
nothing to do with Communism, so there would be no harm done to anybody in publishing it.
The poem could easily be read as a description of Hughess own existence in the early
twenties. From his own pen we have learned that he was enchanted by Harlem from the very
first he set foot there, shortly after he had quit university. We also know how he searched in
vain for a decent job. In the end he had to make do with the humblest positions as a delivery
boy and a servant to white people. Indeed, he would know what it felt like to be a Negro
Servant.
The opening lines depicts him in this role subdued, polite/Kind, thoughtful to the faces
that are white. Then, to counterbalance this humiliation, he has to go all the way back to his
65

African origin, to the times before the whites made his ancestors into slaves. Once again, as in
The Negro Speaks of Rivers, he finds his pride in the past, in Africa. He refers directly to
the drums and the tribal dances of those times. He even includes the veldt, which is the
name of the plains in South Africa. He leaves no doubt to where his heart is longing to be. It
is a yearning for the freedom and the sense of dignity and power associated with the Africa of
old times. He cannot have that, but he has found its substitute in Harlem: Dark Harlem waits
for you. There he finds the drums of life in the blues, which is a direct link to the past,
derived from the ancient African rhythm: Oh, dreams, Oh, songs, Oh, saxophones at night!
There he can live out his longings among his kindred spirits, his equals. Oh, sweet relief
from faces that are white!
The first impression of this poem is that it serves as a heartfelt eulogy to Harlem. After
a closer look, however, I seem to observe a hidden rebellion. It is to be found in the style of
the poem. When I first read it through I found it somehow annoying. Usually, a stop, a change
of lines, or the length of a line are instruments to emphasize the poets message. Negro
Servant did not function like that. The meter was all in a muddle, and the rhyme was
haphazardly used to the extent that the poem would have been better off without it. The poem
was neither free verse, nor did it have a set meter. Then it slowly dawned on me what Hughes
had done. I rearranged the lines, and found that with only small adjustments it fell into an
almost perfect iambic pentameter:
All day subdued, polite,
Kind, thoughtful to the faces that are white.
Oh, tribal dance!
Oh, drums!
Oh, veldt at night!

Kind thoughtful to the faces that are white
Oh, tribal dance! Oh, drums! Oh, veldt at night!

The most significant changes had to be made in this verse:

At six oclock, or seven, or eight,
66

Youre through.
Youve worked all day.
Dark Harlem waits for you.
The bus, the sub,
Pay-nights a taxi
Through the park.
Oh, drums of life in Harlem after dark!

At six oclock, or sevn or eight youre through
Youve worked all day. Dark Harlem waits for you.
The bus,( ) Pay-nights a taxi through the park.
Oh, drums of life in Harlem after dark!

By an ellipsis in seven in the first line, and leaving out the sub in the third line, it fits.

O, dreams! Oh, songs! Oh, saxophones at night!
Oh, sweet relief from faces that are white!
This is what I think could be a demonstration from Hughes. He had written the poem in
iambic pentameter, which is the most traditional European foot there is. Then he had ripped it
up and used it to expose the gap and discrepancies between the two cultures.
Although subtly presented, to me it seems a severe attack. The question whether it was
appropriate for the black writers to adapt to the traditions of the Old World was hotly debated
in the 1920s. One of those who where considered to be the most dedicated to the conservatism
of form was Claude McKay. In an essay from 1986 Rampersad tells us that As a poet
McKay was absolutely ensnared by the sonnet, which for all the variety possible within its
lines is perhaps the most telling sign of conservatism in writing of poetry in English (CLC
Vol. 108. 307).
McKay obviously saw nothing untoward in attacking the White Fiends in their own style.
Another conservative was Countee Cullen. His idol was J ohn Keats. He passionately wanted
African Americans to embrace the traditions of the Old World and adhere to them. In
contradiction to Hughess insistence on being black, even if he was not, Cullen felt his
complexion to be a obstacle to him as an artist. He expressed his regrets in his probably most
67

famous couplet: this curious thing/To make a poet black and bid him sing (CLC Vol. 108,
307).
Hughes in his turn, as we all know, engaged himself in the enterprise of making a brand
new form, and make it as black and far from the European tradition as possible. Although that
particular form eventually became his trademark, that does not mean he left out all other
methods. His literary output shows an abundance of variety, naturally more or less successful.
Whether Negro Servant is a sample of the first or the latter of the two may be left to
personal opinion. To my mind it functions better when it is laid out in couplets, in the old
European traditional style. It conveys the smells, the sounds, and the atmosphere of Dark
Harlem with both lucid elegance and convincing intensity. It thereby gives the humble
servant a background of interesting exoticism, which elevates him and adds to his dignity.













68


Chapter III
Separate as the Fingers, United as the Hand: Segregation and Education

The significance of education in the building of societies can hardly be overestimated. As the
definition of education is the opportunity to learn from other peoples experiences it must
be recognized as the foundation of all progress. Without it, every human being would have to
start from scratch. Since we are born with only one instinct, to suck our nourishment, the
consequences of such conditions would have been lethal. The human race as it appears at
present would face immediate extinction without daily tutoring of its offspring from the very
beginning of life. Except for a few basic tricks that we need to survive, and which are given
to every human being, education has always been a means to establish the hierarchy of the
society. Some of the subjects were shown how to labour with the earth, others were educated
to become leaders. Consequently, education lead to control, over other peoples lives as well
as ones own. The right to rule in a society more often than not was inherited rather than
granted by the subjects as a well-earned position. This fact in time inevitably produced more
bad leaders than able ones. An elected leader would have proved his ability to hold his
position before he entered it, and could therefore be assumed to rule with justice and wisdom.
A person who found himself in a ruling position by the chance of birth might not be quite up
to the task. If not, he would have to hide his shortcomings. One way of keeping the crowds
under control is to keep them ignorant. Knowledge is power, and power in the lower classes
has always constituted a threat to the privileged ones. Langston Hughes gives an example of
that in Father and Son. As told in my chapter 2, the illegitimate son comes home from his
studies at Atlanta University and claims his birthright from his father. This direct link between
education and rebellion against unjust conditions has been a theme with Hughes from his
69

earliest years as a poet. He was convinced that equal education for black and white Americans
was one of the essentials in the struggle for equality. The segregation of the educational
system in the South seems to have been a challenge to him from his first encounter with it
during his reading tours. He was merciless in his condemnation of some of the black
principals humble attitude towards the white authorities.
Keeping his ancestry in mind, Hughess preoccupation with the educational system
seems inevitable. His mothers family was one of the most well-educated African Americans
in the nineteenth century, and that would obviously have formed Hughess attitude in this
field. To him education must have seemed like a matter of course. His own first experience
with segregation in the schools occurred when he was six. His mother at that time worked as a
stenographer in Topeka, and Hughes had difficulties in being admitted to a white school there.
His recollection of the incident was that my mother, who was always ready to do battle for
the rights of a free people, went directly to the school board, and got me into the Harrison
Street School (Berry 4). He was almost the only black pupil, and it does not require much
imagination to realize the impact such surroundings would have on an impressionable six-
year old. Berry confirms this notion: Through his experiences at the Harrison Street School,
he learned not only that he was a child without parents, but also that, unlike those around him,
he was black (Berry 5). The effect of these early experiences is evident in his conduct later
in life. His obvious pleasure in provoking authorities on all levels shows that, rather than
intimidating him, they inspired his vocation to fight for the rights of the blacks. Perhaps the
most provoking poem of them all is Christ in Alabama. It came into being from a
confrontation with the segregation system at a university in the South:



70

Christ in Alabama.
-----------------------

Christ is a nigger
Beaten and black
Oh, bare your back!
Mary is his mother
Mammy of the South
Silence your mouth.

God is his father
White master above
Grant him your love.

Most holy bastard
Of the bleeding Mouth
Nigger Christ
On the cross
Of the South. (CP 143).



The theme of this poem, and one could claim, a justification for its cruel message, is the
bible verse: And the King shall answer and say unto them, Verily I say unto you, Inasmuch
as ye have done it unto one of the least of these my brethren, ye have done it unto me ( St.
Matthew, 25.40). The first two lines of the first stanza is a direct demand to that effect. The
Nigger is one of Christs smallest, so by beating him they also beat Christ. The alliteration
in Beaten and black has an astounding impact on the associations of the reader. It seems as
if it is not only the initial letters which correspond. The two words appear in a disturbing
manner to belong together. In a peculiar way they seem to be related, although there is
nothing neither orthographic nor semantic to link them. After some pondering, though, one
realizes that there is! J ust like old and tired, and young and gay, beaten and black are
connected through endless repetitions of cruel events in which the blacks have been beaten by
the whites. From the childhood bedside reading of Uncle Toms Cabin onwards, the image of
71

the maltreated black man has followed us until this very day. Over the years the beating of the
blacks, both mentally and physically, has become a familiar image, so familiar that the words
seem naturally connected. In the poem they point directly to a spiritual beating of Hughes
himself.
In 1931 he was admitted to do a reading of his poetry at a white college. This was
surely an extraordinary event at that time, even if the University of North Carolina, Chapel
Hill was probably the most progressive white university in the South. Looking back on the
history of educational segregation, we realize that any real break through in this field was still
more than twenty years in the future. Thus Langston Hughes once again positioned himself in
the vanguard. His courage and his pleasure in being provocative is displayed through his
behaviour during that stay. Although he was admitted to read his poems at the university, he
found that none of the (white) teachers or leaders offered to put him up for the night. He
eventually found quarters with two female students (suggested by Rampersad to be the total
membership of the local J ohn Reed Club) (Rampersad 224). Provoked by this humiliating
treatment, and on request from the editors of the progressive magazine Contempo, Hughes
responded with Christ in Alabama. It produced an uproar at the university, and he barely
escaped a mob.
The recipient of the message in the poem is unquestionably the white Americans. After
the accusation of this hideous crime in the first two lines comes something in between a
warning and a threat: Oh, bare your back! Prepare for the punishment for centuries of
cruel and unchristian behaviour!, Hughes seems to shout from the mountain. Once again an
image springs to mind, an image of millions of blacks being flogged by the supreme master,
white and Christian and in his own right to rule the savage. Mistake, Hughes seems to
say, big mistake! You were not beating a savage, a half animal. You were beating the very
centre of your existence, the highest in your hierarchy, not the lowest. You were beating your
72

saviour, who had freed you from eternal condemnation, Christ himself. Oh, bare your
backs! The Oh and the exclamation mark give the line a biblical quality and thereby
emphasizes the inevitability of it. Punishment has to come, because the Almighty himself will
see to it that justice prevails in the end.
The second stanza is a praise to black women. The image of her as the Virgin Mary,
mother of all, corresponds directly with the black Mammy of the South, also a mother of
all. It is one of historys great paradoxes that although the white masters regarded the blacks
as some sort of inferior creatures, they still trusted them with the care of their children from
birth. From all that has been written about the master/slave period emerges the assertion that
the bonds between mammy and child were often stronger than between mother and child.
Since the mammy obviously was able not only to substitute for the mother but actually do her
job better, one would assume that respect for the mammy would follow naturally. That is not
what Hughes conveys in the poem. Silence your mouth, he says. Hold your tongue in
reverence of the black woman.
The third stanza speaks on behalf of the mulatto, and it contains the same theme as
Hughess poem of that title discussed in Chapter II. The most prominent sting of this verse is
the reference to the white master as God. This is pinpointing the white master of the big
house, accusing him of having a godlike perception of himself. It also repeats the fact that if
so, then his son is half god and should be treated like one. Hughes is ironic here. What he is
actually saying is: Face facts and behave like a human being. The black man and the mixed
one are equal with the white. Grant him your love! Accept the bastard!
In the last stanza he includes both the nigger in the first and the bastard in the
third stanza. They are still both presented as representatives of Christ on earth: Most holy
bastard, Nigger Christ. This time the whites are not merely accused of beating the blacks.
Now Hughes goes all the way and draws a direct parallel between the crucifixion of J esus
73

Christ and the practice of the Ku Klux Klan, The cross/Of the South. Acknowledging the
fact that the Klan not only used the cross as their emblem, but also donned the robes of
ancient Christian societies, the impact of the accusation becomes grave. Here we have these
sworn Christian men, out beating and killing Christ himself in Christs own holy name.
The reaction to the publishing of the poem were thunderous. Rampersad tells us: The
powerful Textile Bulletin denounced the insulting and blasphemous articles of the Negro
Langston Hughes. Three hundred persons signed a protest to the state against the angel of
darkness. . . It is bad enough to call Christ a bastard, a local politician fumed about Christ
in Alabama, but to call him a nigger, thats too much! (Rampersad 225). The records
show that Hughes was not in the least discouraged by these events. On the contrary, he moved
like a man possessed, Rampersad says, and he assured Walter White that he had had a swell
time at Chapel Hill (Rampersad 225, 226). Another proof that Hughes was pleased with the
poem and its effect is the fact that he had it reprinted in his final book of poems, The Panther
and the Lash in 1967. In his essay The Literary Experiments of Langston Hughes, J ames
A. Emanuel calls it that passionately brave and artful poem (Black Genius 181).
As he had been a student at several white educational institutions, Hughes was able to
recognize the difference in quality between black universities and white ones.
Throughout his reading tour in the South, he was appalled by the cowardice of the leaders in
the various universities he visited. He found them backward and servile towards the white
government. He said: In general, many black schools are not trying to make men and women
out of their students at all they are doing their best to produce spineless uncle Toms,
uninformed and full of mental and moral evasions (Rampersad 232). In his introduction to
Negro Songs of Protest by Lawrence Gillert, he again attacks the cowardice of most educated
blacks: Fear has silenced their mouths. . . . The tossed scrap of American philanthropy has
74

bribed their leaders. . . . The charity luxury of Fisk, Spelman, Howard, fool and delude their
students. . . . The black millions as a mass are still hungry, poor, and beaten
(Rampersad 232). In 1927 Hughes visited the Tuskegee Institute. Here he was faced with
what Rampersad calls a contradiction between education and leadership (Rampersad 232).
Tuskegee was the wealthiest of the black schools at that time with its 2600 students. The man
in charge was the well known Booker T. Washington. To his horror, Hughes found on campus
a guest house for whites only! (Rampersad 232). Perhaps he should have expected
something like that. It was general knowledge at the time that Booker T. Washington was not
altogether against some form of segregation. His creed was that blacks and whites should be
separate as fingers and united as a hand. All though Hughes quite clearly was of a different
opinion and despite the segregated guest house, he doubtlessly held Washington in the
greatest esteem, as we shall see later on in this chapter.
In Hughess personal papers at the Beneicke Rare Book and Manuscript Library at Yale
University, I found another example of the importance Hughes placed on education. In one of
his notebooks from his trip to Russia and China in 1932-33, there was this description of a
school at Kushai: 1
st
Turkmenian Normal School. 350 students. 38 teachers. Biology well
equipt labororatory,(his error), charts . . . etc. Five white rats, turtles, frogs. Then follows
immaculate data of students and teachers background.
5
In another notebook in the same
folder he praises the progress in the educational system after the revolution: Before
Revolution only 200 Turk. Now 75,000 pupils. How did they develop 4,300 native teachers in
13 years? (Box 492). This seems to have been written in admiration of the system which had
both the wisdom to recognize the importance of education and the ability to bring results in
that field.

5
The Beneicke Rare Book and Manuscript Library,box 492
75

In his article Fair Play in Dixie in the Chicago Defender of March 17, 1945, Hughes
aims his attack on the Southern majority in our country (80). The article is one of many
examples of Hughess ability to vary his tactics. Only a year previously he published Hold
Tight! Theyre Crazy White! in the Chicago Defender of March 11 1944. The theme in the
two texts seems to be the same, but the styles could hardly be more different. The latter of the
two is obviously inspired by the sociologist Franklin Frazers The Pathology of Race
Prejudice. Hughes is quoting him in his article: Race prejudice shows precisely the same
characteristics as those ascribed to insanity (Chicago Defender 77). With this statement of a
professional as foundation, Hughes throws off all caution and gives vent to his seemingly long
subdued frustration in an outburst of exaggerated accusations. Some folks have gone mad
from being white, he says. Their madness is visible in the fact that they think they are meant
to rule the world. He makes his point very clear, when he puts South Africa with its
Apartheid system, Hitlers Germany, and Dixie in the same category. He claims that they are
mad, wrong in the head, abnormal, and need to be psychoanalysed (Chicago Defender 77).
His proof is that It does not make sense to deny Negroes the vote and than call Negroes bad
citizens when they have no chance to be good ones. It does not make sense to deny Negroes
equal educational facilities and then accuse them of being ignorant (Chicago Defender 77).
This is what is done in Dixie, so he suggests that the Southerners be given help to rid
themselves of this pathological domination complex. He hopes that the Carnegie Fund of
the J ulius Rosenwald Foundation will find the funds to psychoanalyse their heads, and help
to straighten them out a bit. He is concerned: They need help to get back to their right
minds, because they are dangerous (Chicago Defender 78). It is not very likely that this
belligerent outburst served Hughess purpose. Such wild accusations, without any connection
to reality, could only alienate and separate the parties in the race conflict. It could also hamper
Hughes in his future attempts to be taken seriously.
76

In Fair Play in Dixie he goes to the opposite extreme. From wild exaggerations he
switches to deliberate understatements. This he contrives by adapting to the forms of the
legendary gentleman of the South. It gives associations to social conditions where honour was
more precious than life, and a mans word was enough to close any deal. His opening lines
confirm this first impression, and set the moral standard of the article: I regret to say it, but
so far as I can see, the Southern majority in our country has no sense of fair play at all
(Chicago Defender 80). Quite a change from the angry scream of Hold Tight! The contents,
however, are very much the same. In the first paragraph he once again points out the
paradoxical behaviour of the Southerners when they first deny blacks the right to equal
education, and then accuse them of being ignorant. Furthermore, how they claim that blacks
are un-cultural and at the same time close the state universities to them, bar them from
theatres, and deny them access to public libraries (Chicago Defender 80). The effect of this
low voiced, modest approach from one gentleman to others of the same quality, reaches its
peak in a phrase that deserves to be called the understatement of the year. First he reminds
his audience of the practice of the Ku Klux Klan, how a gang of forty or more would grab a
single black and torture him or even lynch him. Then he claims simply that such behaviour is
not fair play, because he was only one and they were so many! By addressing them as if they
only need a reminder in order to change their behaviour, he implies that they are gentlemen,
not mere savages. In this way he forces his audience to realize the horror of these mens
conduct.
Despite Hughess, and all the other fighters for equalitys efforts, this state of affairs
was not easily changed. Ten years after this article, in 1955, J udge Tom P. Brady made his
speech Black Monday: Segregation or Amalgamation . . . America has Its Choice (Eyes 83).
The Monday he is referring to is the Monday, May 17, 1954. That is the day of the U.S.
Supreme Court decision which was going to rock the South in its foundation. To comprehend
77

the full meaning of this blow, it is necessary to go all the way back to 1868. That year the
Fourteenth Amendment was made to remove all legal distinctions among all persons born or
naturalized in the United States (Eyes 67). In 1896 Plessey v. Ferguson established the
separate but equal doctrine. The next significant trial in history was the Brown v Board of
Education in 1954, where the Supreme Court reversed the separate but equal doctrine in its
decision on Bradys Black Monday. The decision stated that a classification based solely
on race violated the Fourteenth Amendment to the U.S. Constitution (Eyes 62). In his
speech, which is a passionate defence of segregation policy, Brady uses exactly the same
arguments that Hughes attacks in the two articles above. Bradys main argument is that the
blacks had never proved their right to be treated as equal Americans. One quotation could
represent the essence of his speech. After referring to the history of America, the conquering
of the West, the Indian wars, the liberation of Texas, Custer, and El Alamo, all events which
took place when the blacks were still slaves, he roars: In the struggle for development, in the
expansion and growth which was taking place, in the laying of the solid foundation of our
nation, it is ridiculous to assume that the American Negro played any part except as a body
servant or a hostler (Eyes 85). As if the American Negro had the opportunity.
However contradictory this appeal was, it had its effect. Massive resistance against
racial integration brought quick results. In 1955, the year after the Brown v Board of
Education decision, the Brown II decision was made. It asked African Americans to defer
the exercise of a constitutional right, and gave southern states time to hold fast to the practice
and doctrine of segregation (Eyes 62). However, at this point in history it was plain that it
was only a question of time before desegregation would be put into practice. The diehard
Council Right Southerners would have to give in at some point, even if they would fight
progress at every step. The Civil Rights movement was still in the making, but its accelerating
effect spread like a forest fire.
78

This also seems to be Hughess opinion in The Dilemma of the Negro Teacher Facing
Desegregation, printed in theChicago Defender in October 1955. He ignores the Brown II
decision and acts as if the pupils rights are confirmed, as they truly were, if only on paper.
His concern in this text is the black teachers and their possible difficulties in getting
integrated. He says: As citizens, they should have the right to teach in ANY school, just as
our children now have Supreme Court approval to enter any school
(Chicago Defender 38). This article is the third example of Hughess different styles in factual
prose. It has no irony, no exaggerations, and no understatements. It is held in a matter of fact
tone, and as well as anticipating forthcoming problems, he suggests how they can be solved.
Most of the text is neutral to the extent that it could have been written by an outsider. There is
one very subjective side to it, though, and that part of the article is not just strongly
opinionated, it also marks an alteration from Hughess general view on the question of
equality between the races.
The black-white question regarded from a broad perspective can be seen from three
possible points if view. Tom Brady and his like represent one side, namely that the blacks are
inferior to the whites. In his Black Monday speech he leaves no doubt about his heartfelt
conviction. He even claims to have the proof of it, as shown above. At the other extreme we
find W.E.B. du Bois, who obviously regarded the blacks as superior to the whites. From some
of his statements it seems as if he would like to keep the blacks separated from the whites in
order to maintain this superiority. His call to blacks is to weld together and show how great
a contribution the black genius could bring to the world, the great message we have for
humanity (Eyes 8). Hughes, although he was a great admirer of du Bois, does not seem to go
to such lengths. His works seem to aim at approval from the white part of society. By
depicting the beauty in the black arts and the proud history of the blacks, he wants
79

acknowledgement of the equality between the races. He does not approve of superiority in any
of the parts.
In this article, however, he is promoting the quality of the black teachers as superior to
the white ones. He claims that a blacks teacher has community standing and influence
beyond that enjoyed by most whites. He is also of the opinion that a white grammar school
teacher is just another teacher in the eyes of society(Chicago Defender 38). To prove the
validity of his argument, he points to some of the most prominent persons among the African
Americans. Booker T. Washington, Mary McLeod Bethune, and J ames Weldon J ohnson, all
of them among the greatest names in African American life, and all of them teachers
(Chicago Defender 38). His concern at this point is whether this valuable work force will be
maintained, that is, if they will be integrated. He articulates his misgivings about the fact that
some all-black educational institutions were facing the possibility of being closed. His
solution to the problem must have seemed a little high-flying fifty years ago. Considering the
circumstances at the time, his matter of fact suggestion seem nave and provoking at the same
time. Once again he speaks as if a full consent existed between the white and the black
population. He proposes to turn all the all-black institutions into all-American institutions, but
with special curricula such as African history, in order to enlighten the whites. In addition to
this he suggests that some of them could become centres of interracial culture and social
engineering designed towards the building of a better America, with particular emphasis on
race relations (Chicago Defender 39). To sum it all up, the article seems to convey an
impossible dream dressed in a realistic garment in an effort to influence society. Once again
Hughes is to be found in the vanguard, anticipating the future, and acting as if it already
represents the present.
The present, however, was significantly more complicated. Hughess article
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Concerning a great Mississippi writer, printed in the Chicago Defender on May 26 1956, is
a testimony to that fact. It was a direct reply to an utterance given by William Faulkner, one
of the greatest American authors. It was given in an interview which Russell Warren Howe
conducted in connection with certain riots at the University of Alabama when an African
American girl was given admission to the university. Faulkners comment on that event was:
As long as theres a middle road, all right, Ill be on it. But if it came to fighting, Id fight for
Mississippi against the United States even if it meant going out in the streets and shooting
Negroes (Chicago Defender 247).
In the opening line of his article, Hughes wonders whether Faulkner is going to be
punished for this statement. Then he elaborates the question by comparing Faulkner to Paul
Robeson, the world famous black singer, who lost his passport for allegedly saying
something not nearly so subversified (Chicago Defender 91). Now Hughes asks if the same
will happen to Faulkner. This introductory part of the text reveals the devastating conflict that
was ruling every day life in the Southern states of the United States at that time. It displays the
impossible practice of passing a law to protect certain members of society, and then appealing
to the same group to act as if the law did not exist. The Brown II decision, as told above,
actually gave southerners free hands in their dealings with African Americans. Hence the
Federal Government was caught in a trap constituted by its own decisions. Hughes, though,
chooses to ignore the Brown II decision. Again he is anticipating future progress, assuming
that the law will treat Mr. Faulkner in the same manner as it treated Mr. Robeson. In
presenting his view this way he is pretending to rely on the Federal Government to function as
it is elected to do, according to the Law of the Land. It is a subtle sort of pressure, and it has
often proved more effective than open criticism of the conditions at any given time. The
comparison between Robeson and Faulkner turns out to be quite a deliberate choice. Hughess
purpose is revealed when he expresses his wish that Mr. Faulkner should be allowed to keep
81

his passport. Otherwise he would be stuck in Mississippi, and Hughes wants him to go as far
away as possible, to the moon, Mars, or Venus (Chicago Defender 91).
His next paragraph he uses to praise Faulkner as an excellent writer and a sincere
citizen (The Chicago Defender 91). He does not doubt that Mr. Faulkner means what he
says. What is incomprehensible to Hughes is why he is saying it. To emphasize his next attack
he changes paragraphs again, and also his style of approach. Now he is surprised, taken aback,
astonished, by Mr. Faulkners attitude, as if he did not have the slightest inkling that any
enlightened person could nourish such feelings. Incredulously he asks: Doesnt he want me
to go to school ever in life with the rest of the Americans in Mississippi? Am I a varmint or
something that he wants me, colored, to wait and wait outside of the good life, while
everybody else, white, Mexican, Oriental, native and foreign born, J ew or gentile, go to the
university of Mississippi if they want but me? (The Chicago Defender 91). Hughes, of
course, was perfectly aware of the facts of life. Surveys made in 1940 showed a severe
disparity between the American citizens constitutional rights and the reality in practice. In
1940 the number of white people with no schooling was 3,2 %, of non-whites 11,7%.
Unfortunately, there is no data exclusively on blacks, only for the entire group of non-whites.
However, from J ames A. Geschwenders essay Social Structure and the Negro Revolution,
we learn that the non-white population consisted of 90% blacks at the time of both surveys
that I am referring to (Black Americans 454). The position of the non-whites may therefore be
regarded as approximately that of the blacks. As for the ones who did go to school in 1940,
30,5 % of the whites went four years to elementary school, 11,4 % of the non-whites did. 13
% of the whites had four years at High-School, while only 3,8% of the non-whites were that
fortunate. 5,9 % of the whites went to college for four years, a mere 1,4 % of the non-whites
made it to that level. Even if the survey of 1960 shows improvement as both groups move
upwards in the system, the differences between the races are almost unchanged. It shows 2%
82

whites with no schooling, 6,6 % non-whites. 22,1 % of the whites get four years at high-
school, 11,7% of the non-whites. Four years at college is granted 10,3 % of the whites, and
3,4 % of the non-whites. These figures show that the non-whites are always lagging behind
the whites in the upward climb. They reveal that the whites in general are moving from the
middle to the top of the educational system, the non-whites move from the bottom to the
middle. However, they also indicate that there is a marked progress towards equality between
whites and non-whites in the lower age groups. This fact would inevitable manifest itself
upward in the system as the pupils grew older, and lead to a situation where non-whites
improved their educational accomplishments relative to the whites. It should be noted, though,
that these surveys cover all of the US except Hawaii and Alaska. The situation in the
segregation states in the South is not especially recorded. Still, at the time of his article in
1956, one is safe to assume that Hughes was painfully aware of the situation, both in the
country in general and in the South in particular. With their practice of segregation in addition
to the practice of the over all suppression of African Americans, the South doubtlessly
contributed their fair share to the depressing statistics. Still, Hughes is ignoring the appalling
everyday treatment of the blacks, and sticking stubbornly to his indisputable constitutional
rights.
The rest of the text is in my opinion too emotional to be rated as high quality literature
in any genre. It seems as if Hughes gets carried away on a wave of frustration. Again he goes
to the extreme, and accuses Faulkner of being mad. In doing so he uses expressions which
place him outside the ranks of sophisticated scholars, such as he has blowed his top, and
his wig is gone (Chicago Defender 92). On the other hand, this could of course be
intentional. By using these phrases he would endear himself to the uneducated black readers.
Nevertheless, such language would alienate him from the white gentry of the South, and his
appeal would have no effect unless he managed to reach that particular group of citizens.
83

However, with these expressions he identifies with the largest group of African Americans,
the commoners. The phrases convey an important message. He is not just a writer in an
elevated position in society. He is a representative of the frustrated masses.
Toward the end of the piece there is an interesting sentence. After wondering what
would have happened to Mr. Faulkner in this situation if he were black, he answers the
question himself: He would be in jail, else investigated by Senator Estlands committee,
surveyed by the FBI, and called all the names in the book by the patriotic editorial writers
who damned J osephine Baker to hell and gone for exaggerating a little about lynchings before
the white gentry of Mr. Faulkners state dropped little Emmet Till in the river with an iron
wheel tied to his feet (Chicago Defender 92). Here, in one run-on-line Hughes manages to
display the extent of incongruity between crime and punishment, working both ways. On the
one hand, Mr. Faulkner, who has publicly declared that he is prepared to defy a constitutional
law, even admitting that he is quite willing to commit murder, is not punished at all. On the
other extreme there is Emmet Till, a fourteen year-old boy on a visit to relatives in
Mississippi, in 1955. A Chicago boy, and not familiar with the conditions of the South, he
allegedly whistled at a white girl. For this crime he was brutally murdered and thrown in the
river, condemned to death without a trial. His murderers, though, two white men, were cleared
by an all white jury (Eyes 37-38).
This section of the text is a reflection of Hughess upset mood. It is an emotional
outburst, quite similar to Hold Tight!. By depicting Faulkner as a black man he is pointing
mockingly to the malfunction of the American democracy. He leaves his readers with the
impression of the South as a lawless, barbaric society. The expression little Emmet Till
emphasizes the fact that the victim was a child. Thereby he marks the white gentry, the
carriers of the sophisticated culture of the South, as brutes who are killing children. He is
painting a picture of a society which is existing on false premises. The gentry are savage
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killers. The esteemed author, the noble mind of the Nobel prize is a gunman, out on the streets
killing people.
1958 was a watershed in the struggle for equality in the educational field in the South.
That was the year when Ernest Green graduated from Central High School in Little Rock,
Arkansas. This event took place on May 27nd, and on J une 14th that year, Hughes comments
on it in an exuberant article in the Chicago Defender. This article is yet another example of
his variety in style.
The first ten lines, which constitute the introduction of the article, are composed by the
book, with a presentation of the topic and the conflict. The topic is, of course, civil rights,
and the conflict is the difficulty the black people have in putting those rights into practice. In
order to emphasize the magnitude of the young mans achievement he first points out that
in some parts of our country just average day-to-day living needs from the Negroes more
courage and determination than it does from whites (Chicago Defender 43).
At this point there is a marked change in style in the text. The first example is when he
calls the diploma a banner of singular glory. This image gives associations to historic
heroes at horse with their banners flying at the spearhead of a victorious army. It thereby
classifies Ernest Greens victory as one that turns the historic events, which it obviously did.
From here on Hughes also starts to repeat the word diploma. All in all he does this twenty
times. These images and repetitions give the text a distinctly lyrical quality. Parts of it appear
more like a poem than like a piece of actual prose:
The dim wonder of book learning in the minds of countless slaves
who dared not touch a book for fear of flogging lies in that diploma . . .
The tears of slave mothers who desperately wanted their children to learn
moisten all the letters in Ernest Greens diploma. His diploma is not an
ordinary diploma. No! It is the diploma of all the people who
remembered . . . (Chicago Defender 44).

The depiction of the scene where Ernest Green receives his graduation paper is perhaps
the most solemn part of the text. First he reminds his readers of The Knights of the White
85

Circle and The Ku Klux Klan and all the horror they inflicted on black people who tried to
get some kind of education. Then he uses the image of evening dew to describe their
sufferings: And the dew of ancient pain moistened his diploma, and the tears of all the
generations of enforced ignorance fell upon his hand as he reached out to accept the token of
graduation, his diploma! (Chicago Defender 44). The image of the dew that fell gently over
the stadium conveys almost religious connotations. It becomes like a blessing from heaven of
the ceremony, a token of gratitude from all those who lived and died without being granted
this opportunity. Then he concentrates on the diploma itself, and describes it as a symbol of
everything that has been done to make this moment possible. He manages to include all the
various departments of society. The sweat of work and fear is rolled into the diploma, he says.
In this connection he mentions both the physical workers and the great minds. The ribbon
around the paper is the symbol of all the prayers in all the little churches in the South. The
golden seal on the document is the symbol of song. This symbol represents all the
congregations who gave offers to education, the professional singers who raised money for
the cause, and the song of the black mother as she toiled over her washing to provide her
children with an education. In this way he includes all aspects of life, work, religion and art.
By reminding his readers of the fact that all levels of society have been involved in the
struggle, he once again emphasizes the significance of education, and ends his jubilant script
by proclaiming Ernest Green the man of the year.
In the struggle against segregation, this celebration of victory is just as important as the
harsh attacks on maltreatment. The captivating form of the article leaves no reader unaffected.
Hughes emphasizes the event, and thereby extents the effect of it. In addition he is keeping his
audience informed about both progress and setback in the Civil Rights Movement. He proves
to be a living source of both information and propaganda. Considering the numbers of readers
of theChicago Defender, Langston Hughes must have made a difference in this field. The
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celebration of Ernest Greens diploma can therefore be seen as the marking of a private as
well as a public victory.























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Conclusion

To study Langston Hughes has been a somewhat overwhelming process. I did not realise the
immensity of his production until I started my research. Also the variety of his works is quite
stunning. Between 1926, when he had his break through with The Weary Blues, and his
untimely death in 1967, he wrote sixteen books of poems, two novels, seven collections of
short stories, two autobiographies, five works of non-fiction, and nine childrens books. In
addition to this, he edited nine anthologies of poetry, folklore, short fiction, and humor.
Furthermore, he translated J acques Roumain, Nicholas Guilln, Gabriela Mistral, and
Frederico Garcia Lorca. He also wrote at least thirty plays (Critics ix). The nick-names which
were used to describe him also tell of variation, both in genre and quality. It seems quite
remarkable that such different expressions as Shakespeare in Harlem, the poet laureate of
the Negro, and the poet low-rate of Harlem was used to classify one and the same person
(Critics ix). The huge amount of literary work can only be a result of his unwavering
dedication, which never seems to have slackened. In fact, it appears to thrive in times of
trouble and adversity. After having finished my study of him I see him more clearly than ever
as a pioneer in the matter of style, and a frontline fighter for the cause of the blacks. By using
the black voice as a weapon in his fight for African Americans rights, he managed to
present the demand for just treatment in a very striking fashion. Because he employed the
popular blues and jazz in his poetry, he identified its origin and forced the white population to
recognize and appreciate the assets of the black culture. He thus clearly displayed the
connection between the internationally celebrated music, and the culture of the blacks.
Thereby he transformed the black masses from being beggars at the back door, pleading for
acceptable living conditions, to highly appreciated contributors with something precious to
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offer. Through his poetry he displayed clearly the connection between the internationally
celebrated music, and the culture of the African Americans.
It is not easily explained how this idea first came to him. He was not a natural
himself. As stated above, he said himself that his reason for breaking up with the
Godmother was that he was not in possession of that primitive rhythm. Still he managed
to conquer the literate world with the rhythm of his poetry, and thereby communicate the
mixture of pride and misery among black Americans. The blues and jazz form constantly
reminded the reader that these much admired art forms are a prominent feature of the people
that the whites regarded as inferior to themselves. The words carry an accusation of
maltreatment, and a demand for change. In this fashion the message is given a double effect,
in that it is conveyed in both the words and the style. In retrospect it seems such an obvious
thing to do, because it turned out to be a success. However, at the time it was dismissed by
many authorities in the realm of literature. In the preface to Langston Hughes: Critical
Perspectives Past and Present, Henry Louis Gates, J r. says: Hughes, well before his
compeers, Sterling Brown, and Zora Neal Hurston, demonstrated how to use black vernacular
langauage and music especially the blues and jazz as a poetic diction, a formal language
of poetry, and at a moment when other black writers thought the task fruitless at best,
detrimental at worst. Indeed, so much of the best of the African-American literary tradition
Brown, Hurston, Ellison, Morrison grows out of the vernacular into the very stuff of
literature (Critics x, xi). By this statement, Gates recognizes Hughes as a pioneer in the field
of poetry. However, Gates is here talking about only one of Hughess tools. I find his
variation in style, within the genres, most intriguing. This goes for both his poems and his
articles in the Chicago Defender. The ability to adjust the mood of the text to its theme is, in
my opinion, a characteristic with Hughes.
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So much for his poetic talents. Another part of the puzzle is his, what must be called
vocation, and his perseverance in pursuing it. As I have suggested earlier, the fact that he was
an outsider was perhaps the direct cause of both. He might have been attracted by the
exoticism of it all, enough to want to be part of it, without being able to fulfil the requirements
for membership. In the same way his texts may be seen to be just a little removed from the
real thing, with a sufficient touch of artificiality to add to their ability to excite their readers.
Arnold Rampersad also seems to suggest something along those lines, in his review of Fine
Clothes to the Jew. He says that his impressionistic recording of everyday life resulted from
his impotence, his acknowledged sense of inferiority to the black masses from whom he took
his voice (Critics xi). It is essential in this connection that Rampersad regarded Fine Clothes
to the Jew to be Hughess greatest achievement.
One of the most fascinating qualities of that part of Hughess production which I have
examined is the actuality of the texts. Whether a poem or an article in theChicago Defender,
they always seem to coincide with some major event in his life or in the flow of history. His
attacks on segregation policy and its effect on black Americans lives never seem to have
ceased. This part of his work is an illustration of his alert awareness of current events in the
march towards equality. To appreciate the stamina it took to keep on fighting, one has to
recognize the setbacks and the slowness of the process.
The years between 1936 and 1959 are regarded as the time of the birth of the Civil
Rights Movement. On a time line found on the Internet, J esse Owenss four gold medals in
the 1936 Olympic Games in Berlin, is marked as the first step in the movement. Further on, I
notice with interest the importance of the artists in the progress. The painters, the musicians,
and the writers represent most of the events during the 1930s. The next major achievement is
obtained in connection with WWII, when the all-black 99
th
Pursuit Squadron of the U.S.
Army Air Corps was formed in 1941. Gradually, but slowly, doors which had formerly been
90

closed began to crack open during the 1940s. However, the first evidently major step forward
was taken as late as in 1957, when the Reverend Martin Luther King J r. established the
Southern Christian Leadership Conference. This was the same year as President Dwight D.
Eisenhower ordered federal troops into Little Rock, Arkansas, after unsuccessfully trying to
persuade Governor Orval Faubus to give up efforts to block desegregation at Central High
School.The world, on a whole, may so far have been indifferent to the historical development
which was taking place in the United States, but it was shaken awake by the massive march
on Wahsington D.C. in 1963. Martin Luther King J r.s I have a Dream speech is still on the
syllabus of Norwegian highschool students.
In 1964, the bodies of three murdered civil rights workers, two white and one black,
were found in Philadelphia, Mississippi. Aftenposten of 9 J anuary 2005 brings the baffling
news that now, forty years later, 79 year old preacher and saw-mill owner, Ray Killen, has
been charged with the killings. He is accused of having recruited and organized the gang from
the Ku Klux Klan that committed the murders. In my opinion this is a representative
illustration of the stubborn resistance which has met the Civil Rights Movement. Two more
major events followed in 1964. President Lyndon B. J ohnson signed the Civil Rights Act into
law, and Martin Luther King J r. was awarded the Nobel Peace Prize. The last major step
forward that Langston Hughes was there to watch, was when Thurgood Marshall became the
first African-American U.S. Supreme Court justice in 1967.
6
Here stops the track of Langston Hughes. Thus far, all along, he was in the arena with his
comments, raging, praising, lamenting, attacking. He was always alert to the latest step in the
development, whether it went forwards or backwards. As we must acknowledge the immense
impact of the artists in the struggle for equality, it is inevitable to picture him as an
outstanding and more than average influential representative from that realm.

6
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91


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Heinle, 1999.

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Hill,1983.

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1979.

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David Roessel. New York: Alfred A. Knopf, 1996.

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Hughes, Langston and Milton Meltzer. Black Magic: A Pictorial History of African
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University Press, 1976.

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William Morrow, 1971.

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Appiah. New York: Amistad Press,1993.

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University Press of Kentucky, 1989.

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The Black Americans: Interpretive Readings. Ed. Seth M. Scheiner and Tilden G. Edelstein.
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Louis Armstrongwww.carlpetter.comtextsarmstrong.htm

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Abbreviations.


BLC Black Literature Criticism.
CLC Contemporary Literary Criticism
CP The Collected Poems of Langston Hughes.
Critics L. Hughes: Critical Perspectives Past and Present..
Reader Hughes, L. The Langston Hughes Reader.













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