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Langston Hughes 1902 - 1967

Democracy

Democracy will not come
Today, this year
Nor ever
Through compromise and fear.

I have as much right
As the other fellow has
To stand
On my two feet
And own the land.

I tire so of hearing people say,
Let things take their course.
Tomorrow is another day.
I do not need my freedom when I'm dead.
I cannot live on tomorrow's bread.

Freedom
Is a strong seed
Planted
In a great need.

I live here, too.
I want freedom
Just as you.

Daybreak in Alabama

When I get to be a composer
I'm gonna write me some music about
Daybreak in Alabama
And I'm gonna put the purtiest songs in it
Rising out of the ground like a swamp mist
And falling out of heaven like soft dew.
I'm gonna put some tall tall trees in it
And the scent of pine needles
And the smell of red clay after rain
And long red necks
And poppy colored faces
And big brown arms
And the field daisy eyes
Of black and white black white black people
And I'm gonna put white hands
And black hands and brown and yellow hands
And red clay earth hands in it
Touching everybody with kind fingers
And touching each other natural as dew
In that dawn of music when I
Get to be a composer
And write about daybreak
In Alabama.

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Langston Hughes 1902 - 1967

Born in Joplin, Missouri, James Langston Hughes
was the great-great-grandson of Charles Henry
Langston (brother of John Mercer Langston, the
first Black American to be elected to public office).
He attended Central High School in Cleveland,
Ohio, where he began writing poetry in the eighth
grade. His father would discourage him from
pursuing writing as a career, in favour of something
'more practical'. Langston's tuition fees to Columbia
University were paid on the grounds that he study
engineering.

After a while, he dropped out of the degree course,
but continued to write poetry. His first published
poem, The Negro Speaks of Rivers, was also one of
his most famous, appearing in Brownie's Book.
Later, his poems, short plays, essays and short
stories would appear in the NAACP publication,
Crisis Magazine, in Opportunity Magazine, and
others.

One of Hughes' most acclaimed essays appeared in
the Nation in 1926, entitled "The Negro Artist and
the Racial Mountain". It spoke of Black writers and
poets, "who would surrender racial pride in the
name of a false integration," where a talented Black
writer would prefer to be considered a poet, not a
Black poet, which to Hughes meant he
subconsciously wanted to write like a white poet.
Hughes argued, "no great poet has ever been
afraid of being himself."