Comparing Hughes, Lucille Clifton, And Colleen Mcelroy

Everyone has heritage, we all had to of come from somewhere. In the Harlem Renaissance, many African Americans reflected back on their past, ancestry, and heritage. African American thinkers started to write down what the felt about the current situation for blacks, what could happen, and what it was like in the past. By doing this, many people, black and white were moved to action. Three black poets and writers of the day though, used cultural heritage extremely well in their poems and each in a uniquely different way. Cultural Heritage is present in all three poets, Langston Hughes, Lucille Clifton, and Colleen McElroy, they speak of wishing what was for African Americans in that day, they were the ones with a incredible past and had great minds, and a remembrance of all that used to in their past.
In Langston

This poem plays the biggest role with cultural heritage. The whole poem is about a woman telling stories to her children about everything in the past, all the hardships, the awes, the happy, and the sad. McElroy mentions many different people in Africa and the different roles and activities they did in their regions. Parts of the state, “...In the land called Bilad as-Sudan, So I search for a heritage beyond St. Louis. My memory floats down a long narrow hall, A calabash of history. Grandpa stood high in Watusi shadows… And crowns never touch Bantu heads… The future of Dahomey is a house of 16 doors, The totem of the Burundi counts 17 warriors… To Ashanti mysteries and rituals.” McElroy pulls from various different locations in Africa, from northern Africa which was call Bilad as-Sudan, to Watusi and Ashanti people who were in eastern and western Africa. Without the heritage that they have, there would be no way to be able to tell these unique stories to future generations, in that way, cultural heritage makes up this whole