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Let America Be America Again By Langston Hughes

959 Words4 Pages

Background

Langston Hughes wrote “Let America Be America Again” in 1935 and published it in 1936. The poem discusses many topics, but the common theme is inequality. He mentions several groups of people that have been mistreated and discriminated against including Native Americans, African Americans, and poor people. The poem serves as a plea for better and equal opportunities for everyone.

Historical Context

Displacement of Native Americans

In the poem, Hughes states, “I am the red man driven from the land” referring to the Native Americans who were forced to leave their homes and relocate. The Indian Removal Act was passed in May 1830, and it gave the president the power to relocate “eastern Indians to lands west of the Mississippi …show more content…

Between 1916 and 1918, more than 400,000 African Americans moved from the south to the north (Doyle 25). More than one million African Americans in the south migrated away between 1910 and 1930 (Marks 148). The people who chose to migrate were motivated to do so by the worsening conditions in the south and the available opportunities in the north. Black migrants were “pushed out of the South because of the boll weevil, flooding, disenfranchisement and the rise of Jim Crow” (Marks 148). They were able to find industrial employment opportunities because the north was “newly deprived of immigrant labor from Europe by World War I” (Doyle 25). The Black press, including newspapers, was a contributing factor to the increase in migration because it allowed information to spread quickly (Marks 148). Travelling from the south to the north was expensive and would take several weeks' worth of pay. Some families would sell everything they could to raise money and send one family member north to work so the rest of the family could afford to travel (Marks …show more content…

Hallock. “When Unions ‘Mattered’: The Impact of Strikes on Financial Markets, 1925-1937.” ILR Review, vol. 55, no. 2, Jan. 2002, pp. 219-33. JSTOR, https://doi.org/10.2307/2696206.

Doyle, Rodger. “The Great Migration.” Scientific American, vol. 290, no. 2, Feb. 2004, p. 25. JSTOR, https://www.jstor.org/stable/26047584.

“Great Depression History.” History. A&E Television Networks, 24 May 2023. https://www.history.com/topics/great-depression/great-depression-history

Hughes, Langston. “Let America Be America Again.” The Collected Poems of Langston Hughes, Alfred A. Knopf, Inc., 1994, Poets.org, https://poets.org/poem/let-america-be-america-again. Accessed 24 June 2023.

“The Homeland of Migrating Groups.” Europeana. The European Union. https://www.europeana.eu/en/exhibitions/leaving-europe/the-homeland-of-migrating-groups. Accessed 25 June 2023.

Klein, Christopher. “Last Hired, First Fired: How the Great Depression Affected African Americans.” History, 31 Aug. 2018, https://www.history.com/news/last-hired-first-fired-how-the-great-depression-affected-african-americans

Marks, Carole. “Black Workers and the Great Migration North.” Phylon (1960-), vol. 46, no. 2, 1985, pp. 148-61. JSTOR,

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