Tomorrow I Am Langston Hughes Essay

An artist must be free to choose what he does, certainly, but he must also never be afraid to do what he might choose” is a quote by Langston Hughes. Living in a nation where every citizen were told that they have equal rights as per the Declaration of Independence states that ‘We hold these truths to be self-evident that all men are created equal’ but only Hughes saw the harsh reality behind it. The life of every African-American in the United States during the early 1900’s was difficult because the blacks were oppressed and colonized by the white. James Mercer Langston Hughes was an American poet and an author whose African-American themes made him as one of a crucial contributor to the Harlem Renaissance during the 1920s. Hughes’s wrote

Hughes foresees a tomorrow in America where the black men will be treated with equality. ‘Nobody will dare’ to deprive the poet from his rights because the African-American community will be equal with the whites. ‘They’ll see how beautiful I am’. Here, the poet means that the beauty of a black man is not only on his appearance but the quality of his character. To Hughes the only difference between a black and a white man is his skin color and he says that the whites will be ‘ashamed of their behavior’. This is because, the whites are known to be the most civilized people but their behavior to the blacks is an example of an uncivilized behavior. Due to that, they will be ashamed of their behavior because as time progresses the mask that the whites have put on as civilized men will be torn off. The poet feels that if the black men are given the same opportunity and freedom as the white men they can rise above their circumstance just like the white men has. To reinforce his idea, Hughes, ends the poem with a thrust of the entire poem in the line ‘I too am