Let America Be America Again, By Langston Hughes

Despite the discrimination in America, Hughes identified as an American. A poem in which he declares his American identity is “I, Too”. The voice of the poem is in the first person with the narrator being black using vernacular speech. The setting of the poem is in a home and the speaker is a part of the family living in the home. In the second line of the poem, the speaker states, “I am the darker brother”. This line establishes the brotherhood of the black and the white; American and that they are both part of the human race (Jemie). In the first stanza, Hughes describes the situation that he lives in, in which blacks experienced discrimination from the whites. The mood of the poem then becomes hopeful when Hughes says “Tomorrow/ I’ll be

Through many of the poems that Hughes wrote and published during this time, he expresses his resentment of the hypocritical ways of America. As he traveled to various places around the world, he became more socialistic from the influence of the proposed equality for everyone – especially during his time in Russia. In response to the American paradox, he published the poem “Let America Be America Again." In the poem, Hughes created a pattern of describing America and telling the reader “America never was America for me” (“Let America Be America Again”). By this pattern, Hughes implies that he cannot identify as an American because he did not experience the American freedoms. He creates a paradox between American freedoms and rights with the downtrodden black race. Towards the middle of the poem, the tone of Hughes’s voice changes as he motivates the taking back of America. He brings together all those that live in America saying that they make up America. In the last two stanzas, Hughes expresses his confidence that America will be America someday. “‘Let America Be America Again’ shows the loss of an ideal, yet invokes the reappearance of it” (Miller) Overall, Hughes looks forward to the appearance of true equality of everyone in

He also continues to express his anger towards the hypocrisy of racism within the theme of religion. A poem that shows Hughes’s anger towards racism within the them of his religious identity is “Christ in Alabama.” In this poem, Hughes demonstrates the hypocritical nature of white, racist Christians. By stating Christ was black, he creates a paradox between the racist Christians and their faith. How can a Christian who is saved by grace through the death of a black Christ be racist to the blacks? Hughes boldly exposes the hypocrisy of the white American Christians. In the poem “Christ is seen as the archetype of suffering blacks” (Culp). Hughes parallels the verbal and physical abuse of blacks in America to Christ’s verbal and physical abuse at his crucifixion. Furthermore, the allusion to Christ’s crucifixion in the poem references that the lynching of Christ is similar to the lynching of blacks around