Documentary Commentary – ‘Let America Be’ by Langston Hughes.

Langston Hughes used his poetry, novels, plays, and essays to champion his people and voice his concerns about race and social justice.  Hughes wrote, he contended, ‘to explain and illuminate the Negro condition in America[1]’. Hughes was one of the early black activists.  He held high ideals of opportunity and freedom. The poem ‘Let America Be America Again’, which was published in the International Worker Order pamphlet A New Song in 1938, pleads for fulfilment of this Dream that never was.  Hughes calls for America to return to its ideals, which he claims it has never yet lived up to, although he does see this as an attainable goal. He appeals in his poem to reclaim America for the dream it once was, asserting ‘we must take back our land again’. Hughes sees American national identity as the ‘basic dream’ of opportunity and equality,

'Where Liberty 
            Is crowned with no false patriotic wreath,
            But opportunity is real, and life is free’.

America is supposed be a land of immigrants, a nation of nations, yet Hughes sees a land that has descended into greed and racism, like the Old World countries the immigrants had left behind. Hughes saw little equality in America, the land ‘where never kings connive nor tyrants scheme that any man be crushed by one above’ and where ‘equality is in the air we breathe’. He says  because of ‘the leeches’ he has never had equality: ‘there's never been equality for me, nor freedom in this ‘homeland of the free’. Zinn said that blacks had always suffered from  the inferior status and derogatory thought of racism ‘since the first blacks arrived in Virginia in the early 17^th century’[2].

Hughes’ early life was dominated by racism. His father moved to Mexico because he was so disgusted with racism. Other poems by Hughes also express a passionate belief in human equality, a wish for colour-blind brotherhood, and a growing disillusionment with the American dream. ‘Let America Be America Again’ speaks of the freedom and equality of which America boasts, but never had. Hughes says ‘who said the free?  Not me? Surely not me?’. He wants America to truly be the land of the free. Hughes offers a vision of the just society he has never seen and looks forward to a day when America is ‘that great strong land of love’.

It has often been said that the hostility of one tribe for another is the most instinctive human reaction. Yet, human history has been in great part the history of the mixing of peoples, for example, the influx of Africans, Greeks, Turks, Armenians and Persians to Abbasidian Baghdad in 750BC or the Norse invasions of Western Europe.  Mass migrations have often produced mass antagonisms; for example, Algerians in Southern France have led to right wing parties gaining political power. In the year 2000 factors such as the end of the Cold War, the development of faster modes of communication and transport, the acceleration in population growth, the break down of traditional social structures, the flight from tyranny and the dream of a better life somewhere else have converged to drive people across national frontiers. It is predicted that the mixing of peoples is to lead to major problems in the 21st century. Schlesinger predicted ‘ethnic and racial conflict will now replace the conflict of ideologies as the explosive issue of our times[3]’.

Hughes speaks for the disenchanted ‘millions who have nothing for our pay - except the dream that's almost dead today’. American national identity to Hughes meant the equality of the constitution and hard work:  a new world that people had dreamt of as they left Europe behind. He thought that everyone had an equal claim to it, that everyone should be equally treated and valued in American society, although he stresses that this is not the case, that ‘America never was America to me’, meaning it has never lived up to his dreams. Hughes spoke for the masses in 1930s America who felt disenfranchised. ‘Let America Be’ mourns the loss of national identity. He does not adhere to the traditional master narrative that says America was only founded by Americans of European ancestry, and is firmly rooted in Western civilization. He realises many Americans came from outside Europe, for example Africa and Latin America, and of course others were already in North America. Hughes aims for this diversity to be recognised through multiculturalism. Many people such as Takai contend that the intellectual purpose of multiculturalism is a more accurate understanding of the American national identity.

When people of different languages and religions settle in the same geographical locality and live under the same political sovereignty, in order to stop tribal hostilities driving them apart, they need a common purpose to bind them together. Throughout the world ethnicity is the cause of the fragmenting of nations, for example USSR, Yugoslavia, India, S.Africa are all in crisis. Ethnic tensions disturb and divide Sri Lanka, Burma, Ethiopia, Iraq, Lebanon, Israel, Sudan and Nigeria. Even stable nations such as Great Britain and France face growing ethnic and racial troubles. Canada is 'tearing itself apart...the world's poor are beating at the door to get in[4]'. Schlesinger asks ‘if one of the five most developed nations on earth cannot make a federal, multi-ethnic state work, who else can?[5]'

The answer to this increasingly fundamental question has been, until recently the United States. Other nations have disintegrated because they failed to give their ethnically diverse peoples compelling reasons to view themselves as part of the nation. The USA has worked, thus far, because it has offered such reasons. I think that the fact that America was a multi-ethnic country from the start has held Americans together over two centuries. Crevecoeur, an emigrant to America from France in 1759, asked the question: what then is the American, this new man? He answered it saying:

'He is an American, who leaving behind him all his ancient prejudices and manners, receives new ones from the new modes of life he has embraced, the new government he obeys, and the new rank he holds. The American is a new man, who acts upon new principles...here individuals of all nations are melted into a new race of men[6]'.

It appeared that the United States had a brilliant solution for the inherent fragility of a multiethnic society, the ‘creation of a brand new national identity’[7], carried forward by individuals who, in forsaking old loyalties and joining to make new lives, melted away ethnic differences. George Washington sternly believed in the doctrine of the new place. He said ‘the bosom of America is open to the oppressed and persecuted of all nations and religions’. Myrdal, said in 1944, that it was the American creed that linked together all Americans. The ideals of America are the essential dignity and equality of all human beings, of inalienable rights to freedom, justice and opportunity. This is what Hughes wants America to live up to. He calls for America to ‘be the dream it used to be…the dream that dreamers dreamed…the pioneer on the plain’. He wants to recapture this ‘melting pot’ spirit and aims to ‘make America again!’.

The Europeans who had torn up their old roots to brave the Atlantic were desperate to forget the past and to embrace a hopeful future. They expected to become Americans. Their goals were escape, deliverance, and significantly, assimilation. Hughes wrote:

I'm the man who sailed those early seas
In search of what I meant to be my home--
For I'm the one who left dark Ireland's shore,
And Poland's plain, and England's grassy lea,

The new Americans saw their new land as a transforming nation where they would banish dismal memories and developing a unique national character based on common political ideals and shared experiences. The point of America was to forge a new American culture. Hughes certainly believes that American National Identity is different to all other nations. In his poem ‘Freedom's Plow’ Hughes points out that ‘America is a dream’ and the product of the seed of freedom is not only for all Americans but also for the entire world[8]. In ‘Let America Be’, Hughes said ‘torn from Black Africa's strand I came to build a ‘homeland of the free’.

America has had plenty of history, giving them a powerful sense of national creed. It is this shared experience of History that gives them a national identity. Many people think this vigorous sense of national identity has forged one American people, thereby making a multiethnic society work. Hughes’ poem helps us to understand this American national identity. However, many, like Hughes, never experienced an America that fulfilled Crevecoeur's ideal. In the 19^th and 20^th Centuries new waves of immigration brought in people who fitted awkwardly into a society that had inescapable English language, ideals, and institutions. Whilst the infusion of non-Anglo stocks and the experience of the New World steadily made the USA a very different country from Britain, Anglo Americans still dominate American culture and politics. Black people are much more likely to become criminals. In the year 2000 black family income remains at less than three-fifths the median family income of whites[9]. Black people are twice as likely to be unemployed as whites, the last to be hired, the first to be fired[10]. Fawcett said that black Americans ‘are at the very bottom of the economic heap’[11] and that American schools are still sharply divided by race. It is clear the pot did not melt everybody evenly. Hughes thought that none should have a stronger claim to American national identity than anyone else.

Hughes spoke for the non-white peoples - those long in America whom the European newcomers overran and massacred, or those hauled in against their will from Africa and Asia. They were lifelong victims of the deeply bred racism that put them all - red, black and yellow Americans well outside the pale. Zinn claimed that to the white Americans of the 1930s, ‘non-whites were invisible[12]’. Hughes does not limit his plea to the downtrodden Negro; he also includes the poor white, the Indian, the immigrant--farmer, worker, ‘we the people[13]’ that share the right to the American dream of opportunity and freedom. Hughes refers to the ‘poor white, fooled and pushed apart’, the ‘Negro bearing slavery's scars’ and the ‘red man driven from the land’. Hughes writes the American National Identity has come from:

        The millions who have nothing for our pay?
                    For all the dreams we've dreamed
                    And all the songs we've sung
                    And all the hopes we've held
                    And all the flags we've hung

Hughes sees the curse of racism and the ‘chain of profit, power, gain, of grab the land!’ as the great failures of the American experiment that have thwarted the aspirations of a new equality in the new land. Hughes makes the glaring contradictions of American ideals visible to the reader. Schlesinger called racism the ‘still crippling disease of American life[14]’. Hughes’ work is similar in many ways to that of the South Africa author Es’kia Mphahlele. Both write about the degradations imposed on them by their nation. Another example of the way blacks were excluded can be seen in the 1930s Muzzey text,  that educated American students, which begins: ‘leaving aside the Negro and Indian population’[15].

 Hughes wrote the poem during the Great Depression. Unemployment and poverty among blacks had been high even before the Wall Street Crash[16]. He refers to ‘the millions on relief today’ and ‘the millions shot down when we strike’. Evidence to back up Hughes’ claims is that  the strikes throughout the 20s and 30s people ‘were beaten down by force’[17]. The 1924 Immigration Act restricted immigrant numbers. The fact that no African country could send more than 100 people a year sent out a clear anti-black message. Harlem, where Hughes lived, was an environment that bred crime, what Ottley called the ‘bitter blossom of poverty[18]’. Evidence that many there felt as strongly as Hughes was that on March 1935 Harlem exploded in riots with 10,000 blacks destroying white property. The National Negro Congress was also formed at the time of Hughes’ poem. Just before the time of Hughes’ poems the Ku Klux Klan had been dramatically revived, with 4.5 million members in 1924. Zinn saw ‘mob violence and race hatred everywhere[19]’ in the environment in which Hughes lived. It has been said that it is through the voice of Langston Hughes that ‘we can all hear just how difficult it has been to grow up in Black America’[20].

Hughes agreed with Du Bois's The Souls of Black Folk (1903) that blacks should maintain their cultural heritage. At the same time Hughes also saw a ‘double consciousness’ his identity. Du Bois wrote:

 ‘One ever feels his two-ness—an American, a Negro; two souls, two thoughts, two unreconciled strivings; two warring ideals in one dark body, whose dogged strength alone keeps it from being torn asunder[21]’.

This concept illuminates the black view of American national identity. Do they in fact see themselves as black first and American second? Hughes’ poems concerned other black cultural issues such as how blacks had suffered in Africa as well as America. Yet it is of fundamental importance that the non-white Americans, although miserably treated, still contributed to the formation of the national identity. 29,986,060 blacks were counted by the 1900 census[22]. They were members, albeit 3^rd class, of American society and helped give the common culture new form and flavour. Hughes identifies and praises their contribution to the American national identity, calling America:

‘The land that's mine--the poor man's, Indian's, Negro's, ME--
Who made America,
Whose sweat and blood, whose faith and pain,
Whose hand at the foundry, whose plow in the rain’

Whilst historically and culturally, America has had an Anglo-Saxon base, from the start the base has been modified, enriched, and reconstituted by transfusions from other continents and cultures. Diane Ravitch says ‘the USA has a common culture that is multicultural[23]’.

Throughout Hughes's life, and his poems, the American Dream has appeared as a ragged, uneven, skewed, and often unattainable goal, which became a nightmare, but he always maintained the ‘American Dream’. In the poem he swears that the dream will be fulfilled. In 1943 Hughes called America a land of transition. Hughes would have agreed with Schlesinger that ‘the American national identity will never be fixed and final[24]’ and is constantly redefined. Hughes said that further change toward a finer and better democracy than any citizen has known was attainable. He said ‘the American Negro believes in democracy…we want to make it real, complete, workable, not only for ourselves--the fifteen million dark ones--but for all Americans all over the land[25]’.

 Many, like Schlesinger, disagree with Hughes’ statement that America can be redeemed by the people, that the ‘mighty dream’, can be brought back again. He speaks of ‘a new and opposing vision in the 20th century[26]’ to the melting pot, to the traditional national identity. Now the United States has an even stranger mixture of blood than Crevecoeur knew, Schlesinger thinks many Americans are ignoring the historic goal of a 'new race of man'. Schlesinger says the ancient prejudices and manners of the old world Crevecoeur disavowed have ‘made a surprising comeback[27]’. He attacks what he sees as the cult of ethnicity, among both non-Anglo whites and among non-white minorities. Many have denounced the idea of a melting pot, of one people, preferring to promote, protect and perpetuate separate ethnic and racial communities. He thinks the ethic gospel rejects Hughes’ unifying vision of individuals from all nations melted into a new race. He says its ‘underlying philosophy is that America is not a nation of individuals at all, but a nation of groups[28]’ and that ethnicity is the defining experience for most Americans, that ethnic ties are permanent and indelible. Schlesinger equates multiculturalism with Afro centrism. He says ‘Integration is (being) replaced by separatism[29]’. He poses questions such as ‘in the next century, will the centre hold or will the melting pot ‘give way to the tower of Babel?[30]’ Takai attacks Schlesinger’s claims, arguing ‘Afro centrism is monocultural, not multicultural[31]’. Takai claims ‘what Schlesinger has done is to reduce multiculturalism to the shrillness of ethnic separatism in Afro centrism[32]’. I think that, whilst Schlesinger is right to have concerns about the American race dilemma, for most Americans 'one people', or as Hughes put it ‘the land where every man is free’ still the definition of the USA. In the 21^st Century the burden to unify the country will not fall exclusively on minorities. Those who want to join America should be received and welcomed by those who think they already own America. Hughes speaks of the many, like himself who were not welcomed or included. He writes of the  

Immigrant clutching the hope I seek-- 
And finding only the same old stupid plan 
Of dog eat dog, of mighty crush the weak

Hughes keeps saying the American Dream is bruised and often made a travesty for Negroes, but despite the bitterness and rage, his American Dream still persists. He says the Dream must be fulfilled, because ‘the steel of freedom does not stain’. Hughes might have been speaking to the white youths who beat him up in Chicago when he once wrote: 

Listen, America--
I live here, too.
I want freedom
Just as you[33].

Hughes always insisted that the American dream of brotherhood, freedom, and democracy must come to all peoples and all races of the world. It has often been said that Hughes enhances our love of humanity.  He makes the point that unlike other countries nobody owns America:

You are white-
yet a part of me, as I am a part of you
That's American[34]

There is not a country where racism has been more important, for such a long time as the United States. There have been race riots in the 1980s and 1990s. The problem of the ‘colour line’ as W.E. Du Bois put it, still persists. Will it ever be possible for blacks and whites to live together without hatred? Yet, as Presley said ‘the Dream still beckons[35]’. In a world savagely rent by ethnic and racial antagonisms, it is all the more essential that the United States continues as an example of how a highly differentiated society holds itself together. Researchers have projected that by around 2050 all Americans will be minorities[36]. In the coming multicultural millennium, people will be reminded of their diversity every day.  William Cooper Nell wrote in 1860 that

‘the coloured people of the United States have no destiny separate from that of the nation of which they form an integral part…If (they) cannot live upon the same soil in terms of equality…then the fundamental theory of the American Republic fails, and falls to the ground.’[37]

In the Los Angeles riots of April 29, 1992 when America saw the frightening violence on the streets Rodney King said, ‘Please, people, we're stuck here for a while. We can get along, we can work it out[38]’. The question Hughes posed in ‘Let America Be’, that America and the rest of the world will have to answer is, How will we work it out?

Bibliography

• M.F. Berry, Long Memory: Black Experience in America. Oxford University Press, 1982.

• E.R.Bethel, The Roots of African-American Identiyt, USA, 1997,

• E.Fawcett & T.Thomas, America, Americans, Collins, London, 1983.

• N. Lemann, Promised Land: Great Black Migration and How it Changed America, 1995.

• H.O. Lindsey, History of Black America. Magna Books, 1995.

• A.M. Schlesinger, The Disuniting of America, London, 1992.

• H. Zinn, A People's History of the United States, New York, 1980

• http://www.bookwire.com/bbr/poetry/collected-langston-hughes.htmlAccessed 4/3/00

• http://www.poets.org/lit/poet/lhughfst.htm Accessed 4/3/00

• http://www.english.uiuc.edu/maps/poets/g_l/hughes/life.htm Accessed 4/3/00

• http://www.cis.yale.edu/ynhti/curriculum/units/1991/3/91.03.01.x.html Accessed 26/3/00

• http://www.english.uiuc.edu/maps/poets/g_l/hughes/america.htm Accessed 26/3/00

• http://www.pbs.org/wnet/ihas/poet/hughes.html Accessed 26/3/00

• http://www.cwrl.utexas.edu/~nick/e309k/texts/hughes/hughes-bio.htmls Accessed 17/400

• http://www.ascd.org/pubs/el/apr99/exthalford.html Accessed 17/400

• Understanding Race, Class, and Culture: Ronald Takaki

• http://www.cis.yale.edu/ynhti/curriculum/units/1991/3/91.03.01.x.html Accessed 17/400

Encarta 2000 Articles on USA, Lanston Hughes, American Literature, Blacks in the Americas

(I have not footnote referenced quotes from the actual document