Download I, Too, Sing America

Claude McKay was born in Jamaica, West Indies, in
1889. He was educated by his older brother, who
possessed a library of English novels, poetry, and
scientific texts.
At the age of twenty, McKay published a book of
verse called Songs of Jamaica, recording his
impressions of black life in Jamaica in dialect. In
1912, he travelled to the United States to attend
Tuskegee Institute. He remained there only a few
months, leaving to study agriculture at Kansas
State University.
He published two sonnets, "The Harlem Dancer"
and "Invocation," in 1917, and would later use the
same poetic form to record his reactionary views on
the injustices of black life in America. In addition to
social and political concerns, McKay wrote on a
variety of subjects, from his Jamaican homeland to
romantic love, with a use of passionate language.
During the twenties, McKay developed an interest
in Communism and travelled to Russia and then to
France where he met Edna St. Vincent Millay and
Sinclair Lewis. In 1934, McKay moved back to the
United States and lived in Harlem, New York.
Losing faith in Communism, he turned his attention
to the teachings of various spiritual and political
leaders in Harlem, eventually converting to
Catholicism. McKay's viewpoints and poetic
achievements in the earlier part of the twentieth
century set the tone for the Harlem Renaissance
and gained the deep respect of younger black poets
of the time, including Langston Hughes. He died in
1948.
Claude
McKay
America
Although she feeds me bread of bitterness,
And sinks into my throat her tiger's tooth,
Stealing my breath of life, I will confess
I love this cultured hell that tests my youth!
Her vigor flows like tides into my blood,
Giving me strength erect against her hate.
Her bigness sweeps my being like a flood.
Yet as a rebel fronts a king in state,
I stand within her walls with not a shred
Of terror, malice, not a word of jeer.
Darkly I gaze into the days ahead,
And see her might and granite wonders there,
Beneath the touch of Time's unerring hand,
Like priceless treasures sinking in the sand.
If We Must Die
If we must die, let it not be like hogs
Hunted and penned in an inglorious spot,
While round us bark the mad and hungry dogs,
Making their mock at our accursed lot.
If we must die, O let us nobly die,
So that our precious blood may not be shed
In vain; then even the monsters we defy
Shall be constrained to honor us though dead!
O kinsmen! we must meet the common foe!
Though far outnumbered let us show us brave,
And for their thousand blows deal one deathblow!
What though before us lies the open grave?
Like men we'll face the murderous, cowardly pack,
Pressed to the wall, dying, but fighting back!
Countee
Cullen
(1903-1946)
For a Poet
I have wrapped my dreams in a silken cloth,
And laid them away in a box of gold;
Where long will cling the lips of the moth,
I have wrapped my dreams in a silken cloth;
I hide no hate; I am not even wroth
Who found earth's breath so keen and cold;
I have wrapped my dreams in a silken cloth,
And laid them away in a box of gold.
Countee
Cullen
(1903-1946)
For a Poet
I have wrapped my dreams in a silken cloth,
And laid them away in a box of gold;
Where long will cling the lips of the moth,
I have wrapped my dreams in a silken cloth;
I hide no hate; I am not even wroth
Who found earth's breath so keen and cold;
I have wrapped my dreams in a silken cloth,
And laid them away in a box of gold.
Langston
Hughes
James Langston Hughes was born February 1, 1902, in Joplin, Missouri. His parents divorced
when he was a small child, and his father moved to Mexico. He was raised by his grandmother
until he was thirteen, when he moved to Lincoln, Illinois, to live with his mother and her
husband, eventually settling in Cleveland, Ohio.
In November 1924, he moved to Washington, D.C. Hughes first book of poetry, The Weary
Blues, was published by Alfred A. Knopf in 1926. He finished his college education at Lincoln
University in Pennsylvania three years later.
Hughes, who claimed Paul Lawrence Dunbar, Carl Sandburg, and Walt Whitman as his
primary influences, is particularly known for his insightful, colorful portrayals of black life in
America from the twenties through the sixties.
He wrote novels, short stories and plays, as well as poetry, and is also known for his
engagement with the world of jazz and the influence it had on his writing, as in Montage of a
Dream Deferred. Hughes refused to differentiate between his personal experience and the
common experience of black America. He wanted to tell the stories of his people in ways that
reflected their actual culture, including both their suffering and their love of music, laughter, and
language itself.
Langston Hughes died of complications from prostate cancer in May 22, 1967, in New York.
Dream Deferred
What happens to a dream deferred?
Does it dry up
Like a raisin in the sun?
Or fester like a sore-And then run?
Does it stink like rotten meat?
Or crust and sugar over-like a syrupy sweet?
Maybe it just sags
like a heavy load.
Or does it explode?
Children's
Rhymes
By what sends
the white kids
I ain't sent:
I know I can't
be President. What don't bug
them white kids
sure bugs me:
We know everybody
ain't free.
Lies written down
for white folks
ain't for us a-tall:
Liberty And Justice-Huh!--For All?
I, Too, Sing America
I, too, sing America.
I am the darker brother.
They send me to eat in the kitchen When company
comes, But I laugh, And eat well, And grow
strong.
Tomorrow, I'll be at the table When company
comes.
Nobody'll dare Say to me, "Eat in the kitchen,"
Then. Besides, They'll see how beautiful I am
And be ashamed-- I, too, am America.
The Negro
Speaks of Rivers
I've known rivers:
I've known rivers ancient as the world and older than the
flow of human blood in human veins.
My soul has grown deep like the rivers.
I bathed in the Euphrates when dawns were young.
I built my hut near the Congo and it lulled me to sleep.
I looked upon the Nile and raised the pyramids above it.
I heard the singing of the Mississippi when Abe Lincoln
went down to New Orleans, and I've seen its muddy
bosom turn all golden in the sunset.
I've known rivers:
Ancient, dusky rivers.
My soul has grown deep like the rivers.
Langston
Hughes
James Langston Hughes was born February 1, 1902, in Joplin, Missouri. His parents divorced
when he was a small child, and his father moved to Mexico. He was raised by his grandmother
until he was thirteen, when he moved to Lincoln, Illinois, to live with his mother and her
husband, eventually settling in Cleveland, Ohio.
In November 1924, he moved to Washington, D.C. Hughes first book of poetry, The Weary
Blues, was published by Alfred A. Knopf in 1926. He finished his college education at Lincoln
University in Pennsylvania three years later.
Hughes, who claimed Paul Lawrence Dunbar, Carl Sandburg, and Walt Whitman as his
primary influences, is particularly known for his insightful, colorful portrayals of black life in
America from the twenties through the sixties.
He wrote novels, short stories and plays, as well as poetry, and is also known for his
engagement with the world of jazz and the influence it had on his writing, as in Montage of a
Dream Deferred. Hughes refused to differentiate between his personal experience and the
common experience of black America. He wanted to tell the stories of his people in ways that
reflected their actual culture, including both their suffering and their love of music, laughter, and
language itself.
Langston Hughes died of complications from prostate cancer in May 22, 1967, in New York.
Jean
Toomer
Jean Toomer was born in 1894 in Washington, D.C, the son of a Georgian farmer. Though he passed for white during
certain periods of his life, he was raised in a predominantly black community and attended black high schools. In
1914, he began college at the University of Wisconsin but transferred to the College of the City of New York and
studied there until 1917. In 1921, Toomer took a teaching job in Georgia and remained there four months; the trip
represented his journey back to his Southern roots. His experience inspired his book Cane, a book of prose poetry
describing the Georgian people and landscape. In the early twenties, Toomer became interested in Unitism, a religion
founded by the Armenian George Ivanovich Gurdjieff. The doctrine taught unity, transcendence and mastery of self
through yoga: all of which appealed to Toomer, a light-skinned black man preoccupied with establishing an identity in
a society of rigid race distinctions. He began to preach the teachings of Gurdjieff in Harlem and later moved
downtown into the white community. From there, he moved to Chicago to create a new branch of followers. Toomer
was married twice to wives who were white, and was criticized by the black community for leaving Harlem and
rejecting his roots for a life in the white world; however, he saw himself as an individual living above the boundaries of
race. His meditations center around his longing for racial unity, as illustrated by his long poem "Blue Meridian." He
died in 1967.
The Teacher
By Leslie Pinckney Hill
Lord, who am I to teach the way
To little children day by day,
So prone myself to go astray?
I teach them KNOWLEDGE, but I know
How faint they flicker and how low
The candles of my knowledge glow.
I teach them POWER to will and do,
But only now to learn anew
My own great weakness through and through.
I teach them LOVE for all mankind
And all God's creatures, but I find
My love comes lagging far behind.
Lord, if their guide I still must be,
Oh let the little children see
The teacher leaning hard on Thee.
Hatred
By Gwendolyn Bennett
I shall hate you
Like a dart of singing steel
Shot through still air
At even-tide,
Or solemnly
As pines are sober
When they stand etched
Against the sky.
Hating you shall be a game
Played with cool hands
And slim fingers.
Your heart will yearn
For the lonely splendor
Of the pine tree
While rekindled fires
In my eyes
Shall wound you like swift arrows.
Memory will lay its hands
Upon your breast
And you will understand
My hatred.
A Prayer
By Joseph S. Cotter, Jr.
As I lie in bed,
Flat on my back;
There passes across my ceiling
An endless panorama of things –
Quick steps of gay-voiced children,
Adolescence in its wondering silences,
Maid and man on moonlit summer's eve,
Women in the holy glow of Motherhood,
Old men gazing silently thru the twilight
Into the beyond.
O God, give me words to make my dream-children live.