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NAME _______________________________________ DATE _______________ CLASS _________
Analyzing Primary Sources
Activity
netw rks
The Jazz Age, 1921–1929
The Poetry of Langston Hughes
Background
Copyright © The McGraw-Hill Companies, Inc. Permission is granted to reproduce for classroom use.
Langston Hughes, who was born in Joplin, Missouri, in 1902, became one
of the most gifted and prolific African American writers of the twentieth
century. Like other Harlem Renaissance writers of the 1920s, he wrote
about racism in the United States, adding his unique voice to the struggle
for equality. Hughes’s poems often included personal accounts of the
racism he confronted. At just 18, he wrote “The Negro Speaks of Rivers”
on the back of an envelope on a train ride from Illinois to Missouri. Hughes
combined strong imagery and rhythm in the tradition of the spiritual to
conjure up the despair of the African American in the 1920s and the hope
for a better tomorrow. “The Negro Speaks of Rivers” was the first of many
of Hughes’s poems published in The Crisis, the magazine of the National
Association for the Advancement of Colored People (NAACP). In 1925
Hughes wrote “I, Too, Sing America” just before his return to the United
States from Europe and after he had been denied passage on a ship
because of his race. The poem was written in response to “I Hear America
Singing,” a poem in which Walt Whitman celebrated the diversity of
America.
Directions: Read the two poems by Langston Hughes. Then answer the
questions that follow.
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
I
I
I
bathed in the Euphrates when dawns were young.
built my hut near the Congo and it lulled me to sleep.
looked upon the Nile and raised the pyramids above it.
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.
United States History and Geography: Modern Times
NAME _______________________________________ DATE _______________ CLASS _________
Analyzing Primary Sources
Activity Cont.
netw rks
The Jazz Age, 1921–1929
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.
I, too, am America.
Critical Thinking
1.
In “The Negro Speaks of Rivers,” how does Hughes use images of
rivers, dark and light, to communicate the experience of his race?
2.
What future does Hughes envision in “I, Too, Sing America”?
3.
Both poems focus on “I” statements. What does the “I” represent?
4.
What theme do these two poems share?
5.
Does the language of Hughes’s poems speak equally to both African
Americans and whites? Why or why not?
United States History and Geography: Modern Times
Copyright © The McGraw-Hill Companies, Inc. Permission is granted to reproduce for classroom use.
Besides,
They’ll see how
Beautiful I am
And be ashamed—