The persona of “Negro” a nineteen line poem in free verse by Langston Hughes, known as the poet laureate of Harlem, encompasses a knowledge of elements of black culture, “Hughes was the most prolific, experimental and versatile writer of the Harlem Renaissance. In many of his works, especially his poems, he integrated the rhythm and mood of jazz and blues and used colloquial language to reflect black American culture” (Murphy 490). In this poem, written by the writer when he was a young man, we see him coming to terms with his own identity, in terms of the celebration of black culture and identity as well as a recognition of the abuses and suffering of blacks at the hand of whites.
Hughes was greatly influenced by the writing of Walt Whitman. Like Whitman Hughes was not only embracing America but America embraced him. For despite the poem’s recognition of the abuses of the black man at the hand of racist whites, “All the way from Africa to Georgia/I carried my sorrow songs”, it also affirms the beauty, endurance and power of the black culture, “Black as the night is black,/Black like the depths of my Africa” (Hughes 55). In the latter line, Hughes is affirming that no matter what oppression and abuse were suffered by blacks, they are still firmly connected to nature, in fact, they are nature—black as black and like my Africa. In other words, regardless of the abuses visited upon them, no one can disabuse blacks from their nature or from nature.
The poem is tightly and efficiently structured. Stanza one and six are a repetition of one another. All of the stanzas begin with the speaker using “I” or “I’ve” which is also demonstrative of Whitman’s influence on Hughes. In the first and final stanza we get a declarative statement that is meant by the speaker to be an affirmation of identity, endurance and connection to nature: “I am a Negro:/Black as the nigh
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