Despite an increase in tolerance toward African Americans and increased opportunities since the end of slavery, Joseph F. Healey maintains in Race, Ethnicity, Gender and Class that ôthe huge majority of African Americans have very limited access to quality education; few political rights; few occupational choices; and few vehicles for expressing their views, grievances, and concernsö (255). The historical and systematic prejudice and discrimination African Americans have been subjected to in American society actually helped foster creative outlets for expression in many Blacks. The oppression and subjugation of African Americans actually served as the midwife of Black political and literary expression and talent. Denied mainstream access to expression and progress, many Blacks like Langston Hughes resorted to literary creation as an alternative means of being heard and retaining a distinctly African American voice.
In Black Voices Abraham Chapman wrote as recently as recently as the late 1960s about the banning of HughesÆ poetry in Boston public schools, ôHow come the poem of a leading Negro American poet is not authorized for teaching in the cityÆs schools, and not only in the ghetto schools?ö (25). Though the majority of HughesÆ poetry was written in the first half of the twentieth century, the issues, concerns, hopes and aspirations depicted in them continue to be relevant to the lives of contemporary African Americans û particularly those still living in overcrowded and poverty-ridden urban areas. Hughes poems often rebel against the conditions many African Americans are subjected to in American society. In Ballad of the Landlord, Hughes depicts the slum-like conditions in which many Blacks exist because of being denied access to the means of upward mobility, ôLandlord, landlord, / My roof has sprung a leak. / DonÆt you remember I told you about it / Way last week? / Landlord, landlord, / These steps is brok...