Five Langston Hughes Poems about African-American Poetry

One poem by Hughes (1717) is "The Negro Speaks of Rivers" in which the poet traces the evolution of the African-American people from the Euphrates to the Congo to Egypt and to the southern American states. Like the rivers of these regions, including the Congo, Nile, and Mississippi, Hughes (1717) writes "my soul has grown deep like the rivers." His, he says, are an ancient people like the rivers, "older than the flow of human blood in human veins" (1717).

The place of the "Negro" in American society is influenced by the Mississippi River and in "Refugee in America," Hughes (1721) writes "there are words like Liberty/That almost make me cry/if you had known what I knew/you would know why." In the United States, Hughes' (1724) thesis is that the ancient souls of the Negro people are permanent outsiders or refugees although they have not sought asylum but rather been forced to live as an oppressed people in the United States.

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Approximate Word count = 860
Approximate Pages = 3 (250 words per page)