ers, was predicting a race war, Marcus Garvey was calling for blacks to go "Back to Africa," and the Ku Klux Klan was lynching blacks with impunity (Rampersad 39). In Chicago, a race riot had lasted thirteen days, taking the lives of twenty-three blacks and fifteen whites (Meltzer 58). By the end of 1919, riots had burned and ravaged twenty-five cities.
In the academic year following the "Red Summer," Langston was a senior at Central High School (Meltzer 59). He was elected editor of the yearbook and class poet--an honor he had earned by his poems published in the school magazine. As graduation approached, he began to worry about what was coming after (Meltzer 60). Despite his hatred for his father, he once again headed for Mexico in the summer of 1920 because James Hughes had hinted in a letter that if Langston visited him, he might send him to college (Meltzer 61). Langston wrote The Negro Speaks of Rivers on his first day on the train to Mexico (Rampersad 39). He explains he spent the time on the train thinking about his father and his hatred for his people.
Langston could not understand such self-hatred. In fact, he loved the black folk: their naturalness, their sense of style, their bitter facing up, and their individual courage (Kent
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