The American Dream of Langston Hughes

Author(s): JAMES PRESLEY

Source: Southwest Review , AUTUMN 1963, Vol. 48, No. 4 (AUTUMN 1963), pp. 380-386
Published by: Southern Methodist University

Stable URL: https://www.jstor.org/stable/43467552

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 The American Dream of Langston Hughes

JAMES PRESLEY

one summer in chicago when he was dramatically true for many, Hughes say s,
a teen-ager Langston Hughes feltbut
thefor the Negro (and other assorted
poor
American Dream explode in his face; a people) the American Dream is
gang of white youths beat him up so
merely that - a dream. If the critics and
badly that he went home with blacked
would-be censors had read further they
eyes and a swollen jaw. would have noted that for Hughes the
He had been punished for cutting
American Dream has even greater mean-
ing: it is the raison d9 être of this nation.
through a white neighborhood in the
Nevertheless, Hughes was still a regular
South Side on his way home from work.
That night as he tended his injuries
target for right-wing barbs as recently
young Hughes must have mused as dis-
the 1960's, having been anathema to
turbed thoughts about fulfilment of the
his right wing for decades.
Long before the Chicago summer
American dream of freedom, justice, and
opportunity for all. during World War I Hughes had experi-
A few years after that traumatic
enced the plight of the Negro in America.
Chicago afternoon Hughes inaugurated Although
a he was not born in the South
where conditions probably were worse,
prolific and versatile writing career. Over
the four decades separating then the andboy Langston had faced the practical
now, his reaction to the American Dream prejudices of the Middle West and the
has been one of his most frequentlyNorth. re- In Topeka, Kansas, he was to
curring themes. For many years Hughes, have been dispatched across town to a
often hailed as "the poet laureate ofJim the Crow school, but his determined
Negro people," has been recognizedmother by complained so vigorously to the
white critics as an author-poet of school
the board that Hughes was enrolled,
protest genre. Others, more conservativethe only Negro pupil, in the elementary
and denunciatory, have assailed Hughes school nearest his home. And there the
as radical and leftist, to mention the more
American Dream of equal treatment for
polite language. In both instanceseveryone
the shone through almost perfectly.
critics referred to Hughes's treatment Butofa shadow fell: while most of the
imperfections in the American Dream teachers were kind to him, one kept re-
that we, as a nation, hold so dear. ferring to his color in the classroom. On
The American Dream may have come occasions when the teacher had singled

380 autumn 1963

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him out for his brownness, several of his As a child of separated parents Hughes
classmates would climax the day by grew up in many different places in the
throwing stones or epithets at him. There heartland of America - Kansas, Illinois,
was a great stain on the American Dream. Ohio, Missouri, Colorado - and began his
All was not stain, though. While one globetrotting life with a visit to his father
teacher exercised her prejudices and some in Mexico where the elder Hughes had
classmates poked fun and more tangible fled to escape Jim Crow.
objects at him, other classmates champ- After an interlude at Columbia Uni-
ioned his cause. Consequently the youth versity in the early 192 O's Hughes signed
Langston was never completely alienated, on a freight steamer and saw Africa and
and despite his poverty and darkness in Europe. In 1925 he worked for Dr. Car-
a sea of white he was to know that there ter G. Woodson, editor of Journal of
were others who believed in equality and Negro History , and in 1926 his first book
justice for him too. Later on, in inte- of poetry, The Weary Blues, appeared.
grated Cleveland, Ohio, he was named As a student at Lincoln University that
poet of his high school class. Ever since year he won the Witter Bynner under-
those moments out of a sensitive child- graduate poetry prize; he graduated from
hood the future poet has maintained his Lincoln in 1929.
faith in the American Dream, while con- As the depression reached its depth in
firming his enmity to the stifling and the early 193 O's he had to scratch for new
transmogrification of it. In pursuing the means of earning his living, but he found
Dream, Hughes has followed a course the perfect way by making poetry pay:
very similar to that of the American he organized a public reading tour of the
Negro in general: the Dream is fine - if South. Subsequent travels in the 193 O's
realized. took him around the world in connection
Langston Hughes was born February with a movie-making project which never
1, 1902, at Joplin, Missouri. The three made it to the screen. A Negro company
races of America - Indian, Negro, and had gone to Russia to film Porgy and
Caucasian - contributed to his bloodlines : Bess under the auspices of the Soviet
slaves, warriors, planters. His cultural government. Hughes went as a writer.
heritage was a proud and lively one. His When the Soviets delayed and delayed
earliest memories were of his grand- so that the movie was never made Hughes
mother, a copper- skinned woman of converted the opportunity into one to see
strong Indian ancestry, sitting on the as much as he could of Russia. When the
same platform with President Theodore Spanish Civil War broke out a few years
Roosevelt at a public commemoration of later Hughes covered it for the Baltimore
the Harper's Ferry raid. She was the last Afro- American. By the time the realities
surviving widow of John Brown's his- of World War II reached America,
toric raid. Her husband, a free Negro, Hughes was in his forties and an estab-
had been one of the first to die in the lished Harlem figure busily producing
raid. Young Langston at an early age volumes and volumes of poetry, news-
learned to prize freedom highly. paper columns, anthologies, books for

southwest Review 381

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juveniles, novels, short stories, and plays. for all Americans but for all the world.
The American Dream of brotherhood,
as might be expected Hughes has writ- freedom, and democracy must come to
ten most frequently, though not exclu- all peoples and all races of the world, he
sively, of Negro characters. Consequent- insists.

ly the importance of the color line in Almost invariably Hughes reflects

America is frequently reflected in his hope, for that is part of his American
work. The effect of the color line on the Dream. However, some of his poems, ap-
American Dream is therefore an integral parently written in angry protest, are
part of his protest. In one of his biograph- content to catch the emotion of sorrow in
ies for young people, Famous Negro the face of hopelessness and gross in-
Music Makers (1961), Hughes quotes justice. One of his most biting is a verse
musician Bert Williams as saying: "It is in Jim Crow's Last Stand (1943). Aimed
not a disgrace to be a Negro, but it is at southern lynch law which had just
very inconvenient." In viewing the string taken the lives of two fourteen-year-old
of "inconveniences" vitally affecting the Negro boys in Mississippi, and dedicated
dignity of black Americans Hughes voices to their memory, the poem cried that
his reactions to shriveled freedom, dwarf- "The Bitter River" has

ed equality, and shrunken opportunity -

. . . strangled my dream :
blemishes on the essential ingredients of
The book studied - but useless,
the American Dream. His poetry and Tools handled - but unused ,
prose echo protest and, usually, hope. Knowledge acquired but throum away ,
Two poems especially reflect his theme Ambition battered and bruised .
of protest and hope. "Let America Be
In one of his children's poems, "As
America Again," published in Esquire
I Grow Older," the poet looks at the
and in the International Worker Order
Dream again. He had almost forgotten
pamphlet A New Song (1938), pleads
for fulfilment of the Dream that never his dream; then it reappeared to him.
was. It speaks of the freedom and equal- But a wall rose - a high, sky-high wall.
ity which America boasts, but never A shadow: he was black. The wall and
had. It looks forward to a day when the shadow blotted out the dream, chas-
"Liberty is crowned with no false patri- ing the brightness away. But the poet's
otic wreath" and America is "that great dark hands sustain him.
strong land of love." Hughes, though, is
My dark handsl
not limiting his plea to the downtrod-
Break through the wall !
den Negro; he includes, as well, the poor
Find my dreaml
white, the Indian, the immigrant - farm-
Help me to shatter this darkness ,
er, worker, "the people" share the Dream To smash this night ,
that has not been. The Dream still beck- To break this shadow
ons. In "Freedom's Plow" he points out Into a thousand lights of sun ,
that "America is a dream" and the pro- Into a thousand whirling dreams
duct of the seed of freedom is not only Of sun!

AUTUMN I960

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 On a similar theme, one of the con- to the American Dream, despite the habit
cluding poems in his child's book, The of many critics' labeling him a protest
Dream Keeper (1932), treats of the writer primarily. But in Ask Your Mama:
Dream. In "I, Too," the "darker brother" 12 Moods for Jazz (1961) he returns to
of America eats in the kitchen when the Dream, in jazz tempo with barbs ap-
propriate
company calls. But tomorrow, he says, for a dream too long deferred.
he'll eat at the table; nobody will dareWith an impish introduction of the
tell him to eat in the kitchen then. melody "Dixie" in the background, the
poet combines dreams and nightmares
Besides, to produce a mural of black power in the
They U see how beautiful I am South; he dreams the Negroes have voted
And be ashamed - the Dixiecrats out of office. As a result
I, too, am America . Martin Luther King becomes governor
of Georgia and high posts go to other
In Montage of a Dream Deferred Negro patriots. The remainder of the
(1951) Hughes might have been think- passage reflects the opposite of the south-
ing of the wall which blackness had ern power structure for the past hundred
erected in the child's poem. Montage's years or so. Negroes relax on the verandas
background is Harlem. There is a wall of their mansions while their white share-
about Harlem, and the American Dream, croppers sweat on the plantations. The
as a reality, exists outside Harlem. Har- reverse pattern of historical reality is
lem (and, one can just as well add, the carried out even to the extent of Negro
world of the American Negro) is a children having white mammies, of which
walled-in reality where dreams are de- there are Mammy Faubus, Mammy East-
ferred. The faded Dream pierces black land, and Mammy Patterson. (And, if
New Yorkers to their hearts. Thingshe had written later, Mammy Wallace,
which "don't bug . . . white kids" bother one thinks.) The patronizing air of the
Harlemites profoundly. White boys cling plantation white bourbon is reproduced
to the stimulating dream that any Ameri- as the poet notes that the "dear darling
can may grow up to be President of the old white mammies" are sometimes even
United States. The Negro boy knowsburied with the family!
better. He also knows that the liberty But the grandiose dream sequence, it-
and justice of the Pledge to the Flag areself reflecting how one-sided the Ameri-
inherent rights only of white folks. Even can Dream has been in the South, is
in Harlem, the capital of the North short-lived. The poet returns to the pessi-
which Hughes once described in a novelmistic here and now. The Negro can't
as "mighty magnet of the colored race," keep from losing, even when he's win-
the American Dream is frayed and ning, he moans in blues tempo. Ask Your
ragged. Mama relates to the vast spectrum of the
American Dream, as it affects Negroes.
PROBABLY THE GREATEST PORTION of There are the hardships of blockbusting,
or integrating a white residential area,
Hughes's poetry does not refer specifically

southwest Review 383

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the bitterness of Negro artists, the stereo- up outside the door - and Talmadge, East-
typed attitudes of whites toward Negroes, land, and Byrnes wipe their weeping eyes -
and every coach on the Southern Railroad is
the hope of a better material world for
draped in mourning - as the Confederate flag
ambitious Negroes, and the eternal sus- is at half-mast - and the D.A.R. has fainted
picions cast upon any Negro who does - Jim Crow y you go to hell !"
anything worthwhile or, often, anything
that is ordinary for white folks to do. Jesse B. Semple is a bitter man much
of the time. He has been segregated,
as effectively as Hughes's poetry pre- underpaid, underhoused. When a Negro
sents the unfulfilled fraction of the
experiences injustice anywhere, North or
American dreamers, the Simple stories South, Simple feels it too. In one selec-
of his prose elaborate the most telling tion Simple refers to Jim Crow and
criticism of racial discrimination. Social
lynching of Negroes in the South. "But
criticism and humor travel hand in hand
these are Christian white folks that does
as his character, Jesse B. Semple, depicts such things to me," he says. "At least,
the America of discrimination in an inti-
they call themselves Christians. . . . They
mate, personal manner. Although Simple, got more churches down South than they
as his friends call him, lives in Harlem,
got up North. They read more Bibles and
the loquacious Negro comments pithily sing more hymns." Another time Simple
on prejudice he has experienced in the pleads for a game preserve for Negroes,
South and in the Army. Jim Crow is his where the government would protect
personal devil. them from lynching and beatings. "Col-
One of the several features of Ameri-
ored folks rate as much protection as a
can life that especially disturbs Simple is buffalo, or a deer," Simple says somberly.
that Jim Crow gives little or no respite to
Eventually Simple discusses all aspects
the Negro. Even a foreigner just off the
of the social system which frustrates com-
boat from Europe can Jim Crow the
pletion of the American Dream. The
Negro who has been following the Dream
white folks who say they love the Negro
for generations. "He starts on top of my
people do not really know how the Negro
head," moans Simple. Jim Crow is the
lives in America, he says. They haven't
despoiler of the American Dream, and
slept in colored hotels or eaten in colored
Simple reserves his most stinging venom
restaurants, they haven't sent their chil-
for the southern way.
dren to a segregated Negro school, and
In a piece, "Jim Crow's Funeral" from
they haven't used a Jim Crow toilet in
the book Simple Stakes a Claim (1957),
a bus station. "White folks has got a
one of three books filled with Simple
theoretical knowledge of prejudice. I
stories, the Harlemite preaches Jim Crow
want them to have a real one," Simple
to his reward. He summarizes his emo-
says. "I know I am equal. What I want
tions:
is to be treated equal." Therein he touches
the heart of the failure of the American
"It gives me great pleasure, Jim Crow, to
Dream to date: the transition from
close your funeral with these words - as the
top is shut on your casket and the hearse pulls theory to practice has not been made.

384 autumn 1963

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White folks, insists Simple, would not The boy Sandy, as perhaps the boy
put up with Jim Crow if they had ex- Langston might have done years be-
perienced the unique system themselves. fore, contemplates the color situation in
They need to know what it means to America. "Being colored is like being
Negroes. born in the basement of life, with the
Despite the many crosses the Negro door to the light locked and barred - and
has to bear, though, he is durable, Simple the white folks live upstairs," Sandy
believes. In "Radioactive Red Caps" thinks. It was a white folks' world,
Simple discusses the atomic bomb and Sandy was inclined to believe; it was one
his expectation of living through a nu- in which an unhappy run-in with a
clear war. "If Negroes can survive white Southern white cost him his job in a
folks in Mississippi," he said, "we can hotel. An ambitious lad, Sandy wanted
survive anything." to be a railroad engineer when he grew
up, but his aunt told him there were no
hughes's other prose - his novels and colored engineers.
short stories, his juvenile histories and The characters in Not Without Laugh-
biographies, his two autobiographical ter display divergent views toward white
books - is less laden with reflections on people. Tempy, Sandy's aunt, tries to
the American Dream deferred, though emulate whites. His other aunt, Harriett,
his personal accounts, The Big Sea (1940) hates them. His grandmother retreats to
and I Wonder as I Wander (1956) draw religion, waiting for the other world to
in some detail his encounters with Jim relieve her of the burden of this world's
Crow and even with threats of violence as shattered Dream. Sandy's mother, Ann-
a result of his being on the darker side of jee, is long-suffering but hopeful. His
the color line in the South. Of his plays, father, Jimboy, echoes the anguish of be-
his earliest, "Mulatto" (1931), deals ing Negro in a white -dominated world.
intimately with the Negro end of mis- One of Sandy's light friends, Buster, in-
cegenation on a southern plantation. The tends to realize the Dream by passing for
play concerns the consequences which white when he grows up and leaves town.
follow relentlessly and brutally when a Yet Sandy does not single out any one
planter's mulatto son asserts himself as view of his relatives and seize it as his
the Colonel's heir. The results are tragic; own. His view of the American Dream
the Dream is squashed. Hughes's history comes empirically, as he sees (as did
of the NAACP, Fight for Freedom Langston Hughes) that there is both
(1962), of course, is directly concerned good and bad emanating from the white
with that organization's attempts to society. Sandy's eyes are wide open, and
realize the American Dream for all busily recording.
Negroes. The boy Sandy doubtless views the
Among his novels, Not Without Dream as Hughes had. Sandy saw the
Laughter (1930) indicates the effect of evils behind the Dream's façade, but he
the American Dream on the boy Sandy, also knew of the good there. In spite of
growing up in a small midwestern town. his sorrows and hardships Sandy had

southwest Review 385

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hope, pride, and ambition. He had the American Negroes' role i
will to fight on, to achieve his dream. nized this. . . we know
Hope is implicit in most of Hughes's 1943 speech reprinted i
work. In one of his short stories from Hughes Reader (1958),
Laughing to Keep from Crying (1952),
"One Friday Morning," in which a that America is a land of transition. And
Negro girl has been deprived of an art we know it is within our power to help in its
prize because of race prejudice, her sym- further change toward a finer and better de-
mocracy than any citizen has known before.
pathetic Irish teacher urges the girl to
The American Negro believes in democracy.
keep faith. Speaking of the obstacles We want to make it real, complete, workable,
which the Irish had to overcome after
not only for ourselves - the fifteen million
they came to America and were dis- dark ones - but for all Americans all over the
criminated against, the teacher says:land.
. . we didn't give up, because we be-
lieved in the American dream, and in The American Dream is bruised and often
our power to make that dream come made a travesty for Negroes and other
true." The theme is a recurring one with underdogs, Hughes keeps saying, but the
Hughes: the Negro's bed has been linedAmerican Dream does exist. And the
with injustices, but eventually the Ameri- Dream must be fulfilled. In one of his
can Dream will triumph. verses he put it more plainly. He might
have been speaking to his harshest poli-
THROUGHOUT HUGHES^ LIFE
tical critics or to the white youths who
literary expression - beat
the himAmerican
up on that long-agoDream summer
day in Chicago.
has appeared as a ragged, uneven, splotch-
ed, and often unattainable goal which
often became a nightmare, Listen, butAmerica
there - is
always hope of the fulfilled I live dream
her e y too. even
in the darkest moments. During World
I want freedom
War II Hughes, commenting on
Just as you . the

386 AUTUMN 1963

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