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"Let America Be America Again," published in Esquire and in the International Worker Order pamphlet A New Song (1938), pleads for fulfillment of the Dream that never was. It speaks of the freedom and equality which America boasts, but never had. It looks forward to a day when "Liberty is crowned with no false patriotic wreath" and America is "that great strong land of love." Hughes, though, is not limiting his plea to the downtrodden Negro; he includes, as well, the poor white, the Indian, the immigrant--farmer, worker, "the people" share the Dream that has not been. The Dream still beckons. In "Freedom's Plow" he points out that "America is a dream" and the product of the seed of freedom is not only for all Americans but for all the world. The American Dream of brotherhood, freedom, and democracy must come to all peoples and all races of the world, he insists."

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"Let America Be America Again," published in Esquire and in the International Worker Order pamphlet A New Song (1938), pleads for fulfillment of the Dream that never was. It speaks of the freedom and equality which America boasts, but never had.

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I dreamed that you were a bee
That one day gaily flew along,
You came across the hedge to me,
And sang a soft, love-burdened song.
You brushed my petals with a kiss,
I woke to gladness with a start,
And yielded up to you in bliss
The treasured fragrance of my heart;
And then I knew
That I had waited there for you.

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I dreamed that you were a beeThat one day gaily flew along, You came across the hedge to me, And sang a soft, love-burdened song. You brushed my petals with a kiss, I woke to gladness with a start, And yielded up to you in bliss The treasured fragrance of my heart; And then I knew That I had waited there for you.

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About today's guest writer: W. Jason Miller is associate professor of English at North Carolina State University. He is the author of Langston Hughes and American Lynching Culture, a book that investigates the nearly three dozen poems written by Hughes on the subject of lynching to explore its varying effects on survivors, victims, and accomplices. His newest book, Origins of the Dream: Hughes's Poetry and King's Rhetoric, is the first book to connect the work of Langston Hughes and Martin Luther King Jr. and will be published next month by the University Press of Florida. Get a sneak preview of the book in today's author guest post as W. Jason Miller explains how Langston Hughes' poem "Dream Deferred"-along with the play that draws from it, A Raisin in the Sun -inspired Martin Luther King, Jr. to start speaking about dreams.

"What I have now found and documented is that Hughes's poetry hovers behind Martin Luther King's sermons like watermarks on bonded paper."

Martin Luther King, Jr. first spoke of "dreams" in a sermon he delivered on April 5, 1959. His subject that day was disappointment, not hope. The focus of his sermon came when he said: "Very few people are privileged to live life with all of their dreams realized and all of their hopes fulfilled. Who here this morning has not had to face the agony of blasted hopes and shattered dreams?" Though it doesn't flash on first glance, King's reference to unfulfilled and shattered dreams is actually an allusion to Langston Hughes's famous poem "Dream Deferred" (first titled "Harlem" in 1951). This sermon became one of King's most repeated and personal sermons, and on other occasions King made the connections to Hughes's poem explicit: "I am personally the victim of deferred dreams, of blasted hopes."

My research into King's use of Hughes's poetry first began after discovering this surprising connection. What I have now found and documented is that Hughes's poetry hovers behind Martin Luther King's sermons like watermarks on bonded paper. When I held this 1959 sermon to the light, I found that the unparalleled success of A Raisin in the Sun, a play which was inspired by Hughes's poetry, created the historical context for understanding this sermon.

Taking its title from the first image in Hughes's poem ("What happens to a dream deferred? / Does it dry up / like a raisin in the sun?"), the play debuted on March 19, 1959. It is hard to underestimate the cultural impact of the play A Raisin in the Sun. It ran on Broadway for 538 consecutive performances. Nominated for four Tony Awards, it won the New York Drama Critics Circle Award as the year's best drama. Unlike any play before it, the crowd was often half African American. Eleven days after Raisin's Broadway debut, the New York Times reported that major film companies started bidding for the screen rights. The stipulation to use an all-black cast was accepted without hesitation. Leaping from Broadway to Hollywood in such a short time speaks to the cultural phenomenon that was A Raisin in the Sun. The New York Times summarized the entire play in one sentence: the play deals with "the shattered dreams of a Negro family." Lorraine Hansberry's play doesn't merely use Hughes's poetry in its title: her play is about shattered dreams. King himself read about all this as he was an avid reader of the New York Times where the play was covered in this fashion on no less than two dozen different articles throughout March of 1959.

Though King alluded to five of the six images Hughes uses in his famous poem "Dream Deferred" throughout many of his sermons and addresses before and after 1959, it was the play's debut just three weeks before April 5 th that explains this historic engagement. Because King was obligated to preach about Palm Sunday, and then Easter on successive weeks, April 5 literally marked the first possible opportunity after the play's premier for him to create and deliver a new sermon. In his sermon, King used the poem's imagery, repeated questions, theme, and diction.

Why did King use an idea from Hughes's poem as the central focus for his first sermon about dreams, and why is this connection important? King was enamored with poetry. Not only did he quote it from memory and rewrite poetic lines in his public addresses, I have even discovered that King's earliest iterations of the phrase "I have a dream" were actually presented in the form of a poem. He also had previous (and remarkable) success with using several of Hughes' other poems in his speeches. Moreover, Hughes had written a poem about King in 1956, and by the end of 1959 King would personally request and receive a poem by Langston Hughes to be used at a celebration for A. Philip Randolph. This poem not coincidentally also featured the subject of dreams which King himself picked up on in his own personal remarks at the event held at Carnegie Hall on January 24, 1960. Literary sources about failed dreams, not biblical prophecy, served as the origins of King's engagement with the subject of dreams.

Langston Hughes would never be more popular than he was in 1959-60. In 1959, his Selected Poems was released, he won the NAACP's highest lifetime achievement award in 1960, and he was so well-known that he was selling Smirnoff Vodka in Ebony Magazine which boasted a readership of over 650,000 subscribers. When the historic anthology American Negro Poetry was first released in 1963 (eventually running through an astounding 18 printings), Hughes's poems duly received twice as much space as any other poet in the collection. Few realize that Hughes died in 1967, only a year before King's assassination.

King's 1959 sermon "Unfulfilled Hopes" marks the beginning of King's engagement with the subject of dreams. What becomes most extraordinary about King's use of Hughes's poem is this: without the successes of the play and King's intimate familiarity with Hughes's poetry (buoyed through his wife Coretta's vast collection and appreciation of Hughes's works), Martin Luther King, Jr. would have never started speaking about dreams. And, to my own shock and amazement, Dr. King was personally revising this April 5, 1959 sermon for publication in late 1962. A handwritten draft shows that he paused and traced over the word "dreams" five to six times till it turned black-hard bold. At this same time (not in 1963 as most incorrectly believe) Dr. King first started using the phrase "I have a dream." Gradually turning the negative aspects of dreaming into something truly inspiring and unifying, King found a creative way to synthesize prophecy, politics, and poetry into something unforgettable and truly his own.

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How the Poetry of Langston Hughes Inspired Martin Luther King's First Dream

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About today's guest writer: W. Jason Miller is associate professor of English at North Carolina State University. He is the author of Langston Hughes and American Lynching Culture , a book that investigates the nearly three dozen poems written by Hughes on the subject of lynching to explore its varying effects on survivors, victims, and accomplices.

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http://andria.photoshelter.com/image/I0000MANb2TvVSJ0

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Cultural Context

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Langston Hughes is a writer of striking, seemingly simple poems. His words are melodic; they have a musical rhythm. “I, too, sing America,” he writes at the beginning of his poem, “I, Too,” about an unnamed speaker who feels that his own country is ashamed of him. The speaker is relegated to eating in the kitchen, but, Hughes writes, “Tomorrow, / I’ll be at the table / When company comes.” It’s a poem about protest, and the emotional and practical reasons protest becomes necessary. It’s also a poem about loving your country, but feeling as though you’re not truly a part of it. It’s a poem that’s needed right now, which is why The New York Times dedicated an entire page to it in its print edition today.

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His words are melodic; they have a musical rhythm. "I, too, sing America," he writes at the beginning of his poem, "I, Too," about an unnamed speaker who feels that his own country is ashamed of him. The speaker is relegated to eating in the kitchen, but, Hughes writes, "Tomorrow, / I'll be at the table / When company comes."

It's a poem about protest, and the emotional and practical reasons protest becomes necessary. It's also a poem about loving your country, but feeling as though you're not truly a part of it.

It's a poem that's needed right now, which is why The New York Times dedicated an entire page to it in its print edition today.

A full page in @nytimes today dedicated to a poem. One that everyone should read and reread. pic.twitter.com/sNHr60xUvH
- Pamela Paul (@PamelaPaulNYT) September 22, 2016

Pamela Paul, Editor of The New York Times Book Review, tweeted that "I, Too" is a poem that, "everyone should read and reread."

On Tuesday, police officers in Charlotte, North Carolina, shot and killed a black man named Keith Lamont Scott, who they claim refused to drop a handgun. His family says they were mistaken, that he was holding a book. For the past two nights, protests have ensued and grown violent.

On Thursday morning, Charlotte is in a state of emergency . So, too, is America.
For more on Langston Hughes:

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Powerful Poem About Race Gets A Full Page In The New York Times

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His words are melodic; they have a musical rhythm. "I, too, sing America," he writes at the beginning of his poem, "I, Too," about an unnamed speaker who feels that his own country is ashamed of him. The speaker is relegated to eating in the kitchen, but, Hughes writes, "Tomorrow, / I'll be at the table / When company comes."

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I Too Sing America By Langston Hughes: Visual Representation

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I Too by Denzel Washington in move Great Debators

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I Too by Denzel Washington in move Great Debators

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Cultural Context

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The great debaters. I, too, sing America.

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"The poem is a singularly significant affirmation of the museum’s mission to tell the history of United States through the lens of the African-American experience. It embodies that history at a particular point in the early 20th century when Jim Crow laws throughout the South enforced racial segregation; and argues against those who would deny that importance—and that presence. Its mere 18 lines capture a series of intertwined themes about the relationship of African-Americans to the majority culture and society, themes that show Hughes’ recognition of the painful complexity of that relationship.
-Smithsonian historian David Ward reflects on the work of Langston Hughes

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Smithsonian historian David Ward reflects on the work of Langston Hughes

smithsonian.com

In large graven letters on the wall of the newly opened National Museum of African American History and Culture on the National Mall is a quote from poet Langston Hughes: "I, too, am America."

The line comes from the Hughes's poem "I, too," first published in 1926.

I, too, sing America.

I am the darker brother.

They send me to eat in the kitchen

When company comes,

But I laugh,

And eat well,

And grow strong.

Tomorrow,

I'll be at the table

When company comes.

Nobody'll dare

Say to me,

"Eat in the kitchen,"

Then.

Besides,

They'll see how beautiful I am

And be ashamed-

I, too, am America.

From THE COLLECTED POEMS OF LANGSTON HUGHES. By permission of Harold Ober Associates Incorporated

The poem is a singularly significant affirmation of the museum's mission to tell the history of United States through the lens of the African-American experience. It embodies that history at a particular point in the early 20th century when Jim Crow laws throughout the South enforced racial segregation; and argues against those who would deny that importance-and that presence.

Its mere 18 lines capture a series of intertwined themes about the relationship of African-Americans to the majority culture and society, themes that show Hughes' recognition of the painful complexity of that relationship.

Tomorrow,

I'll be at the table

When company comes.

There is a multi-dimensional pun in the title, "I, too" in the lines that open and close the poem. If you hear the word as the number two, it suddenly shifts the terrain to someone who is secondary, subordinate, even, inferior.

Hughes powerfully speaks for the second-class, those excluded. The full-throated drama of the poem portrays African-Americans moving from out of sight, eating in the kitchen, and taking their place at the dining room table co-equal with the "company" that is dining.

Intriguingly, Langston doesn't amplify on who owns the kitchen. The house, of course, is the United States and the owners of the house and the kitchen are never specified or seen because they cannot be embodied. Hughes' sly wink is to the African-Americans who worked in the plantation houses as slaves and servants. He honors those who lived below stairs or in the cabins. Even excluded, the presence of African-Americans was made palpable by the smooth running of the house, the appearance of meals on the table, and the continuity of material life. Enduring the unendurable, their spirit lives now in these galleries and among the scores of relic artifacts in the museum's underground history galleries and in the soaring arts and culture galleries at the top of the bronze corona-shaped building.

The other reference if you hear that "too" as "two" is not subservience, but dividedness.

Hughes' pays homage to his contemporary, the intellectual leader and founder of the NAACP, W.E.B. DuBois whose speeches and essays about the dividedness of African-American identity and consciousness would rivet audiences; and motivate and compel the determined activism that empowered the Civil Rights Movement of the mid-20th century.

The African-American, according to DuBois in his seminal work, The Souls of Black Folks, existed always in two 'places" at once:

"One ever feels his two-ness, an American, a Negro; two souls, two thoughts, two unreconciled strivings; two warring ideals in one dark body, whose dogged strength alone keeps it from being torn asunder."

DuBois makes the body of the African-American-the body that endured so much work and which is beautifully rendered in Hughes' second stanza "I am the darker brother"-as the vessel for the divided consciousness of his people.

DuBois writes of the continual desire to end this suffering in the merging of this "double self into a better and truer self." Yet in doing so, DuBois argued, paradoxically, that neither "of the older selves to be lost."

The sense of being divided in two was not just the root of the problem not just for the African-American, but for the United States. As Lincoln had spoken about the coexistence of slavery with freedom: "A house divided against itself cannot stand."

Hughes ties together this sense of the unity of the separate and diverse parts of the American democracy by beginning his poem with a near direct reference to Walt Whitman.

Whitman wrote, "I sing the body electric" and went on to associate the power of that body with all the virtues of American democracy in which power was vested in each individual acting in concert with their fellows. Whitman believed that the "electricity" of the body formed a kind of adhesion that would bind people together in companionship and love: "I hear America singing, the varied carols I hear. . ."

Hughes makes Whitman-his literary hero-more explicitly political with his assertion "I, too, sing America."

The verb here is important because it suggests the implicit if unrecognized creative work that African-Americans provided to make America. African-Americans helped sing America into existence and for that work deserve a seat at the table, dining as coequals with their fellows and in the company of the world.

At the end of the poem, the line is changed because the transformation has occurred.

"I, too, am America."

Presence has been established and recognized. The house divided is reconciled into a whole in which the various parts sing sweetly in their separate harmonies. The problem for the politics of all this, if not for the poem itself, is that the simple assertion of presence-"They'll see how beautiful I am. . ." -may not be enough.

The new African American Museum on the National Mall is a powerful assertion of presence and the legitimacy of a story that is unique, tragic and inextricably linked to the totality of American history. "I, too" is Hughes at his most optimistic, reveling in the bodies and souls of his people and the power of that presence in transcendent change. But he fully realized the obstacles to true African-American emancipation and acceptance in the house of American democracy. He was the poet, remember, who also wrote "What will happen to a dream deferred?"

About David C. Ward

David C. Ward is senior historian at the National Portrait Gallery, where he is currently working on the exhibitions, "The Face of Battle. Americans at War, 9/11 to Now" and "The Sweat of their Face: Portraying American Workers."

Read more from this author

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What Langston Hughes' Powerful Poem "I, Too" Tells Us About America's Past and Present

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smithsonian.com In large graven letters on the wall of the newly opened National Museum of African American History and Culture on the National Mall is a quote from poet Langston Hughes: "I, too, am America." The line comes from the Hughes's poem "I, too," first published in 1926. I, too, sing America.

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Biographical Context
Photo Credential: Michael Morand
http://brbl-dl.library.yale.edu/vufind/Record/3772470

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Biographical Context

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Biographical Context
Photo Credentials: Renee Watson
https://www.northcountrypublicradio.org/news/npr/491490593/langston-hughes-harlem-home-may-get-its-own-renaissance-as-an-art-center

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Historical Context

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Langston Hughes' 113th Birthday #GoogleDoodle

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Hughes' Burial At Schomberg Center for Research

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Hughes' Burial At Schomberg Center for Research

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Historical Context
Photocredentials: Thomas & Rodrigo of Cosmogram

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Historical Context

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Langston Hughes | Beinecke Rare Book & Manuscript Library

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Manuscript drafts of "Montage of a Dream Deferred" by Langston Hughes (JWJ MSS 26 Langston Hughes Papers Finding Aid; additional images from the Langston Hughes Papers)

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KCUR Through A Glass Productions
http://kcur.org/post/new-short-film-young-langston-hughes-begins-poetic-resistance-lawrence-kansas#stream/0

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Medallion Recipients | The City College of New York

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Awarded for Distinguished Contributions To the Arts and Letters