Make America America Again Langston Hughs
Langston Hughes. | Painting past Winold Reiss (c. 1925) / National Portrait Gallery
As people in the United states mark the anniversary of the Declaration of Independence and the Revolution of 1776,People's Earth presents the poem, "Permit America be America again," by Langston Hughes (1902-67). One of the great American poets and fiction writers, Hughes' work was known for its powerful delineation of the lives of the working class in our country—especially the lives of working-class African-Americans. As he one time said, "My seeking has been to explain and illuminate the Negro condition in America and obliquely that of all humankind."
In this poem, published in the 1938 International Workers' Gild pamphlet,A New Song, Hughes problems a call for the nation to alive up to its great ethics of liberty and equality. He looks to a time when America volition be a land where freedom is non crowned with a "false patriotic wreath," but rather becomes a identify where "opportunity is real" and "equality is the air we breathe."
In our ain fourth dimension, when demagogues try to divide people using nationalism and try to convince the states that America needs to exist "bang-up again," it is appropriate to plough to Hughes. He reminds us of the dream of what America could be, simply non yet is.
Let America exist America again.
Let it exist the dream it used to exist.
Let it be the pioneer on the plain
Seeking a dwelling where he himself is free.
(America never was America to me.)
Let America be the dream the dreamers dreamed –
Let it exist that not bad strong land of honey
Where never kings connive nor tyrants scheme
That any human be crushed past 1 above.
(Information technology never was America to me.)
O, allow my country be a land where Liberty
Is crowned with no false patriotic wreath,
But opportunity is real, and life is free,
Equality is in the air nosotros breathe.
(In that location'due south never been equality for me, Nor freedom in this "homeland of the gratuitous.")
Say, who are you that mumbles in the dark?
And who are you that draws your veil beyond the stars?
I am the poor white, fooled and pushed apart,
I am the Negro bearing slavery'south scars.
I am the red human driven from the land,
I am the immigrant clutching the hope I seek-
And finding only the same old stupid plan
Of canis familiaris eat dog, of mighty beat out the weak.
I am the young man, full of strength and promise,
Tangled in that ancient countless chain
Of turn a profit, power, gain, of grab the land!
Of grab the golden! Of take hold of the ways of satisfying demand!
Of work the men! Of take the pay!
Of owning everything for one's own greed!
I am the farmer, bondsman to the soil.
I am the worker sold to the car.
I am the Negro, servant to you all.
I am the people, humble, hungry, mean –
Hungry yet today despite the dream.
Beaten yet today – O, Pioneers!
I am the man who never got ahead,
The poorest worker bartered through the years.
Yet I'm the 1 who dreamt our basic dream
In the Old World while still a serf of kings,
Who dreamt a dream then strong, and then brave, so truthful,
That even however its mighty daring sings
In every brick and stone, in every furrow turned
That's made America the land information technology has go.
O, I'm the man who sailed those early seas
In search of what I meant to be my domicile –
For I'm the one who left dark Ireland'south shore,
And Poland's manifestly, and England's grassy lea,
And torn from Black Africa'due south strand I came
To build a "homeland of the free."
The free?
Who said the gratuitous? Non me?
Surely not me? The millions on relief today?
The millions shot down when we strike?
The millions who take nothing for our pay?
For all the dreams we've dreamed
And all the songs we've sung
And all the hopes we've held
And all the flags we've hung,
The millions who have naught for our pay –
Except the dream that's about dead today.
O, let America be America again –
The land that never has been nevertheless –
And yet must exist – the land whereevery human is free.
The country that's mine-the poor human being'southward, Indian's, Negro's, ME –
Who made America,
Whose sweat and blood, whose faith and pain,
Whose hand at the foundry, whose turn in the rain,
Must bring dorsum our mighty dream once again.
Sure, call me any ugly name y'all choose –
The steel of liberty does not stain.
From those who alive like leeches on the people's lives,
We must take back our land again,
America!
O, yes,
I say information technology plain,
America never was America to me,
And yet I swear this oath –
America will exist!
Out of the rack and ruin of our gangster decease,
The rape and rot of graft, and stealth, and lies,
We, the people, must redeem
The land, the mines, the plants, the rivers.
The mountains and the endless plain –
All, all the stretch of these great green states –
And make America once more!
CONTRIBUTOR
Source: https://www.peoplesworld.org/article/langston-hughes-let-america-be-america-again/
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