Let America Be America Again and American South

Permit America Be America Once again—Langston Hughes, 1936

World Peace Foundation expresses its profound sadness at deaths of African Americans at the easily of those who pledge to 'protect and serve.' We stand up together with those struggling confronting the racism that has marked this state throughout its history. In accolade of all those today and over the hundreds of years who accept refused to accept the condition quo, we share this poem by Langston Hughes, an inspiring condemnation of injustice and a demand for change.

Langston Hughes (1902 – 1967) was an American author of poetry, plays, novels, brusque stories and essay—1 of the brilliant writers to emerge as part of the Harlem Renaissance. In 1936, he published "Let America Be America Again," a poem that articulates a vision of a state that excluded his own community of African-Americans, amongst others–the Native populations and the poor–and that transforms an illusion of past greatness into a call to action to forge the state nosotros would yet want to encounter.

Let America Be America Once more—Langston Hughes, 1936

Let America be America again.
Permit it be the dream it used to be.
Let information technology be the pioneer on the evidently
Seeking a home where he himself is free.

(America never was America to me.)

Permit America be the dream the dreamers dreamed —
Let it be that great potent land of love
Where never kings connive nor tyrants scheme
That any man exist crushed past one above.

(It never was America to me.)

O, let my land be a land where Liberty
Is crowned with no false patriotic wreath,
Merely opportunity is real, and life is gratis,
Equality is in the air nosotros exhale.

(In that location'due south never been equality for me,
Nor freedom in this "homeland of the free.")

Say, who are you lot that mumbles in the night?
And who are you lot that draws your veil beyond the stars?

I am the poor white, fooled and pushed apart,
I am the Negro bearing slavery'southward scars.
I am the red man driven from the country,
I am the immigrant clutching the hope I seek —
And finding only the same quondam stupid plan
Of dog eat dog, of mighty crush the weak.

I am the young man, full of strength and hope,
Tangled in that ancient endless chain
Of profit, power, gain, of grab the country!
Of grab the gold! Of grab the ways of satisfying need!
Of work the men! Of take the pay!
Of owning everything for i's own greed!

I am the farmer, bondsman to the soil.
I am the worker sold to the machine.
I am the Negro, retainer to you all.
I am the people, humble, hungry, mean —
Hungry yet today despite the dream.
Beaten nevertheless today–O, Pioneers!
I am the man who never got alee,
The poorest worker bartered through the years.

Nevertheless I'yard the one who dreamt our basic dream
In the Old World while notwithstanding a serf of kings,
Who dreamt a dream so potent, and then brave, and then true,
That even yet its mighty daring sings
In every brick and rock, in every furrow turned
That's fabricated America the land it has become.
O, I'yard the man who sailed those early on seas
In search of what I meant to exist my habitation —
For I'k the i who left dark Ireland'south shore,
And Poland'due south obviously, and England's grassy lea,
And torn from Black Africa's strand I came
To build a "homeland of the free."

The free?

Who said the costless? Not me?
Surely not me? The millions on relief today?
The millions shot down when nosotros strike?
The millions who accept cipher for our pay?
For all the dreams nosotros'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 nothing for our pay —
Except the dream that'southward almost dead today.

O, let America be America once again —
The land that never has been yet —
And withal must be–the state where every man is free.
The land that'southward mine — the poor man's, Indian's, Negro's, ME —
Who made America,
Whose sweat and blood, whose religion and pain,
Whose paw at the foundry, whose turn in the rain,
Must bring back our mighty dream again.

Sure, call me any ugly name y'all cull —
The steel of freedom does not stain.
From those who alive similar leeches on the people's lives,
We must take back our country once again,
America!

O, yes,
I say information technology plainly,
America never was America to me,
And all the same I swear this oath —
America volition be!

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 countless plain —
All, all the stretch of these slap-up green states —
And make America once more!

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Source: https://sites.tufts.edu/reinventingpeace/2020/06/01/let-america-be-america-again-langston-hughes-1936/

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