Langston Hughes American Dream

“Hold fast to dreams, for if dreams die, life is a broken-winged bird that cannot fly.” Langston Hughes, a prominent literary figure in the early twentieth century, once wrote this in his poem “Dreams.” Being a young black man in Great-Depression-era America, he knew well what it meant to have a dream broken by social and economic issues. To his advantage, he was fortunate to possess a strong voice to express his and his people’s opinions. In his poetry, Langston Hughes wrote of twentieth-century, African-American issues, such as embracing identity, overcoming inequality, and pursuing the American Dream, which characterized the literary movement of the Harlem Renaissance.
For centuries, society did not treat African Americans as true American
Hughes’s people were incapable of easily living their lives because of the hatred and inequality they experienced daily. Although the Constitution proclaimed America to be a “free” country, freedom was far from the truth. “The Harlem Renaissance succeeded in depicting the Negro as an individual who was capable of making great achievements if given the opportunity. However, continued injustices against Negroes forced black intellectuals into the harsh realization that prejudice against Negroes was deeply rooted in American society” (Rhodes). In “Mother to Son,” the speaker, the mother, asserts her struggles to climb the life that “ain’t been no crystal stair”: “For a woman of such determination to be kept this poor indicates that hardship is not a moral issue, but is related to an external cause, such as the limits that are put on people because of their race” (“Mother to Son” 180). Numerous black Americans found that they had little control as a minority; fortunately, literature like Hughes’s fearlessly inspired a movement that would change their neglected, out-of-reach dreams into
To the outside world, America was the land of promise; to those inside, factors like the Great Depression and, to the black community, restraint upon freedom, tarnished this belief. The bleak reality stirred those like Langston Hughes to write about this falsity. His poem “Harlem” is a retort to these so-called “dreams” from a perspective that sees this country as not one where they could come true but rather as one which denies people of African descent their equitable freedom (“Harlem” 64). In this poem, Hughes questions “what happens to a dream deferred.” The final line forecasts that although this issue is primarily affecting people of his community, eventually it will “explode” and affect people of all communities. Eventually, as every American knows well, this becomes true during the Civil Rights Movement of the 1950s and 60s, for their struggle comes to a climax and brings the white community into the heart of