Let America Be America Again by Langston Hughs

Langston Hughes. | Painting past Winold Reiss (c. 1925) / National Portrait Gallery

As people in the United States marking the anniversary of the Declaration of Independence and the Revolution of 1776,People's World presents the poem, "Permit America be America again," past Langston Hughes (1902-67). Ane of the great American poets and fiction writers, Hughes' work was known for its powerful depiction of the lives of the working grade in our country—particularly the lives of working-class African-Americans. As he once said, "My seeking has been to explicate and illuminate the Negro status in America and obliquely that of all humankind."

In this poem, published in the 1938 International Workers' Lodge pamphlet,A New Song, Hughes issues a phone call for the nation to live up to its great ideals of freedom and equality. He looks to a time when America will exist a land where liberty is not crowned with a "false patriotic wreath," but rather becomes a place where "opportunity is real" and "equality is the air we breathe."

In our own time, when demagogues endeavour to carve up people using nationalism and endeavor to convince united states that America needs to be "great once more," it is appropriate to plough to Hughes. He reminds us of the dream of what America could exist, but not withal is.

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

(America never was America to me.)

Let America be the dream the dreamers dreamed –
Let it be that great potent state of love
Where never kings connive nor tyrants scheme
That any man be crushed by one above.

(It never was America to me.)

O, permit my land exist a land where Liberty
Is crowned with no false patriotic wreath,
But opportunity is real, and life is complimentary,
Equality is in the air we exhale.

(There's never been equality for me, Nor freedom in this "homeland of the free.")

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

I am the poor white, fooled and pushed apart,
I am the Negro begetting slavery's scars.
I am the red man driven from the state,
I am the immigrant clutching the hope I seek-

And finding only the aforementioned onetime stupid plan
Of dog consume dog, of mighty crush the weak.

I am the young man, full of strength and promise,
Tangled in that ancient endless concatenation

Of profit, power, gain, of grab the country!
Of grab the gold! Of catch the ways of satisfying demand!
Of work the men! Of take the pay!
Of owning everything for one'southward own greed!

I am the farmer, bondsman to the soil.
I am the worker sold to the machine.
I am the Negro, servant to you all.
I am the people, humble, hungry, mean –
Hungry nevertheless today despite the dream.

Beaten nevertheless today – O, Pioneers!
I am the human who never got ahead,
The poorest worker bartered through the years.

Even so I'g the one who dreamt our basic dream
In the Old World while still a serf of kings,
Who dreamt a dream then potent, and so dauntless, so true,
That even yet its mighty daring sings
In every brick and stone, in every furrow turned
That's made America the state it has become.

O, I'1000 the human being who sailed those early seas
In search of what I meant to exist my habitation –
For I'm the ane who left dark Ireland'southward shore,
And Poland's evidently, 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 gratis? 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 nosotros've sung
And all the hopes we've held
And all the flags we've hung,
The millions who accept nothing for our pay –
Except the dream that'due south almost dead today.

O, allow America be America once more –
The land that never has been yet –
And still must be – the land whereevery man is gratis.
The land that's mine-the poor homo's, Indian's, Negro's, ME –
Who fabricated America,
Whose sweat and blood, whose religion and pain,
Whose hand at the foundry, whose turn in the rain,
Must bring back our mighty dream again.

Sure, call me any ugly name you cull –
The steel of liberty does not stain.
From those who live like leeches on the people'south lives,
Nosotros must take back our state again,

America!

O, yes,
I say information technology manifestly,
America never was America to me,
And yet I swear this oath –
America volition be!

Out of the rack and ruin of our gangster death,
The rape and rot of graft, and stealth, and lies,
Nosotros, 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 over again!

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Correspondent

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Source: https://www.peoplesworld.org/article/langston-hughes-let-america-be-america-again/

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