Literary Contribution
In the decades immediately following World War I, huge numbers of African Americans migrated to the industrial North from the economically depressed and agrarian South. In cities such as Chicago, Washington, DC, and New York City, the recently migrated sought and found (to some degree) new opportunities, both economic and artistic. African Americans were encouraged to celebrate their heritage and to become "The New Negro” a term coined in 1925 by sociologist and critic Alain LeRoy Locke in his influential book of the same name. However, many black critics at that time would say that Langston Hughes did the opposite. Hughes refused to “sell-out” to escape the stigma of being a black American when others chose to downplay their heritage. As he wrote in “The Negro Artist”:
"We younger Negro artists who create now intend to express our individual dark-skinned selves without fear or shame. If white people are pleased we are glad. If they are not, it doesn't matter. We know we are beautiful. And ugly too” (Chasar).
Hughes celebrated his African-American heritage in each of his works, constantly praising the highs and the lows; never leaving anything out or shying away from the unsavory. Before it was a catchphrase, Hughes knew that black was beautiful. In “Harlem Sweeties” he celebrated the tones of black skin: "Molasses taffy/ Coffee and cream/ Licorice, clove, cinnamon/ To a honey-brown dream." After centuries of poets who described darkness as insidious and foreboding, Hughes recast it as beautiful in “Dream Variations”: "Then rest at cool evening/ Beneath a tall tree/ While night comes on gently,/ Dark like me/ That is my dream!" (Chasar). His goal was to shed the internalized racism and loathing that he felt too many African-Americans possessed. "To my mind, it is the duty of the younger Negro artist, if he accepts any duties at all from outsiders, to change through the force of his art that old whispering 'I want to be white,' hidden in the aspirations of his people, to 'Why should I want to be white? I am a Negro—and beautiful,'" (Gohar).
Works Cited
Chasar, Mike. "The Sounds of Black Laughter and the Harlem Renaissance: Claude McKay, Sterling Brown, Langston Hughes." American Literature 80.1 (2008): 57-81. Academic Search Complete. EBSCO. Web. 29 April 2011.
GOHAR, SADDIK MOHAMED. "Subverting the History of Slavery and Colonization in the Poetry of M. AI-Fayturi and Langston Hughes." Western Journal of Black Studies 32.1 (2008): 16-29. Academic Search Complete. EBSCO. Web. 29 April 2011.
Lowney, John. "Langston Hughes and the `Nonsense' of Bebop." American Literature 72.2 (2000): 357. Academic Search Complete. EBSCO. Web. 2 May 2011
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