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“I’ve known rivers:

Ancient, dusky rivers.

My soul has grown deep like the rivers.”

Langston Hughes first published his poem “The Negro Speaks of Rivers” in a political magazine during the Harlem Renaissance in the 1920’s. Although the “New Negro” identity that formed during this movement focused on the developing African-American culture exploding in literature, music, and art, many Harlem Renaissance artists incorporated racial history leading up to this African-American stylistic revolution into their art.

“The Negro Speaks of Rivers” is meant to challenge the white culture’s view of African-Americans in the 1920’s as a primitive race by providing geographic and historical links to ancient black civilizations. Hughes includes the Euphrates, the Congo, the Nile, and the Mississippi rivers in his poem in order to demonstrate the rich history of African-Americans. Through the images of the rivers, he illustrates the role that slavery, oppression, and institutional racism played on modern African-American identity. In creating these historical ties, Langston Hughes, along with his fellow Harlem Renaissance artists, exhibited ethnic pride in the emerging black culture.

Langston Hughes references the Mississippi River as the final geographic pinpoint in his poem. By doing so, he alludes to young Abraham Lincoln’s journey to the Mississippi River, where he witnessed the horrors of slavery firsthand. The Mississippi River flows from Minnesota south to the Gulf of Mexico. During the Civil War, the Union and the Confederacy fought for control of the Mississippi River, as it was an essential port for travel and trading. Today, the Mississippi River remains divided into three parts: upper, middle, and lower.

Read more about the Harlem Renaissance and the Mississippi River on Wikipedia.

Read the entire poem on the Poetry Foundation site.

Find The Collected Poems of Langston Hughes at a local library or on Amazon.

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