Let America Be Great Again Intersectionality

Allow America Exist America 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 together with those struggling against the racism that has marked this land throughout its history. In laurels of all those today and over the hundreds of years who have refused to accept the status quo, we share this poem past Langston Hughes, an inspiring condemnation of injustice and a need for change.

Langston Hughes (1902 – 1967) was an American author of poetry, plays, novels, short stories and essay—i of the brilliant writers to emerge as part of the Harlem Renaissance. In 1936, he published "Let America Be America Once again," a poem that articulates a vision of a country that excluded his ain community of African-Americans, among others–the Native populations and the poor–and that transforms an illusion of past greatness into a call to activeness to forge the state we would withal want to see.

Let America Be America Again—Langston Hughes, 1936

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

(America never was America to me.)

Let America be the dream the dreamers dreamed —
Allow it be that great strong land of honey
Where never kings connive nor tyrants scheme
That any man exist crushed by ane to a higher place.

(It never was America to me.)

O, let my land be a country where Liberty
Is crowned with no false patriotic wreath,
But opportunity is real, and life is free,
Equality is in the air nosotros breathe.

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

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

I am the poor white, fooled and pushed autonomously,
I am the Negro bearing slavery'due south scars.
I am the ruddy man driven from the state,
I am the immigrant clutching the hope I seek —
And finding but the same one-time stupid plan
Of dog eat domestic dog, of mighty crush the weak.

I am the young homo, full of strength and hope,
Tangled in that aboriginal endless concatenation
Of turn a profit, power, gain, of take hold of the land!
Of grab the gold! Of catch the ways of satisfying demand!
Of piece of work the men! Of take the pay!
Of owning everything for one's own greed!

I am the farmer, bondservant to the soil.
I am the worker sold to the motorcar.
I am the Negro, retainer to you all.
I am the people, humble, hungry, mean —
Hungry withal today despite the dream.
Beaten yet today–O, Pioneers!
I am the human being who never got ahead,
The poorest worker bartered through the years.

Notwithstanding I'm the one who dreamt our basic dream
In the Sometime World while withal a serf of kings,
Who dreamt a dream so strong, so brave, so truthful,
That even yet its mighty daring sings
In every brick and stone, in every furrow turned
That's made America the land it has go.
O, I'm the man who sailed those early seas
In search of what I meant to be my home —
For I'm the one who left dark Ireland's shore,
And Poland'southward plainly, and England's grassy lea,
And torn from Blackness Africa's strand I came
To build a "homeland of the free."

The gratuitous?

Who said the free? Non me?
Surely not me? The millions on relief today?
The millions shot down when we strike?
The millions who take 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 nix for our pay —
Except the dream that's near expressionless today.

O, permit America be America once again —
The country that never has been yet —
And notwithstanding must be–the land where every man is gratis.
The land that'southward mine — the poor man's, Indian'south, Negro's, ME —
Who fabricated America,
Whose sweat and blood, whose faith and pain,
Whose mitt at the foundry, whose plow in the pelting,
Must bring back our mighty dream once more.

Sure, call me any ugly name yous choose —
The steel of liberty does not stain.
From those who live like leeches on the people's lives,
We must have back our land once again,
America!

O, yes,
I say information technology plain,
America never was America to me,
And nonetheless 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,
We, the people, must redeem
The land, the mines, the plants, the rivers.
The mountains and the countless obviously —
All, all the stretch of these great dark-green states —
And make America again!

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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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