Poems Like Let America Be America Again
Hundreds of people gathered yesterday at North Central University in Minneapolis for a memorial service for George Floyd. His expiry, at the hands of a white police officeholder, has ignited demonstrations all over the state - and the world - against police force brutality and systematic racism. KNAU listener Amber Jones has been searching for the right words to describe her profound assortment of feelings well-nigh what is happening in the United states of america right at present, and how that fits into her feel as a woman of color in America. In this calendar week's Poetry Fri segment, Amber delivers a powerful reading of Langston Hughes' verse form Let America Exist America Again, originally published in 1936.
AJ: My name is Amber Jones. I am a longtime Flagstaff resident and a member of the Coconino Canton African Diaspora Informational Council.
With everything that'due south been going on the last few months, and particularly in the final 2 weeks since George Floyd'due south death, I've been struggling to effigy out how to respond. I feel like I have more of a responsibleness being a woman of colour, but I don't know what to do, what kind of activeness to exercise to endeavour and change things. And I feel like I'm non alone in this. At that place patently needs to be change, only how do we do that?
Credit Amber Jones
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And then, I've been struggling to process my feelings over the last two weeks. And, I constitute Langston Hughes – i of the most well-known figures of the Harlem Renaissance – I found his poem Let America Be America Again. I feel like this phrase is heard from so many different people at so many different times, "Make America Great Once more." Simply what does that really hateful? It ways unlike things to different groups of people.
Every bit a adult female of color, I go through this world very differently from some of my friends, and I see it. I see, similar, in that location's this level of confidence you lot tin go through, but when I go out, I don't know what volition meet me…directed acrimony or fright. I merely don't know. I get looks and constant questions of, 'what are you?' The abiding fight to prove my worth every unmarried day. As a woman and as a adult female of color I have to exist constantly proving myself.
Only back to the poem, and back to Let America Exist America Again…what exactly does that mean? It'due south hard, merely not everybody has admission to that American Dream in the aforementioned way. The American Dream, y'all know, you can pull yourself up by your bootstraps if you work hard enough. You tin attain the American Dream of the house, and the two cars, and the whatever…wealth, fame, fortune. But, I don't take that aforementioned correct.
It's like Martin Luther King, Jr. said. I mean, yous can't tell a bootless man to pull themselves up by their bootstraps. There are all these external factors that get into it, and influences. It's and then very complicated and so hard. But we have to do something about it, or we're non going to have equality for all.
Langston Hughes penned it beautifully in Allow America Be America Again.
Allow America exist America once again.
Allow it be the dream information technology used to exist.
Let information technology be the pioneer on the plain
Seeking a habitation where he himself is gratis.
Credit Amber Jones
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(America never was America to me.)
Permit America be the dream the dreamers dreamed—
Permit it exist that great potent land of love
Where never kings connive nor tyrants scheme
That any man be crushed by ane in a higher place.
(It never was America to me.)
O, let my land be a land where Liberty
Is crowned with no faux patriotic wreath,
But opportunity is existent, and life is costless,
Equality is in the air we breathe.
(There's never been equality for me,
Nor freedom in this "homeland of the free.")
Say, who are yous that mumbles in the nighttime?
And who are you that draws your veil across the stars?
I am the poor white, fooled and pushed autonomously,
I am the Negro begetting slavery's scars.
I am the ruby-red human being driven from the land,
I am the immigrant clutching the hope I seek—
And finding only the same old stupid program
Of dog eat canis familiaris, of mighty shell the weak.
I am the young human, total of strength and hope,
Tangled in that ancient endless chain
Of profit, power, gain, of grab the country!
Of catch the gilded! Of take hold of the ways of satisfying need!
Of piece of work the men! Of accept the pay!
Of owning everything for one's own greed!
I am the farmer, bondsman to the soil.
I am the worker sold to the automobile.
I am the Negro, servant to y'all all.
I am the people, apprehensive, hungry, mean—
Hungry even so today despite the dream.
Browbeaten all the same today—O, Pioneers!
I am the human being who never got alee,
The poorest worker bartered through the years.
Yet I'm the one who dreamt our basic dream
In the Old World while still a serf of kings,
Who dreamt a dream so potent, so dauntless, and then true,
That even yet its mighty daring sings
In every brick and stone, in every furrow turned
That'due south made America the land it has become.
O, I'm the human being who sailed those early seas
In search of what I meant to be my dwelling—
For I'g the one who left dark Republic of ireland's shore,
And Poland's manifestly, and England's grassy lea,
And torn from Blackness Africa's strand I came
To build a "homeland of the free."
Credit biography.com
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The gratis?
Who said the gratuitous? Not me?
Surely non me? The millions on relief today?
The millions shot down when we strike?
The millions who take aught for our pay?
For all the dreams we'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 accept nothing for our pay—
Except the dream that'southward almost expressionless today.
O, let America exist America again—
The state that never has been however—
And yet must be—the land where every homo is free.
The country that's mine—the poor man's, Indian's, Negro'due south, ME—
Who made America,
Whose sweat and claret, whose faith and pain,
Whose hand at the foundry, whose plow in the rain,
Must bring back our mighty dream once again.
Sure, call me any ugly name yous cull—
The steel of freedom does not stain.
From those who live like leeches on the people's lives,
We must take back our land once again,
America!
O, yes,
I say it plain,
America never was America to me,
And yet I swear this oath—
America will be!
Out of the rack and ruin of our gangster decease,
The rape and rot of graft, and stealth, and lies,
We, the people, must redeem
The state, the mines, the plants, the rivers.
The mountains and the endless plain—
All, all the stretch of these great green states—
And brand America over again!
(Music: John Coltrane and Duke Ellington - In a Sentimental Mood)
Verse Friday is produced by KNAU's Gillian Ferris. If you have an thought for a segment, drib her an email at Gillian.Ferris@nau.edu.
Source: https://www.knau.org/knau-and-arizona-news/2020-06-05/poetry-friday-let-america-be-america-again
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