Poem of Let America Be America Again
Hundreds of people gathered yesterday at North Cardinal University in Minneapolis for a memorial service for George Floyd. His decease, at the easily of a white constabulary officeholder, has ignited demonstrations all over the state - and the globe - against police brutality and systematic racism. KNAU listener Bister Jones has been searching for the correct words to draw her profound array of feelings virtually what is happening in the United States right now, and how that fits into her experience as a woman of color in America. In this week's Poesy Friday segment, Amber delivers a powerful reading of Langston Hughes' poem Let America Be America Again, originally published in 1936.
AJ: My name is Amber Jones. I am a longtime Flagstaff resident and a fellow member of the Coconino County African Diaspora Advisory Council.
With everything that'southward been going on the concluding few months, and particularly in the final 2 weeks since George Floyd'south death, I've been struggling to effigy out how to respond. I feel like I have more of a responsibility beingness a woman of colour, but I don't know what to practise, what kind of activity to practise to try and change things. And I feel like I'yard not lone in this. There obviously needs to be modify, merely how do we do that?
Credit Amber Jones
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And so, I've been struggling to process my feelings over the last 2 weeks. And, I constitute Langston Hughes – one of the nearly well-known figures of the Harlem Renaissance – I constitute his poem Let America Be America Again. I feel like this phrase is heard from so many unlike people at so many dissimilar times, "Make America Great Again." But what does that really mean? Information technology ways dissimilar things to different groups of people.
As a adult female of colour, I become through this world very differently from some of my friends, and I run into information technology. I come across, like, there'southward this level of confidence yous can become through, but when I become out, I don't know what will come across me…directed anger or fear. I merely don't know. I get looks and abiding questions of, 'what are you?' The abiding fight to testify my worth every unmarried solar day. As a woman and as a woman of color I have to exist constantly proving myself.
But back to the poem, and back to Allow America Be America Again…what exactly does that hateful? It's difficult, but non everybody has access to that American Dream in the same way. The American Dream, y'all know, y'all tin can pull yourself up past your bootstraps if y'all work difficult enough. You can attain the American Dream of the house, and the ii cars, and the whatever…wealth, fame, fortune. Only, I don't have that same right.
It's similar Martin Luther Rex, Jr. said. I mean, y'all can't tell a bootless man to pull themselves up by their bootstraps. At that place are all these external factors that go into it, and influences. It's so very complicated and so hard. But we have to do something near it, or we're not going to have equality for all.
Langston Hughes penned it beautifully in Let America Be America Again.
Let America be America again.
Let it exist the dream it used to be.
Let it be the pioneer on the evidently
Seeking a domicile where he himself is free.
Credit Bister Jones
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(America never was America to me.)
Let America be the dream the dreamers dreamed—
Let it be that great strong state of honey
Where never kings connive nor tyrants scheme
That any man be crushed by one higher up.
(It never was America to me.)
O, let my land be a country where Freedom
Is crowned with no false patriotic wreath,
But opportunity is real, and life is gratuitous,
Equality is in the air nosotros breathe.
(In that location's never been equality for me,
Nor freedom in this "homeland of the complimentary.")
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'due south scars.
I am the cerise man driven from the state,
I am the immigrant clutching the hope I seek—
And finding only the same former stupid plan
Of canis familiaris eat dog, of mighty crush the weak.
I am the young man, full of strength and hope,
Tangled in that ancient endless chain
Of profit, power, proceeds, of grab the country!
Of take hold of the gold! Of take hold of the means of satisfying need!
Of work the men! Of take the pay!
Of owning everything for i's own greed!
I am the farmer, bondservant 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 however today despite the dream.
Browbeaten withal today—O, Pioneers!
I am the man who never got ahead,
The poorest worker bartered through the years.
All the same I'thou the i who dreamt our basic dream
In the Old World while still a serf of kings,
Who dreamt a dream so strong, and so brave, and so true,
That even all the same its mighty daring sings
In every brick and stone, in every furrow turned
That'southward made America the land it has go.
O, I'chiliad the man who sailed those early seas
In search of what I meant to exist my dwelling house—
For I'1000 the 1 who left dark Ireland's shore,
And Poland's plain, and England's grassy lea,
And torn from Black Africa's strand I came
To build a "homeland of the costless."
Credit biography.com
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The free?
Who said the gratis? Not me?
Surely not me? The millions on relief today?
The millions shot down when we strike?
The millions who have 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 nosotros've hung,
The millions who have null for our pay—
Except the dream that'south almost dead today.
O, let America be America again—
The state that never has been nevertheless—
And still must be—the state where every man is free.
The country that'southward mine—the poor homo'southward, Indian'south, Negro's, ME—
Who made America,
Whose sweat and claret, whose religion and hurting,
Whose mitt at the foundry, whose plow in the rain,
Must bring dorsum our mighty dream again.
Sure, call me any ugly name you choose—
The steel of freedom does not stain.
From those who live like leeches on the people'south lives,
We must have back our land over again,
America!
O, aye,
I say it evidently,
America never was America to me,
And still I swear this oath—
America will be!
Out of the rack and ruin of our gangster expiry,
The rape and rot of graft, and stealth, and lies,
We, the people, must redeem
The country, the mines, the plants, the rivers.
The mountains and the endless plain—
All, all the stretch of these great green states—
And brand America once more!
(Music: John Coltrane and Knuckles Ellington - In a Sentimental Mood)
Poetry Friday is produced by KNAU'due south Gillian Ferris. If yous have an idea for a segment, drop her an e-mail at Gillian.Ferris@nau.edu.
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Source: https://www.knau.org/knau-and-arizona-news/2020-06-05/poetry-friday-let-america-be-america-again
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