Langston Hughes Research Paper

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Langston Hughes’s Dream for Racial Equality Racism, prejudice and discrimination are some words that have harassed black people for a long period of time dating back to the arrival of Africans in America. As laws and times have changed, racism generally has lessened, and it has become increasingly difficult for many people to identify what racism is and how it shows up in today’s society. This concept, however, unlike today painted a different picture during The Harlem Renaissance Era. The Harlem Renaissance was an artistic and cultural movement in New York’s Harlem borough during the 1920’s and 1930’s when African-American music, literature, art, and philosophy was revealed to the rest of the world. The movement began shortly after World…show more content…
Through poetry, Langston Hughes questioned the racial equality of American society, and he would become an important figure in the fight for equal rights because his poetry was his way of voicing his concerns and performing his nonviolent protest. Racial equality was often used in emphasis and used greatly in his literature, and many of his poems that focused on equality came from his own personal experiences and showed his main ideas in overcoming the race issue, which changed throughout his life. For Hughes, becoming an equal in not only his works but in society as well was very important in terms of understanding identity as a human being and getting the respect he…show more content…
Hughes wrote lots of music as well and was very into jazz and this was around when that sort of genre of music was at its prime. But in case one did not know, the great depression was one of the worse things to happen to Harlem it dragged Harlem's residents into poverty and great disappointment. Harlem’s residents' dreams disappear like a dream deferred and never seem to return. Musicians sing about their misfortunes, and opportunistic men prey on gullible women. Harlem, then, comes to represent everything America has to offer as well as everything that it has long denied its black citizens. Langston Hughes understood that the “American Experience” was not one in the same for blacks as it is for whites. African Americans were oppressed, discriminated against, and legally classified as low-class citizens. African Americans struggled as slaves for decades and then as poor laborers, always without access to the American Dream. However, Hughes believed that African Americans deserved equality and presented a vision of America as a racially equal country; he accepted that the path would not be easy, but emphasized that the struggle for equality was worth fighting for every single

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