Let America Be America Again

“The Dream Keeper” by Langston Hughes (1926)

This poem demonstrates Hughes’s belief in the preciousness of dreams, and he presents himself as the one who keeps and protects them. He promises to wrap the dreams:

In a blue cloud-cloth

Away from the too-rough fingers

Of the world (Lines 6-8).

The poem also suggests the perils that a dream may encounter if it is carried into the harsher realities of the world.

“Harlem” by Langston Hughes (1951)

This poem later appeared in the Selected Poems of Langston Hughes (1959) under the title “Dream Deferred.” It is another take by Hughes on the theme of dreams. It is more pessimistic than other poems on the same topic, and he is likely referring to the decline of Harlem since its heyday in the 1920s. He wonders what happens to a dream—a dream that is about doing or accomplishing something—when it is deferred or delayed, and he offers various possibilities, none of them attractive.

“Share-Croppers” by Langston Hughes (1935)

In this poem, Hughes bemoans the lot of African American sharecroppers. After their work is done, these seasonal farm workers have nothing to show for their labor. The employers take all the money, and the workers are left to go hungry. This has gone on for years, the poet states, and nothing has changed. The sharecroppers are examples of the unfortunate mass of people who are “Hungry yet today despite the [American] dream” (Line 35), as he puts it in “Let America Be America.”