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Let America be America, where equality is in the air we breathe.

Langston Hughes

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Langston Hughes
Age: 66 †
Born: 1901
Born: February 1
Died: 1967
Died: May 22
Biographer
Essayist
Journalist
Novelist
Playwright
Poet
Writer
Joplin
Missouri
James Langston Hughes
James Mercer Langston Hughes
Brotherhood
Equality
Diversity
Breathe
Air
America

More quotes by Langston Hughes

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Well, when Christ comes back this time, I hope He comes back mad His own self. I hope He drives the Jim Crowers out of their high places, every living last one of them from Washington to Texas.
Langston Hughes
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Let the rain kiss you. Let the rain beat upon your head with silver liquid drops. Let the rain sing you a lullaby.
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One of the great difficulties about being a member of a minority race is that so many kindhearted, well-meaning bores gather around to help.
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For my best poems were all written when I felt the worst. When I was happy, I didn't write anything.
Langston Hughes
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Beauty for some provides escape, who gain a happiness in eyeing the gorgeous buttocks of the ape or Autumn sunsets exquisitely dying.
Langston Hughes
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Words Like Freedom There are words like Freedom Sweet and wonderful to say. On my heartstrings freedom sings All day everyday. There are words like Liberty That almost make me cry. If you had known what I know You would know why.
Langston Hughes
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I went down to the river, I set down on the bank. I tried to think but couldn't, So I jumped in and sank.
Langston Hughes
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Because my mouth Is wide with laughter And my throat Is deep with song, You do not think I suffer after I have held my pain So long? Because my mouth Is wide with laughter You do not hear My inner cry? Because my feet Are gay with dancing You do not know I die?
Langston Hughes
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Frosting Freedom Is just frosting On somebody else's Cake-- And so must be Till we Learn how to Bake.
Langston Hughes
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I am the darker brother. They send me to eat in the kitchen when company comes, but I laugh, and eat well, and grow strong.
Langston Hughes
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Harriet Tubman lived to see the harvest.
Langston Hughes
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Misery is when you heard on the radio that the neighborhood you live in is a slum but you always thought it was home.
Langston Hughes
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This is the mountain standing in the way of any true Negro art in America - this urge within the race toward whiteness, the desire to pour racial individuality into the mold of American standardization, and to be as little Negro and as much American as possible.
Langston Hughes
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Negroes - Sweet and docile, Meek, humble, and kind: Beware the day - They change their mind.
Langston Hughes
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I did not believe political directives could be successfully applied to creative writing . . . not to poetry or fiction, which to be valid had to express as truthfully as possible the individual emotions and reactions of the writer.
Langston Hughes
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When poems stop talking about the moon and begin to mention poverty, trade unions, color, color lines and colonies, somebody tells the police.
Langston Hughes
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For poems are like rainbows they escape you quickly.
Langston Hughes
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Let America be the dream the dreamers dreamed - Let it be that great strong land of love Where never kings connive nor tyrants scheme That any man be crushed by one above.
Langston Hughes
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There is no color line in death. I swear to the lord I still can't see Why Democracy means Everybody but me. O, yes, I say it plain, America never was America to me, And yet I swear this oath - America will be! I am the American heartbreak- The rock on which Freedom Stumped its toe.
Langston Hughes
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It is the duty of the younger Negro artist . . . to change through the force of his art that old whispering I want to be white, hidden in the aspirations of his people, to Why should I want to be white? I am a Negro - and beautiful!
Langston Hughes