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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
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Langston Hughes
Age: 66 †
Born: 1901
Born: February 1
Died: 1967
Died: May 22
Biographer
Essayist
Journalist
Novelist
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Poet
Writer
Joplin
Missouri
James Langston Hughes
James Mercer Langston Hughes
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More quotes by Langston Hughes
Summer was made to give you a taste of what hell is like. Winter was made for landladies to charge high rents and keep cold radiators and make a fortune off of poor tenants.
Langston Hughes
They [the police] learned something from them Harlem riots. They used to beat your head right in public, but now they only beat it after they get you down to the station house.
Langston Hughes
Negroes - Sweet and docile, Meek, humble, and kind: Beware the day - They change their mind.
Langston Hughes
When I were a young man, I used to play baseball and steal bases just like Jackie Robinson. If the empire would rule me out, I would get mad and hit the empire.
Langston Hughes
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
Frosting Freedom Is just frosting On somebody else's Cake-- And so must be Till we Learn how to Bake.
Langston Hughes
I felt very bad in Washington. . . I didn't like my job, and I didn't know what was going to happen to me, and I was cold and half-hungry, so I wrote a great many poems.
Langston Hughes
I am a Negro: Black as the night is black, Black like the depths of my Africa.
Langston Hughes
A dream deferred is a dream denied.
Langston Hughes
Politics in any country in the world is dangerous. For the poet, politics in any country had better be disguised as poetry. Politics can be the graveyard of the poet. And only poetry can be his resurrection.
Langston Hughes
Let America be America, where equality is in the air we breathe.
Langston Hughes
Democracy will not come Today, this year Nor ever Through compromise and fear.
Langston Hughes
Wear it Like a banner For the proud? Not like a shroud.
Langston Hughes
This morning I paid seventy cents for two little old dried-up slivers of bacon and one cockeyed egg. It took me till noon to get my appetite back.
Langston Hughes
Teach us all to do right, Lord, please, and to get along together with that atom bomb on this earth because I do not want it to fall on me-nor Thee-nor anybody living. Amen!
Langston Hughes
Out of the rack and ruin of our gangster death, The rape and rot of graft, and stealth, and lies, We, the people, must redeem The land, the mines, the plants, the rivers. The mountains and the endless plain-- All, all the stretch of these great green states-- And make America again!
Langston Hughes
The calm, Cool face of the river, Asked me for a kiss
Langston Hughes
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
For my best poems were all written when I felt the worst. When I was happy, I didn't write anything.
Langston Hughes
There's a certain amount of traveling in a dream deferred.
Langston Hughes
