black
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Why should I want to be white? I am a Negro – and beautiful!

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

Fortune Hell Summer Taste Winter Yourself
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

Freedom Heart Myself Sing Wonderful Word
Cheap little rhymes A cheap little tune Are sometimes as dangerous As a sliver of the moon.
LANGSTON HUGHES

Cheap Dangerous Moon Silver
We Negro writers, just by being black, have been on the blacklist all our lives. Censorship for us begins at the color line.
LANGSTON HUGHES

Beginning Black Live Oppression Ourselves Poet Writing
Go home and write / a page tonight. / And let that page come out of you – / Then, it will be true.
LANGSTON HUGHES

Home Page Poet True Writing Yourself
For poems are like rainbows; they escape you quickly.
LANGSTON HUGHES

Escape Poem Quick Yourself
For my best poems were all written when I felt the worst. When I was happy, I didn’t write anything.
LANGSTON HUGHES

Best Feeling Happiness Myself Poem Worst Writing
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

Home Live Misery Radio Thinking Yourself
I’ve known rivers: I’ve known rivers ancient as the world and older than the flow of human blood in human veins. My soul has grown deep like the rivers.
LANGSTON HUGHES

Deep Growth Human Old River Soul World
I tire so of hearing people say, Let things take their course. Tomorrow is another day. I do not need my freedom when I’m dead. I cannot live on tomorrow’s bread.
LANGSTON HUGHES

Course Death Freedom Live Myself People
I do not want no pretty woman. First thing you know, you fall in love with her-then you got to kill somebody about her. She’ll make you so jealous, you’ll bust!
LANGSTON HUGHES

Fall In Love Herself Jealous Woman Yourself
LIBERTY! FREEDOM! DEMOCRACY! True anyhow no matter how many Liars use those words.
LANGSTON HUGHES

Democracy Freedom Liberty True Word
A world I dream where black or white, Whatever race you be, Will share the bounties of the Earth And every man is free.
LANGSTON HUGHES

Black Dreams Earth Freedom Man Race White World Yourself
An artist must be free to choose what he does, certainly, but he must also never be afraid to do what he might choose.
LANGSTON HUGHES

Afraid Artist Choice Fear Freedom
I wish the rent Was heaven sent.
LANGSTON HUGHES

Heaven Myself
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

Beginning Color Moon Poem Police Stop Talk

Why should I want to be white? I am a Negro – and beautiful!

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Why should I want to be white? I am a Negro – and beautiful!

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