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

Langston Hughes

Pleasured equally In seeking as in finding, Each detail minding, Old Walt went seeking And finding.
LANGSTON HUGHES

Detail Happiness Pleasure Search Seek
Peace We passed their graves: The dead men there, Winners or losers, Did not care. In the dark They could not see Who had gained The victory.
LANGSTON HUGHES

Death Grave Man Peace Victory
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

Hungry Morning Myself Price
Sometimes a crumb falls From the tables of joy, Sometimes a bone Is flung. To some people Love is given, To others Only heaven.
LANGSTON HUGHES

Heaven Love Time
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

Believe Creative Direction Politics Reaction Success Thinking Writing
Cheap little rhymes A cheap little tune Are sometimes as dangerous As a sliver of the moon.
LANGSTON HUGHES

Cheap Dangerous Moon Silver
But there are certain very practical things American Negro writers can do. And must do. There’s a song that says, “the time ain’t long.” That song is right. Something has got to change in America-and change soon. We must help that change to come.
LANGSTON HUGHES

Change Difference Help Practical Time Transformation Writing
My seeking has been to explain and illuminate the Negro condition in America and obliquely that of all human kind.
LANGSTON HUGHES

Condition Explanation Human Kind Seek
A dream deferred is a dream denied.
LANGSTON HUGHES

Dreams One Liner
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 have discovered in life that there are ways of getting almost anywhere you want to go, if you really want to go.
LANGSTON HUGHES

Discover Life Yourself
Life is for the living. Death is for the dead. Let life be like music. And death a note unsaid.
LANGSTON HUGHES

Death Life Live Music Note
Well, I like to eat, sleep, drink, and be in love. I like to work, read, learn, and understand life.
LANGSTON HUGHES

Drink Eat Learning Life Reading Sleep Understand Work
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
Out of love, No regrets– Though the goodness Be wasted forever. Out of love, No regrets– Though the return Be never.
LANGSTON HUGHES

Forever Goodness Love Regret Return Wasted
It has seemed to me that most people are generally good, in every race and in every country where I have been.
LANGSTON HUGHES

Country Goodness Myself People Race

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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