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We younger Negro artists who create now intend to express our individual dark-skinned selves without fear or shame. If white people are pleased we are glad. If they aren?t it doesn?t matter.

Langston Hughes

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
Life is a big sea full of many fish. I let down my nets and pulled. I’m still pulling.
LANGSTON HUGHES

Big Life Myself
If you want to honor me, give some young boy or girl who’s coming along trying to create arts and write and compose and sing and act and paint and dance and make something out of the beauties of the Negro race-give that child some help.
LANGSTON HUGHES

Beautiful Children Help Honor Man Race Respect Woman Writing Young
When peoples care for you and cry for you, they can straighten out your soul.
LANGSTON HUGHES

Care Cry People Soul Yourself
Yet the ivory gods, And the ebony gods, And the gods of diamond-jade, Are only silly puppet gods That people themselves Have made.
LANGSTON HUGHES

Build Fake God Imagination People
Keep your hand on the plow. Hold on.
LANGSTON HUGHES

Hands Hold On Yourself
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

Earth God Live Right Teaching Togetherness
There is no color line in art.
LANGSTON HUGHES

Art Color Line One Liner
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
Never look for a worm in the apple of your eye.
LANGSTON HUGHES

Eyes Love Mistake Relationship Search Yourself
I dream a world… where wretchedness will hang its head and joy, like a pearl, attends the needs of all mankind. Of such I dream, my world!
LANGSTON HUGHES

Dreams Head Kind Man Myself World
We younger Negro artists who create now intend to express our individual dark-skinned selves without fear or shame. If white people are pleased we are glad. If they aren?t it doesn?t matter.
LANGSTON HUGHES

Artist Creation Darkness Expression Happiness People Skin White Young
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

Drive God Hope Myself Place Time
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
A dream deferred is a dream denied.
LANGSTON HUGHES

Dreams One Liner
I stay cool, and dig all jive, That’s the way I stay alive. My motto, as I live and learn, is Dig and be dug In return.
LANGSTON HUGHES

Alive Learning Myself Return Stay
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
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 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

Company Darkness Eat Growth Laughter Myself Strong
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
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
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
If the government can set aside some spot for a elk to be a elk without being bothered, or a buffalo to be a buffalo without being shot down, there ought to be some place where a Negro can be a Negro without being Jim Crowed.
LANGSTON HUGHES

Animal Be Yourself Equality Government Oppression Place Safety
The past has been a mint Of blood and sorrow. That must not be True of tomorrow.
LANGSTON HUGHES

Blood Past Sorrow Tomorrow True
Everything there is but lovin’ leaves a rust on your old soul.
LANGSTON HUGHES

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

Detail Happiness Pleasure Search Seek
Books -where if people suffered, they suffered in beautiful language, not in monosyllables.
LANGSTON HUGHES

Beautiful Book Language People Suffering

We younger Negro artists who create now intend to express our individual dark-skinned selves without fear or shame. If white people are pleased we are glad. If they aren?t it doesn?t matter.

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We younger Negro artists who create now intend to express our individual dark-skinned selves without fear or shame. If white people are pleased we are glad. If they aren?t it doesn?t matter.

Related Topics

Popular Authors

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