The Political Background of "Harlem"

The poem “Harlem” by Langston Hughes was directed towards the African American population living in Harlem, New York, who were often denied the right to fulfill their dreams because of the prejudice against their skin color. In 1951–the year of the poem's publication–frustration characterized the mood of American blacks. The Civil War in the previous century had liberated them from slavery, and federal laws had granted them the right to vote, the right to own property, and so on. However, continuing prejudice against blacks, as well as laws passed since the Civil War, relegated them to second-class citizenship. Court and legislative decisions later emasculated the legal protection of blacks. For example, the U.S. Supreme Court ruled in 1896 (Plessy v. Ferguson) that it was legal to provide "separate but equal" accommodations for passengers of Louisiana's railroads. This ruling set a precedent that led to segregated schools, restaurants, parks, libraries, and so on. Access to other facilities, such as buses, required them to take a back seat, literally, to whites. Meanwhile, hate groups inflicted inhuman treatment on innocent blacks, including brutal beatings. Lynchings of innocent blacks were not uncommon. As life in the South became increasingly difficult, African Americans began to migrate North in great number. Those expanding northern communities confronted familiar problems—racism, poverty, police abuse and official hostility— but these were in a new setting, where the men could vote (and women, too, after 1920), and possibilities for political action were far broader than in the South. Many in the Harlem Renaissance were part of the Great Migration out of the South into the negro neighborhoods of the North and Midwest. The Harlem Renaissance refers to the flowering of African American cultural and intellectual life during the 1920s and 1930s. Characterizing the Harlem Renaissance was an overt racial pride that came to be represented in the idea of the New Negro, who through intellect and production of literature, art, and music could challenge the pervading racism and stereotypes to promote progressive or socialist politics, and racial and social integration. The creation of art and literature would serve to "uplift" the race. Therefore, in his work he confronted racial stereotypes, protested social conditions, and expanded African America’s image of itself; a “people’s poet” who sought to reeducate both audience and artist by lifting the theory of the black aesthetic into reality.