Who Was Langston Hughes Analysis

In Eric Sundquist’s essay, “Who was Langston Hughes”, we get an insight on Langston Hughes’s background and some of the themes of his main works of poetry. In this essay, I will use one of those poems, “Open Letter to the South”, and focus on race equality. Throughout Sundquist’s essay, we learn that Hughes main focus in most of his poems was racial protest. It is important to understand that protest means a statement or action that expresses disapproval or objection towards something. During the time period in which Hughes lived, almost everything was racially divided. African Americans would have their rights taken away from them or trampled on simply because they were of a different skin color. Discriminating one because of his or her …show more content…
Unlike now, back then there weren 't many laws restricting this or people to stop this horrible thing from happening. Lynching was commonly carried out by a mob and it was to kill someone for an alleged offense without a legal trial. As a result, many African Americans were lynched for petty offences that were not of serious matter. Sundquist points out one of Hughes’s anti-lynching poems called “Christ in Alabama.” This poem is really stark and to the point and I feel like there was no other way of saying what he said. Today, lynching is not something that happens as there is laws in place and people that are more willing to stop these type of things from happening. Back then, one could just watch in horror as it happened and not be willing to do anything about it without them having to worry that they might have the same fate if the intervene. In the time we live in today, we live knowing that each and every one of us has rights and if they’re violated, we can fight against it. African Americans then had almost no say in anything that happened to them as the odds were always against …show more content…
In “Open Letter to the South”, Hughes suggests that we look past the color of skin and become one. That together we can become stronger “to kill the lies of color that keep the rich enthroned.” He says that the rich “drive us to the time-clock and the plow.” That they want us to feel helpless, alone, and stupid and keep it race against race. Some might argue that this still goes on today and I would agree. One of the strongest lines for me in this poem is “You are my brother, black or white, You are my sister-now-today!” To many of us today, color doesn’t mean anything and we are able to look past that and get along with each other. It was not too long ago that everything was segregated. With that being said I think that it is mostly the past generation that actually experienced segregation that can be stuck with that mindset and it is up to us to end colorism. Don’t get me wrong there’s plenty of young people that discriminate too, but I think that depending on how we are raised to view others is a major factor in what type of person we become. So let 's you and I, be the ones to end colorism. Let color be just that, a