There are times where people feel alone, desperate, and unable to escape the poor living conditions they are in. An example of this was for African Americans during the Great Migration. The great migration was when mass amounts of African Americans moved north from the south. This was due to Jim Crow segregation that was prevalent in the south. Jim Cow were laws that were put in place after the Civil War legalizing segregation between blacks and whites. The laws stated that blacks and whites could have separate facilities but they needed to be equal. The separate facilities were far from equal. These segregation laws were ruled legal by a supreme court decision in 1896 in Plessy v. Ferguson that separate facilities for both whites and blacks.
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The first line of Langston Hughes’ poem “Harlem” is an example of people having their dreams unfulfilled. “What happens to a dream deferred?”(“Harlem”). This quote is Langston Hughes asking what happens when your dreams are deferred or put off due to something. One of the reasons that people could not fulfill their dreams was the racism that was common in the north. A large portion of the people that moved north hoped that they would be able to secure high paying jobs and live in nicer conditions than in the south were disappointed. They had to defer their dreams as well as hope life would get better at a later time. Hughes also had this line at the end of “Good Morning.” This poem shows one of the struggles that African Americans faced during the great …show more content…
“but the trains are late./The gates open—/Yet there’s bars at each gate.” These lines demonstrate that people were arriving too late to be successful. The open gates are favorable jobs that are available but the bars at each gate represent the racism that African Americans faced. Even though they were able to do the jobs the white men were doing on account of the color of their skin they were denied the jobs. The rejection due to skin color was a common theme both during the great migration as well as in the poems of Langston Hughes.
These poems provide important insight into the suffering African Americans felt both during the Great Migration plus the period after. This was demonstrated in “Letter,” “Good morning,” and “Harlem.” It is important for people to understand how society was in reality along with the suffering that African Americans went through during this time period. It is important to know this so that it doesn’t happen to another group of
The first line of Langston Hughes’ poem “Harlem” is an example of people having their dreams unfulfilled. “What happens to a dream deferred?”(“Harlem”). This quote is Langston Hughes asking what happens when your dreams are deferred or put off due to something. One of the reasons that people could not fulfill their dreams was the racism that was common in the north. A large portion of the people that moved north hoped that they would be able to secure high paying jobs and live in nicer conditions than in the south were disappointed. They had to defer their dreams as well as hope life would get better at a later time. Hughes also had this line at the end of “Good Morning.” This poem shows one of the struggles that African Americans faced during the great …show more content…
“but the trains are late./The gates open—/Yet there’s bars at each gate.” These lines demonstrate that people were arriving too late to be successful. The open gates are favorable jobs that are available but the bars at each gate represent the racism that African Americans faced. Even though they were able to do the jobs the white men were doing on account of the color of their skin they were denied the jobs. The rejection due to skin color was a common theme both during the great migration as well as in the poems of Langston Hughes.
These poems provide important insight into the suffering African Americans felt both during the Great Migration plus the period after. This was demonstrated in “Letter,” “Good morning,” and “Harlem.” It is important for people to understand how society was in reality along with the suffering that African Americans went through during this time period. It is important to know this so that it doesn’t happen to another group of