“I Too Sing America” and “Still, I Rise” have more in common than one might think. Both poems address the fight for equality and aim to inspire people to take action. However, each poem carries a different tone: while one is ambitious, the other is triumphant. The message in “I Too Sing America” is very direct and easily identifiable, unlike “Still, I Rise” which could be considered to have a double meaning. Langston Hughes wrote “I Too Sing America” as a response to Walt Whitman’s “I Hear America Singing.” At the time when Hughes wrote “I Too Sing America”,whites were heavily discriminatory toward African Americans and many still considered them to be property. Slavery had been abolished decades before, but many African Americans still found
