Langston Hughes
Sometimes I wish the public were equally aware of the men of our race in the cultural fields. You, for instance, have you ever bought a book by a Negro writer?Collection: Book
Negro writers, just by being black, have been on the blacklist all our lives. Do you know that there are libraries in our country that will not stock a book by a Negro writer, not even as a gift? There are towns where Negro newspapers and magazines cannot be sold except surreptitiously. There are American magazines that have never published anything by Negroes. There are film studios that have never hired a Negro writer. Censorship for us begins at the color line.Collection: Country
Love is a naked shadow, On a gnarled and naked tree.Collection: Love Is
These feet have walked ten thousand miles working for white folks and another ten thousand keeping up with colored.Collection: White
Don't come giving me, who's old enough to die and too near blind to create anything any more anyhow, a great big banquet that you eat up in honor of your own stomachs as much as in honor of me- who's toothless and can't eat.Collection: Giving
I know how to handle women who act like ladies, but my landlady ain't no lady. Sometimes I even wish I was living with my wife again so I could have my own place and not have no landladies.Collection: Women
Good morning, daddy! Ain't you heard The boogie-woogie rumble Of a dream deferred? Listen closely: You'll hear their feet Beating out and beating out a - You think It's a happy beat? Listen to it closely: Ain't you heard something underneath like a - What did I say? Sure, I'm happy! Take it away! Dream Boogie Hey, pop! Re-bop! Mop! Y-e-a-h!Collection: Dream
Good evening, daddy! Ain't you heard The boogie-woogie rumble Of a dream deferred? Trilling the treble And twining the bass Into midnight ruffles Of cat-gut lace.Collection: Dream
When I were a young man, I used to play baseball and steal bases just like Jackie Robinson. If the empire would rule me out, I would get mad and hit the empire.Collection: Sports
It were depression, too. They cut my wages down once at the foundry. They cut my wages down again. Then they cut my wages out, also the job.Collection: Jobs
I’s been livin’ a long time in yesterday, Sandy chile, an’ I knows there ain’t no room in de world fo’ nothin’ mo’n love. I know, chile! Ever’thing there is but lovin’ leaves a rust on yo’ soul. An’ to love sho ‘nough, you got to have a spot in yo’ heart fo’ ever’body – great an’ small, white an’ black, an’ them what’s good an’ them what’s evil – ‘cause love ain’t got no crowded-out places where de good ones stay an’ de bad ones can’t come in. When it gets that way, then it ain’t love.Collection: Heart
You and I By Henry Alford My hand is lonely for your clasping, dear; My ear is tired waiting for your call. I want your strength to help, your laugh to cheer; Heart, soul and senses need you, one and all. I droop without your full, frank sympathy; We ought to be together—you and I; We want each other so, to comprehend The dream, the hope, things planned, or seen, or wrought. Companion, comforter and guide and friend, As much as love asks love, does thought ask thought. Life is so short, so fast the lone hours fly, We ought to be together, you and I.Collection: Dream
As long as what is is-and Georgia is Georgia-I will take Harlem for mine. At least, if trouble comes, I will have my own window to shoot from.Collection: New York
I do not want no pretty woman. First thing you know, you fall in love with her-then you got to kill somebody about her. She'll make you so jealous, you'll bust!Collection: Beauty
I went down to the river, I set down on the bank. I tried to think but couldn't, So I jumped in and sank.Collection: Thinking
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.Collection: Dark
So since I'm still here livin', I guess I will live on. I could've died for love-- But for livin' I was born.Collection: Born
While over Alabama earth These words are gently spoken: Serve and hate will die unborn. Love and chains are broken.Collection: Hate
This is the mountain standing in the way of any true Negro art in America - this urge within the race toward whiteness, the desire to pour racial individuality into the mold of American standardization, and to be as little Negro and as much American as possible.Collection: Art
Cheap little rhymes A cheap little tune Are sometimes as dangerous As a sliver of the moon.Collection: Moon
The first of the month falls every month, too, North or South. And them white folks who sends bills never forgets to send them-the phone bill, the furniture bill, the water bill, the gas bill, insurance, house rent.Collection: Death
Frosting Freedom Is just frosting On somebody else's Cake-- And so must be Till we Learn how to Bake.Collection: Cake
Wear it Like a banner For the proud? Not like a shroud.Collection: Black
Yet the ivory gods, And the ebony gods, And the gods of diamond-jade, Are only silly puppet gods That people themselves Have made.-Collection: God
To some people Love is given, To others Only Heaven.Collection: Love Is
Why should I want to be white? I am a Negro - and beautiful!Collection: Beautiful
I felt very bad in Washington. . . I didn't like my job, and I didn't know what was going to happen to me, and I was cold and half-hungry, so I wrote a great many poems.Collection: Jobs
Hard as I try, daddy-o, I really do not like concert singers. They are always singing in some foreign language.Collection: Daddy
I did not believe political directives could be successfully applied to creative writing . . . not to poetry or fiction, which to be valid had to express as truthfully as possible the individual emotions and reactions of the writer.Collection: Believe
Lawrence has a wonderful hill in it, with a university on top and the first time I ran away from home, I ran up the hill and looked across the world: Kansas wheat fields and the Kaw River, and I wanted to go some place, too. I got a whipping for it.Collection: Home
To create a market for your writing you have to be consistent, professional, a continuing writer - not just a one-article or a one-story or a one-book man.Collection: Book
Life for me ain't been no crystal stairCollection: Splinters
It is the duty of the younger Negro artist . . . to change through the force of his art that old whispering "I want to be white," hidden in the aspirations of his people, to "Why should I want to be white? I am a Negro - and beautiful!"Collection: Beautiful
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.Collection: Morning
When a man starts out to build a world, He starts first with himself.Collection: Firsts
Let America be the dream the dreamers dreamed – Let it be that great strong land of love Where never kings connive nor tyrants scheme That any man be crushed by one above.Collection: Strong
Humor is when the joke’s on you but hits the other fellow first – before it boomerangs.Collection: Firsts
Books -where if people suffered, they suffered in beautiful language, not in monosyllables, as we did in Kansas.Collection: Book
To create a market for your writing you have to be consistent, professional, a continuing writer – not just a one-article or a one-story or a one-book man.Collection: Book