Today is a good day for thinking about dreamers, as it is the 50th anniversary of the March on Washington in which Dr. Martin Luther KIng, Jr. declared: "I have a dream that my four little children will one day live in a nation where they will not be judged by the color of their skin but by the content of their character."
But, of course, Dr. King wasn't the only one who had a dream. Another prominent and highly talented African American who started writing poetry prolifically in the 1920s also had a dream. His name was Langston Hughes and he often invoked the image of a dreamer who struggled to find himself within the outmoded tradition of the American dream.
For instance, in a relatively early poem that he called "Dream Variations," the poet imagines himself free to dance, to whirl, to play, to let himself go, to be liberated from all constraints, conventions, and restrictions. When he was writing in the 1920s, such a dream for a Black man was simply impossible, completely out of reach. To be oneself, to go natural, to release oneself from inhibitions was to risk upsetting the white man, to appear as if you wanted to unend the whole white power structure. At least until well into the 1960s, such boldness wasn't likely. In the 1920s it was utterly taboo.
In the poem "America," Hughes again sees the Negro striving, reaching, straining for the stars, not letting himself be held back by anyone. He identities the Negro with the European immigrant similarly striving, but there are hints of how unfairly he is actually treated, and how stained democracy is as a result. At the same time, Hughes as poet wants to declare himself absolutely unique, not so much like a European immigrant or even a Black man bludgeoned by another round of unrelenting discrimination, but somehow his "own sole self" in an America where dreams come true and where everyone is freed to "seek the stars."
Or in "The Negro Mother," we learn of the universal Black mother, the one "beaten and mistreated" by slavery and racial oppression whose dream is achieved through her children. She kept trudging on because she had to, because she so desperately sought to become the "seed of the coming free." At times she had nothing to live for except the dream of her children making things anew. But now she returns to see her dream come alive through her children, but issues this caveat to them to never weaken or to take for granted how hard won this dream of freedom has been.
Or in "Let America be America Again," we hear again of the dream and the dreamers who dream it. We hear of the poet's call for America to "be the dream the dreamers dreamed," where love is strong and true and lasting. In this poem we also hear the parenthetical refrain "America never was America to me." Meaning, presumably, that the dream the white man takes for granted has never even been a glimmer of hope for the Negro. He goes on: "For all the dreams we've dreamed/ And all the songs we've sung/ And all the flags we've hung/ The millions who have nothing for our pay---Except the dream that's almost dead today." In the midst of this rising despair, the poet rescues the possibility that the dream may yet be lived out: "O, yes,/ I say it plain,/ America never was America to me,/ And yet I swear this oath--/American will be!"
And then perhaps most famously and desperately of all there is his poem simply called "Harlem" in which the quest for the dream has reached its endpoint with no hope in sight and no sign of redemption or progress. It begins with a question and seems somehow to address this opening question with still more questions: "What happens to a dream deferred?/ Does it dry up/ like a raisin in the sun/ Or fester like a sore--/ And then run?/ Does it stink like rotten meat?/ Or crust and sugar over--/ Like a syrupy sweet?/ Maybe it just sags / like a heavy load/ Or does it explode?
King may have had his dream, but no African American writer dreamt with as much intensity and persistence as Langston Hughes. Sometimes the dreams were hopeful and sweet, but as the years dragged on and the hopes for real progress seemed to bog down in an everyday racism that would be hard for anyone to bear, the dreams grew fewer and darker. Why do the dreams of our youth so often become the nightmares of our all too seasoned adulthood?
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