Hughes’s ‘Let America Be America Again’

By Scott Horton

Langston Hughes, photograph (1942)

Let America be America again.

Let it be the dream it used to be.

Let it be the pioneer on the plain

Seeking a home where he himself is free.

(America never was America to me.)

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.

(It never was America to me.)

O, let my land be a land where Liberty

Is crowned with no false patriotic wreath,

But opportunity is real, and life is free,

Equality is in the air we breathe.

(There’s never been equality for me,

Nor freedom in this “homeland of the free.”)

Say, who are you that mumbles in the dark?

And who are you that draws your veil across the stars?

Finish reading Langston Hughes’s Let America Be America Again at Poemhunter

–Langston Hughes, Let America Be America Again from: A New Song (1938) in The Collected Poems of Langston Hughes pp. 189-91 (A. Rampersad ed. 1995)