Showing posts with label Langston Hughes. Show all posts
Showing posts with label Langston Hughes. Show all posts

Thursday, June 05, 2008

Sing it out, Langston!


I found this 70-year old poem at Daily Kos this morning

O, yes,
I say it plain,
America never was America to me,
And yet I swear this oath--
America will be!

Out of the rack and ruin of our gangster death,
The rape and rot of graft, and stealth, and lies,
We, the people, must redeem
The land, the mines, the plants, the rivers.
The mountains and the endless plain--
All, all the stretch of these great green states--
And make America again!

from Let America be America Again (1938)
Langston Hughes [1902 - 67].