Harlem is a short poem by poet and social activist Langston Hughes. It is a part of a longer, book-length poem called Montage of a Dream Deferred, published in 1951. Inspired by jazz music, Montage sketches out several different scenes that take place in the neighborhood of Harlem over the course of a 24-hour-long period. Langston Hughes was one of the pioneers of jazz poetry, a form of which Montage was one of the earliest examples. A central figure of the Harlem Renaissance, he produced several works of literature—poetry, essays, novels, and more—focused on portraying and documenting the daily lives and struggles of African-Americans at the time.
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The Harlem Renaissance
The early 1900s were the period of the Great Migration: a collective movement of African-Americans from the South to the North and from rural America to the cities. This migration was caused by a range of factors, the primary of these being discrimination in the Jim Crow South.
One of the areas that saw a steady congregation of African-American migrants was Harlem in New York. Soon, the area became the center for the fomenting of black identity and culture. Figures like W.E.B Du Bois rose to prominence, instigating the Black Pride movement. African-American writers, like Zora Neale Hurston, Langston Hughes, and Countee Cullen, found a space to be published and were given due credit for their work. Other art forms—such as music, theater, and painting—developed by African-American artists and capturing the black experience in the country, flourished.
Background of Harlem
America’s history of slavery and racism is a well-known one. On the one hand, black slaves were forcefully brought to the country, put to relentless work, and subjected to cruelty. On the other hand, the US spread, grew, and thrived on the idea of the American Dream, the idea that anyone could come to this land and prosper. Even as these became a key part of the American identity, those trapped in slavery did not have access to it until Emancipation. And even then, they faced severe discrimination and segregation in the Jim Crow states.
Events such as the Great Migration may have opened new pastures and spaces for black communities. However, inherent racism remained an affliction for the country at large. Race riots in seemingly tolerant Northern cities, such as Detroit, were a glaring example of this. Even Harlem—an area that became the mecca of African-American pride, identity, and culture—was the site of race riots in 1935 and 1943. Both of these had been incited by racial discrimination and brutality attributed to the police. These two riots in particular are the background against which Langston Hughes’ Harlem is set. In the meantime, the United States also became a major player in World War II, fighting on the side of the Allies against Nazi Germany and its ideology of hyper discrimination based on race and purity. As in the Great War before, African-American soldiers too participated and fought in this war. However, back home, there seemed to be no letting up of the discrimination that they themselves faced.
Harlem: Summary and Analysis
Harlem is a very short poem, consisting of eleven brief lines. It begins with its central theme posed as a question: What happens to a dream deferred?
It then considers various answers to this question. The delayed dream could shrivel up like a raisin in the sun; it could fester like a sore; it could rot and begin to resemble rotten meat; it could form a crust like those on sugary sweets; or it could simply begin to sag like a heavy load. The poem then ends with another question, a last alternative: Or does it explode? The intent and focus of Harlem is made obvious by its opening line. It ponders the future of a community that has borne witness to the American Dream and the prosperity it promises. This community had watched as America formulated this dream and predominantly white Americans seemed to make it a reality. And eventually, the African-American community became one that was promised access to this dream and the benefits that it brought.
“Harlem” contemplates the consequences of hopes and dreams unjustly denied to an entire community.
Injustice has delayed and put off again and again the realization of a dream for African-Americans. However, Harlem posits that the dream does not disappear or cease to hold a place in people’s imaginations and hopes. Instead, it transforms into bitterness and even resignation. Hughes offers a variety of imagery for this transformation—shriveled raisins, festering sores, rotten meat, crusted sweets, and sagging loads. Each of these describes a decay and nearly dire disillusionment. The unfulfilled dream doesn’t just not disappear, but it also drags down and injures the community as a whole and as individuals. The distance from equality achieved sorrow and pain.
However, the last line offers a radically different option, one that is a far cry from hopelessness and dejection. It suggests that rather than crippling the people, the deferred dream becomes a source of justified rage and louder calls for change. This is the line that transforms Harlem into a protest poem. While it initially projected an image of defeat, the poem ended with a subversion that resembles a renewed cry for justice. Harlem almost predicts the upcoming Civil Rights Movement that took over America in the mid 1950s through to the end of the 1960s when artists like Hughes himself and Louis Armstrong were succeeded by leaders like Rosa Parks, Malcolm X, and Martin Luther King, Jr. It reminds readers that the continued oppression of African-Americans may not necessarily bring about their resignation and acceptance of their second-class status in the country. Instead, it delivers an almost prophetic promise of its own, that the pressure of discrimination may likely cause an outburst in response.
