LET AMERICA BE AMERICA AGAIN

                 Langston Hughes (1938)

 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 tyrant’s 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?

 I am the poor white, fooled and pushed apart,

I am the Negro bearing slavery’s scars.

I am the red man driven from the land,

I am the immigrant clutching the hope I seek -

And finding only the same old stupid plan

Of dog eat dog, of mighty crush the weak.

 I am the young man, full of strength and hope,

Tangled in that ancient endless chain

Of profit, power, gain, of grab the land!

Of grab the gold! O grab the ways of satisfying need!

Of work the men! Of take the pay!

Of owning everything for one’s own greed!

 I am the farmer, bondsman to the soil.

I am the worker sold to the machine.

I am the Negro, servant to you all.

I am the people, humble, hungry, mean -

Hungry yet today despite the dream.

Beaten yet today -- O, Pioneers!

I am the man who never got ahead,

The poorest worker bartered through the years.

 Yet I’m the one who dreamt our basic dream

In that Old World, while still a serf of kings,

Who dreamt a dream so strong, so brave, so true,

That even yet its mighty daring sings.

 In every brick and stone, in every furrow turned

That made America the land it has become!

 O, I’m the man who sailed those early seas

In search of what I meant to be my home -

For I’m the one who left dark Ireland’s shore,

And Poland’s plain, and England’s grassy lea,

And torn from Black Africa’s strand, I came

To build a “homeland of the free.”

 The free?

A dream still beckoning to me.

 O, let America be America again -

The land that never has been yet -

And yet must be -

The land where every man is free.

The land that’s mine -

The poor man, Indian, Negro, ME -

 Who made America!

 Whose sweat and blood,

Whose faith and pain,

Whose hand at the foundry,

Whose plow in the rain,

Must bring back our mighty dream again.

Sure, call me any ugly name you choose -

The steel of freedom does not stain.

From those who live like leeches on the people’s lives,

We must take back our land again,

America!

 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 past,

The rape and rot of graft, the stealth, and lies that

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!