Langston Hughes - Negro Quotes

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You see, unfortunately, I am not black. There are lots of different kinds of blood in our family. But here in the United States, the word Negro is used to mean anyone who has any Negro blood at all in his veins. In Africa, the word is more pure. It means all Negro, therefore black. I am brown. My father was a darker brown. My mother an olive-yellow.

Langston Hughes
But there are certain very practical things American Negro writers can do. And must do. There's a song that says, "the time ain't long." That song is right. Something has got to change in America-and change soon. We must help that change to come.

Langston Hughes
If the government can set aside some spot for a elk to be a elk without being bothered, or a buffalo to be a buffalo without being shot down, there ought to be some place where a Negro can be a Negro without being Jim Crowed.

Langston Hughes
Sometimes I wish the public were equally aware of the men of our race in the cultural fields. You, for instance, have you ever bought a book by a Negro writer?

Langston Hughes
If you want to honor me, give some young boy or girl who's coming along trying to create arts and write and compose and sing and act and paint and dance and make something out of the beauties of the Negro race-give that child some help.

Langston Hughes
It was the period when the Negro was in vogue.

Langston Hughes
Droning a drowsy syncopated tune,
Rocking back and forth to a mellow croon,
I heard a Negro play.
Down on Lenox Avenue the other night By the pale dull pallor of an old gas light He did a lazy sway.
He did a lazy sway.
To the tune o' those Weary Blues.

Langston Hughes
Negro blood is sure powerful — because just onedrop of black blood makes a colored man. One drop—you are a Negro!... Black is powerful.

Langston Hughes
The depression brought everybody down a peg or two. And the Negro had but few pegs to fall.

Langston Hughes
Jazz to me is one of the inherent expressions of Negro life in America: the eternal tom-tom beating in the Negro soul – the tom-tom of revolt against weariness in a white world, a world of subway trains, and work, work, work; the tom-tom of joy and laughter, and pain swallowed in a smile.

Langston Hughes
It is the duty of the younger Negro artist... to change through the force of his art that old whispering "I want to be white," hidden in the aspirations of his people, to "Why should I want to be white? I am a Negro — and beautiful!"

Langston Hughes
We younger Negro artists who create now intend to express our individual dark-skinned selves without fear or shame. If white people are pleased we are glad. If they aren't it doesn't matter.

Langston Hughes
'It's powerful,' he said.
'What?'
'That one drop of Negro blood—because just one drop of black blood makes a man coloured. One drop—you are a Negro!'

Langston Hughes
We Negro writers, just by being black, have been on the blacklist all our lives. Censorship for us begins at the color line.

Langston Hughes
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.

Langston Hughes
This is the mountain standing in the way of any true Negro art in America—this urge within the race toward whiteness, the desire to pour racial individuality into the mold of American standardization, and to be as little Negro and as much American as possible.

Langston Hughes
I am a Negro:
Black as the night is black,
Black like the depths of my Africa.

Langston Hughes
Ordinary Negroes hadn't heard of the Negro Renaissance. And if they had, it hadn't raised their wages any.

Langston Hughes