Vox Populi
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Langston Hughes | Beaumont to Detroit: 1943
Looky here, America
What you done done–
Let things drift
Until the riots come.
Now your policemen
Let your mobs run free
I reckon you don’t care
Nothing about me.
You tell me that hitler
Is a mighty bad man.
I guess he took lessons
from the ku klux klan.
You tell me mussolini’s
Got an evil heart.
Well, it mus-a been in Beaumont
That he had his start–
Cause everything that hitler
And mussolini do,
Negroes get the same
Treatment from you.
You jim crowed me
Before hitler rose to power–
And you’re STILL jim crowing me
Right now, this very hour.
Yet you say we’re fighting
For democracy.
Then why don’t democracy
Include me?
I ask you this question
Cause I want to know
How long I got to fight
BOTH HITLER–AND JIM CROW.
~~~~
From Collected Poems of Langston Hughes – Vintage Classics – Editor – A. Rampersad – 1995
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“Then why don’t democracy
Include me?”
Now it doesn’t include anyone in this country 😦
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Thanks for posting this, Michael. Love this poem. Mr. Hughes tells it like it is, like it still is. Hitler studied racism in the US and the KKK to inform his Nazi strategies. A lot of people don’t know how the USA helped this monster hone his chops.
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Exactly. And Trump has a copy of Mein Kampf beside his bed.
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Great poem, Michael. Inspired this from me today:
My country gone from me split land of infamy, where did you go?
Fell down Drump’s rabbit hole, Freedom now must pay a toll. Where did “love-your-neighbor” go? To fascists we bend our knees.
Love to you and Eva, Charlie BTW, did you see my posting about your poem “Bloodroot” that I put on Facebook? What a wonderful poem. Judy and I had a great time looking at it.
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Hahahaha. Best to you and Judy, Charlie. Sorry, I’ve been banned from Facebook. What did you say about Bloodroot (which incidentally is a true account of a legendary witch aunt of mine on the Cajun side.)?
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Charlie’s poem goes well to “My country t’is of thee…”
We learned it in school in 1959, and I never associated it with anything real, nothing beyond landscape paintings with purple mountains in the distance.
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I have never heard this one before but the first lines remind me of See See Rider, the old blues song, and it is the blues. I was intruded to Langston Hughs’ work by fellow civil rights workers in Mississippi. What a perfect day to read it!
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Such a good choice for THIS 4th July. There was a beginning just now, and it has been nipped in the bud. Reversed. Back to Jim Crow.
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A perfect poet with the perfect poem to “celebrate” today. As a person native to these lands, how long….
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Yes, how long will it take…
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As Dr. King said, “I hope to see the day…”
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What a poem. Written the year I was born. How little, how sadly & terribly little has changed. Thank you for posting this poem, Michael.
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Laure-Anne,
I look forward to your words, wherever they appear, and I’m always rewarded. Thanks for your encouragement to so many of us, both through your powerful poetry, and your helpful comments.
Jim N
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Thanks, Laure-Anne.
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The first two lines of the poem temporarily stopped me:
Looky here, America
What you done done–
I found this a fascinating beginning to what becomes a deep-felt and not to be forgotten reminder of the hypocrisy within our 1943 country. But those two lines, with their slang word Looky, almost humorous as a start, and the done done, which my father in his rural Georgia days probably spoke as done did, became stepping stones into Hughes’ grim terror talk. I can’t think of another poem that so easily catches attention by beginning as something friendly and down to earth, and then spills its true message of our racist hostilities.
Oh, to be able to begin a poem like those first two lines, and then let loose the power.
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As always, such a great response, Jim.
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Thank you, Michael Simms, for this poem today.
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Hughes has become such a fixture in high school textbooks that we may forget how subtle and precise his poetry is. This poem is a perfect satire.
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When I was at UCLA I had the great privilege of meeting and hearing this brilliant and compassionate man. I had no idea who he was but I have since devoured everything he ever wrote. Thank you for sharing this marvelous and thought provoking poem.
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Wow. I would love to have met or at least listened to Hughes.
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You can listen to him! I just checked and YouTube has him reading several of his poems. Enjoy!
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Oh, wow! I will check it out.
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