The gay black patriot Langston Hughes: I too sing America

I’ve made a tradition every Fourth of July to share the gay black poet Langston Hughes’ I Too Sing America on my blog. To the degree that July 4th is really about celebrating all of America and not just white people, this is the most patriotic poem that has ever been written. It’s incredible that Langston Hughes would want to be part of a country that has brutally oppressed his people for centuries. It is Langston Hughes and the justice-seekers he has inspired who are America’s true patriots.

I Too Sing America

I too sing America.
I am the darker brother.
They send me to eat in the kitchen
When company comes,

But I laugh,
And eat well,
And grow strong.

Tomorrow,
I’ll be at the table
When company comes

Nobody’ll dare
Say to me,
“Eat in the kitchen,”
Then.

Besides,
They’ll see how beautiful I am,
And be ashamed —
I, too, am America.

It’s true that we killed off most of the natives who lived here before. It’s true that we had slavery and segregation for most of our history. It’s true that the rich have controlled our government most of the time. It’s true that we’ve fought wars for bad reasons and treated other countries arrogantly. But something about America made Langston Hughes want to sing. He saw enough beauty in the values that we profess that it was worth fighting to get a place at the American dinner table.

What Langston Hughes did as a poet and civil rights crusader epitomizes to me what’s great about America. What made him want to sing about America is what we say we believe as Americans: “that all humanity is created equal.” And what has allowed America to fulfill its professed raison d’être are the Americans who have refused to settle for empty lip service and politician’s slogans but have demanded that American society be structured in such a way so that everybody has a fair chance at life, liberty, and the pursuit of happiness.

We can debate about the details. Should civilian blue-collar workers be able to support their families on a single income so that one parent can stay home with the kids? Is it right to raise taxes if you want public school classrooms with 15 kids per teacher instead of 30? Regardless of where you come down in these debates, when you celebrate America today, you’re celebrating more than just the rich white guys in tights and whigs who wrote our Constitution. You’re celebrating Langston Hughes, Elizabeth Cady Stanton, Henry Thoreau, Emma Goldman, Cesar Chavez, Ida Wells, Martin Luther King Jr, Malcolm X, Sandra Cisneros, Woody Guthrie, Dorothy Day, and a whole lot of other people who were widely hated and controversial in their time for fighting to create an America worth defending. America is only as good as the people who force us to live up to our promises. That is the America for which I sing.