After we read Langston Hughes’ poem “I Too Sing America” in class I decided to read some more of his poetry. He writes a lot of poetry about racism, slavery, and troubles that blacks faced. I found one of his poems entitled “The Negro Mother” and it really moved me. This poem describes the horrors of slavery from a black woman's point of view. She tells about how far blacks have come in the years since slavery and how she prayed for the day to come when her children could read and write and be members of society. Sometimes I don’t think we fully realize how hard things were. Langston really puts in to perspective how parents want their goals to be achieved through their children.
In the first stanza she is telling the story of her life as a slave. She describes it as “the story of the long dark way that I had to climb.” She worked in the field and was “beaten and mistreated for the work” she did. Her children were sold away. She was given no safety, no love, and no respect. Slaves were just property to the whites.
Then you see the hope come through in the second stanza.
“Three hundred years in the deepest South:
But God put a song and a prayer in my mouth.
God put a dream like a steel in my soul.
Now, though my children, I’m reaching the goal.”
When you read this you can tell that she has faith that God will watch over her children and that they will one day be a part of the white society.
“Sometimes, the valley was filled with tears,
But I kept trudging on through the lonely years.”
She hopes that through all her struggles that her children and their children will benefit just as parents do today. I truely believe that parents want better for there children than what they had. You hear about so many success stories of people who have come from nothing and are now living a great life due to all of their hard work and most say that their drive was "to give their kids a better life than I had."
