New York City’s Harlem was transformed in the early 20th century from a small middle class white neighbourhood into a cultural mecca for Black artists, writers and musicians moving north in the Great Migration to escape Jim Crow laws. The Cotton Club, Louis Armstrong and Paul Robeson brought spirituals and innovation into new forms of music. In dance, Josephine Baker affirmed a place for Black women. In art, Meta Warrick Fuller was one of the first, if not the first, African American woman to make a place for sculpture in the US. Black Nationalism flourished under Marcus Garvey. And in poetry, Langston Hughes developed a voice which revealed Black experience with wit, hope, musicality and encouraging what Senator John Lewis would call ‘good trouble.’
‘I Look at the World’ is a pessimistic poem but also hopeful for the future, that what exists as yet only in his mind may one day be a real version of America.
Dr Russell Evans.
