Let America Be America Again

Langston Hughes wrote “Let America Be America Again” on a train journey from New York to Oberlin, Ohio, in October 1935, in the middle of the Great Depression. It was published the following year in Esquire. The magazine, however, printed only the first 50 lines of the poem. The full version was published two years later, in 1938, in Hughes’s collection A New Song. With its inspiring, patriotic vision, in which the speaker identifies with a range of different races and groups, and its passionate call for the nation to live up to its ideals for all of its citizens, “Let America Be America Again” soon became one of Hughes’s best-known poems. He would recite it often at public readings and it has been reprinted many times.

Poet Biography

Poet, short-story writer, novelist, and dramatist Langston Hughes was born on February 1, 1901, in Joplin, Missouri. His parents divorced when he was a young child, and his father, James Nathaniel Hughes, moved to Mexico. Until the age of 13, Hughes was raised by Mary Langston, his maternal grandmother. After her death in 1915, he moved to Lincoln, Illinois, where he lived with his mother and her second husband. The family moved to Cleveland, Ohio, the following year.