Night, Death, Mississippi

“Night, Death, Mississippi” reflects two literary traditions in mid-century America that influenced Robert Hayden: the impact of Modernism on the form and sound of poetry and the rise in interest, sparked by a movement in the 1920s in New York City known as the Harlem Renaissance, in Black identity, Black culture, and Black history in white America.

Raised in what were essentially the projects of Detroit, neighborhoods where Black people new to the North established enclaves of Southern Black culture, Hayden grew up aware of the transition of Black America into a strong and independent cultural voice. In high school, Hayden introduced himself to a wide range of poets from the Harlem Renaissance, most notably Countee Cullen, Claude McKay, and Langston Hughes. The poetry, which so often confronted the realities of white oppression and the struggle nevertheless to joyously assert Black identity despite/because of the heavy history of slavery, opened Hayden’s awareness to the long, troubled history of Black people. Under the aegis of the Federal Writers’ Project, Hayden explored further the historic documents of antebellum South and the legacy of African folk tales on the religion in the Black South.