Running head: EXPLILACATING LANGSTON HUGHES: SONG FOR A DARK GIRL 1

Analysis: Song for a Dark Girl

Lisa Livingston

LIT-420-Modern Poetry

Miller College
EXPLILACATING LANGSTON HUGHES: SONG FOR A DARK GIRL 2

Abstract

Langston Hughes was an African American Poet who loved the Blues. In his poem Song for a

Dark Girl he writes in a style that would suggest that this is a song. This essay will analyze the

title of the piece and its importance in describing the tone of this work. This essay should provide

insight into what was going on during this time period for Langston Hughes and other African

Americans.

Langston Hughes was an African American poet who was considered the leading poet of

the Harlem Renaissance. The Harlem Renaissance was a cultural movement during the 1920s

that portrayed the cultural, social and artistic explosion that took place in Harlem between the

end of the World War 1 and the middle of the 1930s. Many black artists were gravitating to

Harlem during this time, searching for freedom from the oppression of life in the south. In

Harlem artists were encouraged to freely express their experiences through their talents. Their

works helped to fuel racial pride and helped civil rights for African Americans.

Song for a Dark Girl was written by Langston Hughes in 1927. The title is very

descriptive in what this piece is about. This piece is a song about a black or an African American

girl who has discovered her lovers body lynched in a tree. Langston Hughes loved the Blues and

since the Blues was a popular art form that African Americans used to express their daily

experiences of life, Song for a Dark Girl as the title is fitting for what this poem is about. This

poem expresses an experience that in that era was unfortunately quite common. Lynching of

African Americans. In the poem, Hughes describes the scene of an African American woman

who has found that her lover has been violently beaten and left there for all to see. The piece

references a part of the south that is notorious for its mistreatment of African Americans and that
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is way down south in Dixie. This poem paints a graphic picture in the mind of the reader as the

scene of a battered and beaten black man is dangling from the twisted tree while his lover is left

standing there grief stricken. The womans despair is further recognized as she asks the white

Lord Jesus what is the use of prayer (line 7). This line describes how she feels that her prayers

have gone unanswered to the white Jesus and by stating white Lord Jesus she feels

discriminated against by the Lord himself. It is as if she is feeling that Jesus is siding with the

white people of the South and is allowing them to do African Americans as they please.

This poem is a deep look into many different themes. There are aspects of Christianity,

such as the reference of the white Lord Jesus and the cross roads tree that may be a symbol of

a cross or crucifix. There are themes that promote a feeling of separation in religion when the

poem references a white Lord Jesus. It can be argued that Jesus was a black man. But since

Christianity was the consensus among most of the white people in the South and the white

people ruled the South that thought process was frowned upon by the whites who ran the land.

The cross roads also holds a different meaning for the African Americans of that time.

The cross roads for African Americans of that time was a common legend which describes a

place to meet up with the devil in order to bargain for certain things using your soul as payment.

The words of this poem paint a tone of despair. The Song of a Dark Girl is an

emotional piece that expresses the feelings that African Americans shared about this era of time.

This poem was written by a man who has seen racial segregation and prejudice throughout his

life. The pain that African Americans felt as they would come across such a sight is well depicted

within the lines of this piece.

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References

Hughes, Langston. Song for a Dark Girl (1927). The Norton Anthology Of Modern and

Contemporary Poetry Vol. 1.