Volume 10 205

portantly, Hughes states in A Pictorial History of
Black Americans, that “[b]lack Pharaohs ruled
Egypt for centuries and black Queen Nefertete
[was] one of the most beautiful women of all time.”
Although Hughes might have wished to emphasize
the Nile’s glamour, the fact is, the whole of ancient
Egyptian religion lauded death over life and fo-
cused on the pharaohs and their comfortable sur-
vival in the next world. Because of the pyramids,
the Egyptians needed as much manpower as pos-
sible and enslaved those they captured to build their
gigantic tombs. Still, this knowledge does little to
detract from the glamour and, if anything, balances
it with reality.

The last river mentioned is the Mississippi, the
longest river in the United States, and one intimately
connected to slavery. A slave sold down the river
in Mark Twain’s Missouri was doomed to an even
worse fate than he was already living: Slavery was
more entrenched in the deep South, escape to the
free states was even farther away, and any slave sent
down the river was not only leaving a familiar place,
but family as well. However, the speaker “heard the
singing of the Mississippi when Abe Lincoln went
down to New /Orleans”; the river was “singing” be-
cause, according to legend, when the future presi-
dent saw the horrors of slavery, he vowed to elim-
inate that institution from the country.

In the last half of that line, the speaker has seen
the Mississippi’s “muddy bosom turn golden in the
sunset.” On a physical level, the speaker as Hughes
most likely saw that phenomena as he wrote the
poem on a train crossing the river from Illinois to
St. Louis, Missouri. Its muddy bosom connects it
to the Negro mother who nurtured her babies de-
spite the fact that they could be taken away from
her at any time and despite the fact that some of
their fathers were the white masters. In the end, af-
ter a life of cruel hardship, the heavenly rewards
come at death, at sunset. The black mother and her
progeny, who never abandoned their spirituality but
refined it into music, poetry and dance, are now
seen for their true value, revealed in the light as
golden.

In the fourth stanza the speaker repeats the
phrase that he has “known rivers,” but now he
broadens the image to include “[a]ncient, dusky
rivers.” This concludes our history tour and ties
these rivers to the color of dusk, the magical color
of twilight, and the color of the Negro. The Negro
encompasses the African in Africa or on any other
continent, and especially the African-American,
Hughes’ first audience.

The last stanza repeats the second stanza: “My

soul has grown deep like the rivers.” Now we un-

derstand more profoundly what the speaker means,

for each of these rivers has nurtured the Negro and

some have transported him as a slave. The final

repetitions also add a rhythm to the poem, as if, af-

ter the flow of the first and third stanzas, like the

river, this poem has arrived at its mouth, its place

of proclamation to the world. These people, these

Negroes, have come out of Africa, and later out of

slavery, and they have flourished in the fertile cres-

cent of their spirituality and contributed much to

The Negro Speaks of Rivers

What

Do I Read

Next?

• The Crisis Reader: Stories, Poetry and Essays
  from the NAACP’s Crisis Magazinenot only in-
  cludes some of Hughes’ work but also provides
  insights into the political, cultural, social
  thought of Black America in the first part of this
  century.


• This 1999 release of W. E. B. DuBois’The Souls
  of Black Folk: Authoritative Text, Contexts,
  Criticism,edited by Henry Louis Gates, Jr., pro-
  vides an informative perspective for viewing
  DuBois’ classic work.


• The 1958 Brazilier collection, the Langston
  Hughes Reader,includes some of Hughes’ best
  work in all genres.


• Let Nobody Turn Us Around: Voices of Resis-
  tance, Reform and Renewal, An African Ameri-
  can Anthologycontains Hughes’ “The Negro
  Artist and the Racial Mountain” as well as works
  by W. E. B. DuBois, Marcus Garvey, and sev-
  eral writers of the Harlem Renaissance.


• Hughes admired Carl Sandburg’s poetry for its
  populist stance; Sandburg’s Complete Poems
  are available in a Harcourt Brace edition.


• The Portable Harlem Renaissance Reader
  collects essays, memoirs, poetry, and fiction of
  the period, along with a brief but informative
  history.