An overview of the context for Langston Hughes' poem "Freedom's Plow" (1943), which the students at St. Alphonsus recited back to him.
Skip to the Notes section at the end for a quick summary of the post!
Introduction
Summary of Poem
"Freedom's Plow" opens up by describing how an unnamed man starts out with nothing, but eventually gains a community to build a world. “Freedom’s Plow” then segways into how colonial immigrants came to America to develop and execute the “American dream,” which carries various meanings as different positions (such as the slave men and slave masters) have differing ideas of what freedom actually is. However, Hughes reiterates that regardless of status, every American's goal is to gain freedom from oppressive forces, whether it be the British monarchy or enslavement. Through the allegorical use of a plow tilling the land and yielding crops, Hughes contextually compares American togetherness with successful productivity and production during World War II. Furthermore, Hughes compares the renowned words from White American democracy founders, Thomas Jefferson and Abraham Lincoln, with words from African American freedom fighters, Frederick Douglass and the enslaved Gospel Plow singers. Near the end of his poem, he ties together his ballad of this “plow” through the gospel spiritual ("Keep Your Hand on the Plow, Hold On") to show that everyone should be working towards the founding American democratic ideals despite their racial differences. Hughes finishes his poem by placing all of these ideas of freedom together and declaring that America will not fall to oppressive, non-liberating values.
Audiences
One of Hughes' intended audiences are the privileged White Americans-possibly those in the government-because he is attempting to persuade them into integrating the races. As a Black poet who has written unfavorable, liberal ideologies about Black militancy and Communism support, he is surely walking on a thin line with his White American audience in this poem. That’s why there are so many appeals to the White man in it, hence the lack of condemnation.
However, Hughes does not forsake his African American audiences in this poem. The poem is structured around their "Keep Your Hand on the Plow, Hold On" spiritual that they are culturally familiar with. He includes them as part of the founders of this country when he writes how they helped shape America. Hughes also writes about how bad their struggles were in enslavement once he establishes the neutral and patriotic hook at the beginning of the story.
Publication
Members of the National Urban League, a civil rights organization based in New York, influenced Hughes to write "Freedom's Plow." Lester B. Granger, the League's executive secretary, requested it.
Audio Performances
“Freedom’s Plow” became a sensation after broadway performer, Paul Muni, read it on NBC radio on March 15, 1943, per the National Urban League's program. An organ and the Golden Gate Quartette were played in the background to Muni's reading. Today, the "Freedom's Plow" audio performance can be listened to at the Recorded Sound Research Center in Washington, DC by appointment only.
The Opportunity: A Journey of Negro Life magazine newspaper-owned by the League-published Hughes' poem in its March 25, 1943 issue on pages 63-69.
Source: Opportunity: Journal of Negro Life. United States, National Urban League, 1943.
The images above are from Google's digitized version of Opportunity. To view the magazine's full section with Hughes' "Freedom's Plow" poem, see it embedded below or click here.
"Freedom's Plow" was also publicly performed by actor Frederic March.
In Print
In April 1943, the Musette Publishers in New York published "Freedom's Plow" as a five-paged stapled pamphlet. However, these copies were not easily accessible to everyone. “Freedom’s Plow” was better known for its audio and visual performances a month earlier.
influential
Hughes would also dedicate the pamphlets to his poetic muses and other influential public figures. Notice how Hughes is disagreeing with William T Couch, former director of the UNC and Chicago Press, and his "half democracy, half equality" stance. For the message of his poem, Hughes is essentially saying not to hold those "half democracy, half equality" ideas.
Literary Techniques
Many of the techniques seen in Hughes’ “Freedom’s Plow” are allusions to works from his favorite literary genres, poets, and supporting beliefs.
Styles of Romanticism
Romanticism was an art and literary movement that focused on illustrating and glorifying a landscape through pastoral language. American writers began using Romanticism in the early 1800s to the Civil War era so that they could promote their newly settled land. Romanticism also focuses on comparing individual beliefs with the collective norm.
In Hughes’ poem, readers can see his allusions to Romanticism when he writes, "On the great wooded world,/On the rich soil of the world,/On the rivers of the world" (lines 12-14).
His pastoral language mimics one of his favorite Romanticism poets, Walt Whitman, when Whitman writes, “Down the edges, through the passes, up the mountains steep,/Conquering, holding, daring, venturing as we go the unknown ways” in Leaves of Grass' “Pioneers! O Pioneers.”
Romanticism also focuses on the contradiction between a character’s individual beliefs and those of the collective norm. We see this through Hughes starting out with one man, then eventually gaining a community to help him build his newly founded land. For example, the beginning of “Freedom’s Plow” states, “First in the heart is the dream./Then the mind starts seeking a way./His eyes look out on the world” (lines 9-10).
Whitman shows the same spiritual versus collectivism concept in his Leaves of Grass poem, “Song of the Universal” when he states, “Is it a dream?/Nay, but the lack of it the dream./And, failing it, life's lore and wealth a dream,/And all the world a dream.”
Styles of Modernism
The Britannica's explanation of Modernism states:
"The Modernist impulse is fueled in various literatures by industrialization and urbanization and by the search for an authentic response to a much-changed world…Modernism as a literary movement is typically associated with the period after World War I. The enormity of the war had undermined humankind’s faith in the foundations of Western society and culture, and postwar Modernist literature reflected a sense of disillusionment and fragmentation."
Hughes' wrote "Freedom's Plow" in the epoch of American literary Modernism where writers wrote in unconventional forms about contemporary causes. Readers can see the industrialization aspect of Modernism being demonstrated in line 54, “Clang against the trees went the ax into many hands/That hewed and shaped the rooftops of America./Splash into the rivers/and the seas went the boat-hulls/That moved and transported America./Crack went the whips that drove the horses/Across the plains of America.”
We also see that Hughes' language can mimic the language of his favorite Modernist literary writer, Carl Sandburg, who wrote in his “Chicago” poem, “Hog Butcher for the World,/Tool Maker,/Stacker of Wheat,/Player with Railroads and the Nation's/Freight Handler;/Stormy, husky, brawling,/City of the Big Shoulders.”
Hughes even dedicated a "Freedom's Plow" booklet to Sandburg:
What it does:
Readers may find that “Freedom’s Plow” has a justification dynamic to it. For example, in the beginning, Hughes does not condemn racists for their hypocritical beliefs of American democracy or of how they gained it through war. Later in the poem though, Hughes speaks on the Black person's fight for freedom and how when a war-the Civil War-set them free it was also okay, even at the cost of America’s founding plantation hierarchy. Hughes saying that the Civil War was good for Black people would have been a “radical”-and quite dangerous-topic in segregated America because it suggests that Americans may have to go through uncomfortable ways to ensure racial acceptance in America. Yet, his historical justification gives him a right to say this as he is trying to make integration make sense to his patriotic readers.
So…
By beginning his poem with Romanticism-style literature and ending it with Modernist descriptions of industrialization and urbanization, Hughes demonstrates that history changes all the time for the good of America. The Constitution is even considered a “living and breathing document.” Therefore, the founding principles of America justify that it makes sense for Black people to have the same rights as Whites.
Critical Questions for Hughes
One critical question for Hughes is what happened to the Native Americans in this poem? "Freedom's Plow" begins with European immigrants arriving on their land, yet, he mentions nothing about their help. Does he purposefully leave them out to appeal to White Americans? Could he have purposefully left them out to show how they are left out in American history-is he raising awareness in a muted way? It would be hard to think of Hughes leaving these important people out of a poem about American togetherness when his great maternal Grandmother, of the one who raised him, was Cherokee.
Notes
Through the allegorical use of a plow tilling the land and yielding crops, Hughes contextually compares American togetherness with successful productivity and production during World War II.
One of Hughes' intended audiences are privileged White Americans-possibly those in the government-because he is attempting to persuade them into integrating the races.
However, Hughes does not forsake his African American audiences in this poem.
“Freedom’s Plow” became a sensation after Broadway performer, Paul Muni, read it on NBC radio on March 15, 1943, per the National Urban League's program.
In April 1943, the Musette Publishers in New York published "Freedom's Plow" as a five-paged stapled pamphlet.
In Hughes’ poem, readers can see his allusions to Romanticism when he writes, "On the great wooded world,/On the rich soil of the world,/On the rivers of the world" (lines 12-14).
Readers can see the industrialization aspect of Modernism being demonstrated in line 54,
Therefore, the founding principles of America justify that it makes sense for Black people to have the same rights as Whites.
what happened to the Native Americans in this poem?
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