18 pages • 36 minutes read
Langston HughesThe Negro Speaks of Rivers
Fiction | Poem | Adult | Published in 1921A modern alternative to SparkNotes and CliffsNotes, SuperSummary offers high-quality Study Guides with detailed chapter summaries and analysis of major themes, characters, and more.
Background
Geographical Context: Rivers
“The Negro Speaks of Rivers” progresses through time and location, centering around four great rivers. The poem begins with the Euphrates, moves to the Congo and the Nile, and then ends with the Mississippi. Each river carries historical and geographic significance that informs the poem’s greater message.
The Euphrates River, in the area of the world now known as West Asia, is one of the world’s longest rivers and, along with the Tigris, played a role in establishing the earliest recorded human civilization. The waterways of the Euphrates (as well as the Nile) feed into the Fertile Crescent, so named for the irrigation and agriculture made possible by the water sources. The Crescent includes Mesopotamia, which in the ancient world was home to some of the earliest dynasties in human history, including the Sumerians and Akkadians. This is where human agriculture first began, facilitating an explosion of the human population over the last 10,000 years.
The poem then moves to the Congo River, which is among the most important in Africa, as it runs throughout the middle of the continent and has historically been the home and economic center of millions of people. The Congo has been a central uniting force for the Bantu peoples, who have traditionally lived along the river and in its surrounding areas. The poem next mentions another major African river: the Nile, the river that supported the Egyptian Empire, which lasted for 3,000 years. The Egyptian Empire was the longest-lasting and most famous ancient empire in Africa, and it is where great structures like the pyramids and the Sphinx were built.
Finally, the Mississippi River is the second longest river in North America, and it is traditionally the most important river in the United States: The Mississippi was the center of trade and transportation in the 18th and 19th centuries, and it factored heavily into western expansion, as well as slavery.
All four of these rivers have important ties to the history of humanity, and especially to the history of people of African descent.
Authorial Context: Hughes’s Mississippi River Crossing
Many critics consider this poem Hughes’s best, yet it is one of the earliest in his career. While traveling across the Mississippi River on a train on his way to visit his father in Mexico, Hughes wrote the poem on the back of an envelope in a few minutes. He was only 17 years old.
Writing in 1920 on his way south, Hughes was profoundly influenced by the trauma of segregation, lynching, and racism in the United States. Just the year before, the United States went through what is now known as the Red Summer, during which race riots broke out across the country due largely to racial animosity and economic anxiety after World War I. This tumult included the Elaine Massacre in Arkansas, where hundreds of Black people were murdered in one of the worst atrocities in United States history.
Hughes would have also been aware of the historical significance of his traveling south down the Mississippi. During the age of United States chattel slavery, it would have been incredibly rare for a Black person to voluntarily travel down the Mississippi, willingly entering the South, and even in Hughes’s time, the South was a dangerous place for Black people—a place where lynching was common and discrimination and racism rampant.
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By Langston Hughes
