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Stanza Up to Racism: 5 Poets for the Movement
In this entry, I will looking at poetry and some of my favourite poems on race, racism and Black history — there’s some blinders!
“Black lives matter” — no justice, no peace” — “Black power” — are three of the slogans I heard on Abington Street at the Northampton protest at the start of July. Since then, I have had umpteen hours to think and write, and even organise / taken part in events, having done three and an am imminently about to do four. The murder of George Floyd sparked outrage, triggering quite possibly the largest anti-racist civil rights movement in human history. In this next blog I will take you through five poems on either race, racism or Black history, or even encompassing all of these topics at the same time.
I, Too — Langston Hughes (1926)
‘I, Too’ is a personal poem written by Langston Hughes in the middle of the Harlem Renaissance. This was an intellectual socio-artistic revival in Harlem, Manhattan and New York City starting just after the First World War and ending in the 1930s. ‘I, Too’ arrived in the middle of that, Hughes writing about racism in the early twentieth century. It starts “I, too, sing America” as seemingly even today you’re only American if you are white. It was the late…
