Langston Hughes first published his poem “Mother to Son” in a 1922 issue of The Crisis, which was—and remains—a publication dedicated to promoting Civil Rights. The poem later appeared in Hughes’s first poetry collection, The Weary Blues (1926), which helped solidify his reputation as a key figure in the Harlem Renaissance. The poem is a dramatic monologue in which a working-class Black woman speaks to her son about the value of perseverance in the face of American racism. She does so using an extended metaphor that likens life to a staircase. The first two-thirds of her address revolve around the endurance she’s had to maintain in the face of the many hazards that have obstructed her path through life. She speaks about her own experience in order to inspire her son to persevere through the difficulties that he, too, will inevitably face. Though the poem implicitly takes place around the time it was written in the 1920s, it’s important to recognize that racism remains very much alive in American society. For this reason, the poem speaks to how racism continues to create obstacles to the advancement of Black people and other people of color.

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