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The “Red Summer” of 1919 and the Great Migration

Hughes wrote “The Negro Speaks of Rivers” at the nexus of two significant events in Black American history. The first event is known as the “Red Summer” of 1919. Following the end of World War I, as veterans returned home and reintegrated into social and economic life, competition for work quickly led to worsening racial tensions. White servicemen resented the fact that many of their jobs had been filled by Black laborers while they were abroad. This resentment reached a tipping point in the summer of 1919, which saw widespread violence against Black people. The violence of this period was related to a longer history of lynching in the United States. Lynching, along with other forms of persecution, had terrorized Black communities since the Reconstruction era that followed the end of the American Civil War.  Against this backdrop of violence, a massive demographic shift began to take place as millions of African Americans moved to Northern cities in search of greater freedom and equality of opportunity. This shift, which lasted roughly from 1910 to 1970, is known as the “Great Migration.” Written in 1920, “The Negro Speaks of Rivers” navigates both the violence of the Red Summer and the freedom promised by the Great Migration.

The Harlem Renaissance

Hughes wrote “The Negro Speaks of Rivers” in 1920, thereby marking the beginning of the major period of Black intellectual and artistic activity known as the Harlem Renaissance. This “rebirth” of Black cultural life lasted through the 1920s and into the 1930s, and Hughes was at its very center. Though centered on the Harlem neighborhood of New York City, the Renaissance had an international reach that witnessed the flowering of Black intellectual discourse, literature, visual art, music, and fashion. All these forms of cultural and artistic production sought to challenge racism, subvert predominant stereotypes, and develop a progressive new politics that advanced Black peoples and promoted integration. Central to the Harlem Renaissance stood the figure known as the “New Negro.” The “Old Negro” remained hampered by the historical trauma of slavery. The New Negro, by contrast, possessed a renewed sense of self, purpose, and pride. Langston Hughes contributed to this vision of the New Negro through his poetry. Many critics consider “The Negro Speaks of Rivers” as the seminal statement of this New Negro figure. Indeed, the speaker of this poem is self-possessed and capable of speaking for a wider, collective consciousness about the long history of the Black experience.

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