Hughes’s poem features an anonymous speaker about whom we know little aside from the fact that he or she is Black, as indicated in the title. Because this speaker uses the first-person pronoun “I,” he or she is implicitly linked to other speakers within the tradition of lyric poetry. Lyric poems tend to be relatively short, and they typically center on a first-person speaker who describes personal thoughts, feelings, and perceptions as they unfold in real time. Hughes’s speaker may initially appear to be a typical lyric speaker. However, as the poem proceeds, it quickly becomes clear that the experiences being described can’t possibly belong to a single person. Rather than being confined to a particular time and place, the speaker addresses the full sweep of human history. The poem begins with the origins of civilization in the Fertile Crescent; continues with references to major African kingdoms, both ancient and precolonial; and concludes with the enslavement of Blacks in nineteenth-century America. In this way, the speaker doesn’t simply describe the experience of the individual “Negro” mentioned in the title. Rather, the speaker gives voice to the collective “soul” of Black cultures and communities more broadly.

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