Content Matter Discussion
The Deficiencies of our Current Curriculum
In our district, teachers are required to use the Springboard curriculum, created by College Board, a non-profit organization. The workbook and accompanying online resources include teaching strategies that differentiate and scaffold materials to facilitate student learning in ELA and Mathematics towards college readiness standards.
Langston Hughes appears in the Springboard middle school ELA curriculum in the sixth-grade workbook, in a unit designed to identify the key events of a story and how characters react.
Each reading selection has a brief introduction to the author. For the text Thank You, M’am, the only of Hughes short stories to be included across the middle school curriculum, his introduction is written as follows:
About the Author
Langston Hughes (1902-1967) began his writing career early. By 8th grade, he was named the class poet. He regularly wrote verses for his high school magazine. Hughes entered Columbia University in 1921 and discovered the arts scene in Harlem. He became a prominent figure in the Harlem Renaissance. His poetry, plays, and stories frequently focus on the African American experience, particularly on the struggles and feelings of people in a segregated society. His poetry was especially informed by the jazz and blues rhythms of African American music. (5)
This introduction of Hughes is meant to make him relatable to students, having started in the 8th grade himself. It emphasizes his educational experiences and notes his participation in the Harlem Renaissance. The last two sentences unjustly, and quickly, synthesize his overarching themes and inspiration.
The problem with this introduction is how much is left out. An author is not relatable to students simply because they once were a student. The emphasis on his educational experience leaves out the racial tensions he felt while at Columbia, which he takes a dramatic leave from, after just one year. He spends four years rejecting higher education in exchange for learning through travel and living life. His ultimate return to school, to Lincoln University, happens later than this timeline suggests, and when he is finally in a position to do so, with financial support. (6) This is much more relatable to a larger portion of my student base, who wonder how they will be to afford college, or whether they want to go at all.
The introduction also mentions the Harlem Renaissance, yet to do so without providing context is to not introduce it at all. In the 6th grade, when the social studies curriculum centers on ancient civilizations, it is unclear whether students have ever even heard of the Harlem Renaissance, let alone truly understand the impact it had on African American and American culture overall. An understanding of the Harlem Renaissance would only shed light on the themes of the short story in the curriculum and help students understand.
In Thank You, M’am a young black boy attempts to steal the purse of an older black woman. She catches him by the collar and takes him home with her to wash his face and feed him. Through their conversation she urges him to behave, gives him money for new shoes, and it concludes with his ‘thank you,’ at which point they part ways. In many ways, this story exemplifies the changing identity of the African American that is only possible after the historical Great Migration and World War 1 shifts in America, and a new identity for Black Americans is brought to life, particularly through the art of the Harlem Renaissance. Thus the teaching of historical context would lead to a deeper understanding of the themes in this story than are simply provided in the Springboard curriculum.
Rejecting the “Old Negro” Identity
Hughes spends most of his life in Northern cities and travels abroad before his most well-known time as a writer in the Harlem Renaissance. Hughes is the product of his time and experience, a man whose identity morphs into what will be known as the “New Negro.” In 1925, Alain Locke examines this change in identities in his published essay, Enter the New Negro. To understand how crucial this shift is in collective and personal identity, one must concretely understand the identity of the “Old Negro” first. Locke writes, “The Old Negro… was a creature of moral debate and historical controversy… of dependence… The Negro himself has contributed his share to this through a sort of protective social mimicry forced upon him by the adverse circumstances of dependence.” (7) This quote is crucial in that it sets up two sides of the identity problem. The first being the society that has turned the Black individual into the subject of debate and controversy, often as a delinquent or subhuman. These are the societal norms, the Jim Crow Laws, and the legacy of slavery, that all worked to keep African Americans “in his[their] place.”(8) What is more relevant about this quote, however, is the contribution of African Americans to their submersion. Not only would they need to unburden themselves of societal barriers, more importantly, but they would also need to eliminate the psychological barriers formed by generationally living these norms. After all, it was safer to live abiding by the projected image than to exist as a full, self-determining, individual.
Hughes is perhaps lucky to have experienced history in such a way that promoted a new identity, what Locke refers to as the “New Negro”. Protected from the old identity, it wasn't until 1927, as an adult, that he first experienced the American South. While this event is out of chronological order, this moment helps exemplify the identity of the “Old Negro” and the self-acceptance of it that prompts psychological rejection, particularly in Hughes.
By this point in his life, Hughes was living in Harlem, back from foreign travels, and focusing on his professional writing. He was invited to both Tennessee and Texas to read his poetry and used that as an opportunity to explore the South for the first time. Familiar with stories of southern racism, Hughes seems surprised by subtleties acknowledging that “the South is not entirely as bad as it is painted...”(9)
While visiting for these lectures, Hughes takes the time to visit Baton Rouge, where a refugee camp is established due to the rising floods of the Mississippi. It is here that he encounters Southern segregation, and worse even, the “Old Negro” self held identity Locke talks about.
Visiting the refugee camp, Hughes observes that white refugees are brought to the city in covered protected decks, housed in former government barracks and tree-shaded buildings, were fed three hot meals a day, and given rations of delicacies such as tobacco, snuff, and candy. For African American refugees quite the opposite was true. They were transported to the camp exposed to the elements, housed in open fields ankle-deep in mud when it rained, received only two meals a day, and often were simply given leftover goods if any at all. (10) This treatment of African Americans, especially in a time of emergency, though deplorable, was not beyond the realm of belief. It was expected that American society would thus treat the black population as second-class citizens.
What was surprising to Hughes, was the confrontation with the “Old Negro. ” Black newspapers had reported that the flood was a “blessing in disguise” in that it saved field hands from debt servitude. These were the people that Hughes wanted to interview. He learned that they had never had 10 dollars at once in their lives, had seldom ever left the city, and most were illiterate. (11) These could all be seen as reasons to run away from Baton Rouge and seek a better life, especially when such a flood provides a clean break from these conditions, and yet when Hughes asks, “But are you going back to the plantations?” Their responses were overwhelming, “Yes, suh, I reckon we are.” (12)
More than the disparity in emergency treatment, this is the interaction that shocks Hughes. It exemplifies Locke’s analysis of the old African American as one so dependent on the system that they cannot envision for themselves anything different or better. They have become reliant and accepting holding the same ideology up as a pillar of their own identity and worth. This is what is most unbelievable to Hughes. In the very next sentence he writes, “Baton Rouge depressed me so terribly; so, having the money to go away, I went.” (13) It is not the outwardly discriminate conditions of the refugee camp that frighten Hughes, but the self-deprivation, and inwardly acceptance of the “Old Negro” identity, that is too much, causing Hughes to run away from it.
This visceral effect of this moment, like many of his experiences, winds up impacting his writing later in life. One example of this is in his short story, Father and Son. The Colonel, a white plantation owner, has fathered several mixed children with his black farmhand, Cora. Of these children, two are pivotal. Bert is the light-skinned bold academic, who has been sent and kept away, due to his resemblance to the Colonel. His independence and sense of self-worth embody the “New Negro.” On the opposite end of the spectrum, the “Old Negro” is exemplified by his brother Willie. He is darker skinned, has chosen to work the plantation, and is meek and obedient to white folks. Bert’s insistence on taking his rightful place as Colonel’s son leads him to trouble; a mob hunting him for a lynching. In the end, as an act of final self-determination, Bert takes his own life. The mob finally recovers Bert’s dead body, but robbed of satisfaction in their lynching, decide to take Willie, although innocent, to lynch as well. (14) Even in death, the “New Negro” can take his life into his own hands, to stand his ground, maintain his pride, and make his own decisions. The “Old Negro” on the other hand, has lived a life of servitude, having accepted his status and ultimately accepting a violent death, innocently, at the hands of white rage.
Migrating From the South to a New Sense of Self
The very creation of America, although not often taught as such, is inextricably linked to slavery. The legacy of which impacts the political, economic, and everyday experiences of African Americans from then until now.
We are well aware of the classical moments in American history that have led to the legal and liveable change in our country: The Civil War, the Emancipation Proclamation, the Reconstruction Era, the Civil Rights Movement, Affirmative Action, and most recently a summer of protest against police brutality targeting black and brown bodies.
What is often left out of this narrative, are historical events, that on their surface may seem isolated, but are an integral part of this story.
In Glenn Jordan’s Re-membering the African-American Past, Jordan discusses ways in which two key moments in history, the Great Migration and World War 1, allow for the changing identity of African Americans, which comes through in the form of art and literature, particularly produced in the Harlem Renaissance.
Between 1910 and the 1940s African Americans moved to the North in droves. Not that the North had absolute freedom, because it did not, but it offered a higher sense of security than what many generations had faced in the South. Thousands moved North for the economic opportunities, industrial growth, and of course as, “an act of resistance fleeing the exploitation, lynching and racial violence of the South.”(15) This, Jordan says, results in a re-imagining of their image, and since this happens on such a large scale, the African American identity as a whole becomes reinvented. From a history of slavery and suppression emerges a resistance and sense of pride in oneself.
Evidence of this shift in mindset is made clear in Hughes’ autobiography, “The Big Sea.” Born in Joplin, Missouri, Hughes moves progressively North throughout his young life, eventually ending up in Harlem. He was raised by his grandmother in Lawrence Kansas until her death when he was 12 years old. He traveled then to his Aunt and Uncle Reeds, and after that sporadically with his mother and stepfather. (16) What we see of his lineage, and in particular the attitude of his grandmother, provide an example of the transformation we see in African American ideology and the escape from an early time of tyranny over Black Americans.
Both Hughes’ great grandfathers were white on his paternal side; Silas Cushenberry being a Jewish slave trader and Sam Clay was a Scottish distiller. On his maternal side, his great grandfather was Captain Ralph Quarels who was also white. The male lineage then exemplifies the history of white supremacy in the South and the relationships that often were forced between the white slave owners and their housekeepers, slaves, etc. (17)
In the story of his grandmother, however, we see the shift to a story of resistance, beginning with her French and Indian Blood. Hughes writes, “She said there had been a French trader who came down St. Lawrence, then on foot to the Carolinas and mated with her grandmother, who was a Cherokee- so all her people were free. During slavery, she had free papers in North Carolina, and traveled about free, at will. Her name was Mary Sampson Patterson.” She marries a free man named Heridan Leary who is eventually shot and killed in John Brown's raid at Harpers Ferry. She then marries Charles Langston, Hughes’ grandfather. He also believed in freedom and followed a life of politics. (18) His grandmother’s history is one characterized by freedom since her inception. To say that “all her people were free” is a statement not afforded to many given the history of slavery. His grandmother continues this legacy by marrying an abolitionist whose life is lost in the fight for freedom, and later an academic whose work is rooted in freedom.
Of his grandmother, Hughes writes, “Our mortgage never got paid off- for my grandmother was not like the other colored women of Lawrence. She didn’t take in washing or go out to cook, for she had never worked for anyone.”(19) In this quote we can see how this free identity permeates beyond lineage into everyday life. Mary is set apart from other “colored women” due to her refusal to relinquish that freedom by performing work of servitude. While the security of a mortgage is in question here, and Hughes often talks about the poverty they faced, what would never be in question was their freedom, independence, and pride.
Returning From War a Changed Man
The freedom felt by his grandmother Mary was shared large scale when African American veterans returned from World War I. In his Re-membering the African-American Past, Jordan points out that, “Those who had ‘fought for freedom’ and returned to find continued oppression, asked the obvious question: We have been fighting for the freedom of others, what about our own? We have laid down our lives for this country, isn’t it about time that we got something in return? There was also a further problem: many African-American servicemen were stationed in France during the War, and they were treated like human beings.”(20) African Americans had fulfilled the ultimate patriotic call. The parallels between the freedom fought for and the lack of it at home was blatant. Many had died, and truthfully, many continued to die at home at the hands of white rage, receiving nothing for their sacrifice. These questions, which may have existed all along, were now front and center. Furthermore, Jordan points out that they were treated, “like human beings'' overseas. While this sounds basic enough, it sheds light on their subhuman treatment at home. Having experienced the basic respect and freedom of simple humanity, how could they return to anything less? What was taken for granted as societal norms back home, was now exposed to be unnecessarily constructed, and could no longer be accepted and tolerated. Since the laws had not changed, they would make their changes in one of the only ways available to them; their self-determination and identity.
While Hughes did not serve in the military, his travels through American cities and abroad gave him the full scope of experiences, leading to self-transformation.
Although Hughes lived in Northern cities for much of his life and attended integrated schools, he was nonetheless held down to second-class citizenship. As a middle schooler, he attended an almost all-white school in Lincoln, Illinois. One of two black students, he was chosen as a class poet his 8th-grade year, as is mentioned in our 6th grade Springboard Curriculum. Taken at surface value, this may appear a grand accomplishment, but his account reveals the sting of racism. Hughes writes, “In America, most white people think, of course, that all Negroes can sing and dance, and have a sense of rhythm. So my classmates, knowing that a poem had to have rhythm, elected me unanimously, thinking, no doubt, that I had some, being a Negro.” (21) At this moment Hughes is singled out and stereotyped as a representative of his whole race in a single blow. Not having thought of himself as a poet before this moment, he is also under the pressure to perform for white folks, as a token fulfillment of this stereotype. While it is presented to students in a single sentence, a deeper look at history will allow them to understand Hughes on a human level. As someone dealing with stereotypes in ways that, unfortunately, maybe all too relatable for students.
Having now had the label of poet trust upon him, Hughes moves on to Central high school in Cleveland. Following opportunities for employment, his mother and stepfather moved their family, including Hughes and his little brother, from city to city. Work was hard to come by due to the influx of African Americans to cities during the Great Migration. The scarce number of jobs available for Black Americans now had a surplus of applicants. In addition, rent, as Hughes describes was the case in Cleveland, was often doubled and tripled for Black families. As a result, Hughes’ family rented several attics and basement apartments, during his 4 high school years. (22)
Central high school exposed Hughes to a variety of ethnicities as it was integrated and catered to many foreign-born families. Instead of race being a dividing factor among the student body, the greater division was among Jewish and Gentile. Due to the diversity, Hughes was made aware of the stereotypes and discrimination that faced other ethnicities, noting the racial slurs new to his vocabulary. Yet while this discrimination against other races was present, he noticed a commonality among other minorities in that, “scorned though they might be by the pure Americans - all had it on the n------ in one thing. Summertime came and they could get jobs quickly. For even during the war, when help was badly needed, lots of employers would not hire Negroes.” (23) The new revelation to Hughes, here is one that he endures in the constant city changes his family makes for work. He sees for the first time, discrimination against other people of color, and yet those other groups are at least afforded the right to work, a right that enables security and basic necessity. There is a reverberation back to veterans’ demands in Jordans’ quote as well. Why was it that others could readily find work and not the African American community? Why should it be so hard for African Americans to work, even in time of need? Perhaps more importantly, when would Hughes and other African Americans earn the right to work? The right to provide a livelihood for themselves?
The job insecurity his family and community faced, not only provides context for some of his short stories, including Thank You, Ma’m, but can provide for students the opportunity to discuss and explore job and housing inequalities in their communities. This would be a discussion that, in San Jose, would resonate with students as our community currently faces growing housing insecurities due to incoming tech and commercial developments.
After high school, Hughes traveled abroad for the first time to meet his father in Mexico. His father’s very existence in Mexico is a testament to the difference in treatment of African Americans in American society compared to foreign countries. Having studied law in the South, his father was unable to get a legal license, not to mention that banks, unions, and insurance companies would reject any of his future business. His father moved to Cuba and then Mexico, where he could open a law practice and work. While his relationship with his father is strained, to say the least, his father’s advice is to leave America. His father tells him, “Learn something you can make a living from anywhere in the world, in Europe or South America, and don’t stay in the States, where you have to live like a nigger with niggers... How can you have fun with the color line staring you in the face?”(24) More than his own internalized racism, this quote provides his father’s insightful critique of American Society. It supports Locke’s definition of the “Old Negro” identity. With the pressures of the “color line staring you in the face,” one would be relegated, often by law, to specific geographic locations and occupations. One would have very little mobility and interaction with anyone outside their race. By being locked into this condition, one would inevitably believe the same stereotypes about themselves and their community.
To escape this second-class citizenry, Hughes decided to leave school and travel the world. The Big Sea begins as he sheds the weight of his books from Columbia University, into the sea, at the port of Sandy Hook. His journey as a seaman begins with his 21-year-old self-actualization, “And I felt that nothing would ever happen to me again that I didn’t want to happen.” (25) This is a shedding, not just of books, but of that society his father cautioned him of. He would not be a pawn of that society’s regulations on him due to skin color, but go out and make his own decisions in the world. In essence, he began his own story by declaring his freedom.
His first voyage took him to Africa, “My Africa, Motherland of the Negro peoples!. .The great Africa of my dreams!” (26) While this is a momentous occasion for Hughes, in some ways it forces him to deal with his American identity as his white lineage excludes him from being considered “Black,” thus othering him, in what he expects to be his moment of acceptance. Hughes is left as an outsider in both American and African societies.
Hughes continued to travel for a few years as a seaman before deciding to live and work in Paris for some time. Arriving with only 7 dollars to his name, he quickly made a friend named Sonja, a Russian dancer who shared a room with him while they both looked for work. Finding work was difficult, now due to his foreign status rather than his skin tone. This was understandable to Hughes in a way that American discrimination was not. There is an amount of freedom Hughes witnessed during this time. He was more readily accepted into integrated social circles building friendships among artists, workers, and academics across race lines. He was able to find sustaining work and witnessed firsthand how black artists can rise in their careers to heights that would not be possible in America. (27)
Hughes’ experiences in Paris mirrored those of the soldiers stationed in Europe during World War 1. Although they did face some adversity, it was not the norm to sublimate and humiliate African Americans. They were not restricted by location, speech, work opportunities, or familial relationships. The racial restrictions they were accustomed to, which had shaped some of their previous identities, were an American construct. Those who returned from war, and Hughes, had to come to terms with the freedom they felt in a foreign country juxtaposed with the harsh living conditions they were cornered into at home. They were left with a taste of human freedom and dignity that they would not give up upon their return.
In what ways do our students recognize the impacts of society on their own identity? In what ways do they feel othered, accepted, or changed by exposure to other societies, groups, or norms?
Identity Into Art→ The Harlem Renaissance
The imagery of Jim Crow stereotypes and vaudeville caricatures is wearing away as Black Americans relocate and change. Not only is this group of people changing, but the world of art is changing in such a way that it allows writers and artists an avenue to capture their cultural change. James Campbell writes of The Timeliness of Langston Hughes, and says, “the decade of the 1920s witnessed a revolution in the realm of aesthetics, the rise of what George Hutchinson has called ‘pragmatic aesthetics,’ a new critical sensibility in which the merit of a work of art lay not in its adherence to some universal standard but rather in its capacity to express and evoke the specificities of human experiences in particular places and time...” (28) This shift from what has been traditionally considered artist, often a European standard, is now able to shift towards the everyday lives and experiences of particular localities. It creates what Campbell goes on to call a “cultural independence,” a time in which what is now considered American art, emerges. The cataloging of an “American Experience,” through music, literature, and art redefines the norms. The Harlem Renaissance, and Hughes’s own writing, thrive in capturing the experiences of what it means to be a Black American, in America, more specifically in Harlem, during this exact moment in time. His work, in particular his short stories, tells of the many interactions he’s had with African Americans across his lifetime of travel. He tells stories of the working struggles they faced and the dignity in which they faced them.
His life and the historical context are thus crucial in understanding and being able to closely read a variety of his short stories and poetry. The poverty and pride in, Thank You M'am, are more deeply understood when taking his childhood poverty into account, and the pride his family maintained in their free identity. The freedom experienced by servicemen abroad, and his taste of it are seen in, Home, the story of a musician who spends time abroad only to be hanged for exercising the same freedoms back home. The Blues I’m Playing, and Slave on the Block are about young black artists at the mercy of white patrons, which mirror one of Hughes’ last autobiographical chapters, Patron and Friend as well as shed light on the Negro experience in Harlem, while the Renaissance attracted wealthy white observers. Reading Father and Son is only enriched with an understanding of Hughes’ strained relationship with his father, and the color dynamics that play out in his genetic history. It is also the story through which the changing identities held by Black Americans are contrasted. (29) His poetry and stories are only fully understood when we can go beyond the close meaning of a word or phrase, and into the history behind the word, both from Hughes’s personal experience and from the collective experience of African Americans during that time. For students reading these texts, this provides a concrete way to understand the themes of the text and further their connection to lived experiences. This will help us draw connections between the lived experiences of today and the social movements happening around us.
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