Black Heritage

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Black Heritage in Langston Hughes
“The Negro Speaks of Rivers”
“The Negro Speaks of Rivers” by Langston Hughes brings together the images of rives in different parts of the world and sheds light on the experiences of people of African Ancestry over the past thousands of years. Rivers are used as a simile to the source of life; the poem traces the movements of blacks from the Euphrates River in Asia, to the Nile and Congo Rivers in African, to the Mississippi River in North America. In this poem Langston Hughes uses imagery and symbolism to express how the black mans soul is connected to the earth and how together man and river tell a story.
In the first 3 stanzas the speaker in the poem has “known rivers”. The speaker her identifies himself self as “I’ve” is a person of African Ancestry “The Negro”. The rivers he speaks of are “rives ancient as the world and the flow of human blood in human veins”. Rivers symbolize the lifeline of the earth and are the sources from which all civilizations sprang. Rives existed before there were human through which blood could flow. The link between ancient and modern humans is the flow of rivers rather than the flow of blood because when human go away rivers still remain. When the speaker implies “My soul has grown deep like the rivers”. He identifies himself and the color of his skin with the beginning of mankind. Together these three stanzas predate human existence longer than human memory. River are immortal and human are ephemeral.
In stanzas 4-7 the speaker tell the story of the “ancient’ rives the speaker mentions in the first three stanzas. The rivers are named in order of their association with black history. In stanza 4 the speakers says “I bath in the Euphrates when dawns were young” suggesting he was there when human life first begin possibly in biblical terms the Garden of Eden. In Stanza 5 the speaker goes on to say, “ I built my hut near the Co...