Teach This Poem: “Let America Be America Again” by Langston Hughes

Watch and listen to Tracy Chapman sing “Talkin’ About A Revolution.”

The following activities and questions are designed to help your students use their noticing skills to move through the poem and develop their thinking skills so they understand its meaning with confidence, using what they’ve noticed as evidence for their interpretations. Read more about the framework upon which these activities are based.

1. Warm-up: (free-write) What does it mean to be American? Why? How might you describe the United States to someone who does not live here? Why? If you feel comfortable, share with a partner or small group.  

2. Before Reading the Poem: Watch and listen to Tracy Chapman sing “Talkin’ About A Revolution.” What lyrics and/or phrases stand out? What emotions does the song evoke? How? 

3. Reading the Poem: Silently read the poem “Let America Be America Again” by Langston Hughes. What do you notice about the poem? Note any words or phrases that stand out to you or any questions you might have. 

4. Listening to the Poem: Enlist two volunteers and listen as the poem is read aloud twice. Write down any additional words and phrases that stand out to you. Or, you can watch the poet Danez Smith recite the poem. 

5. Small Group Discussion: Share what you noticed about the poem with a small group of students. How do the resources from the beginning of class compare to your reading of the poem? How would you describe the speaker in the poem? Why? How does the speaker describe America? How does this compare to your feelings about the United States? Why? What do the final two stanzas of the poem mean to you?

6. Whole Class Discussion: Try reading the poem again with and without the parenthetical lines, and with just these lines. How do these lines inform the poem? What do you make of the anaphora “I am” and “Of …”? How does this develop and change throughout the poem? 

7. Extension for Grades 7-8: “Let America Be America Again” by Langston Hughes was published in 1936. What thoughts do you have about the United States currently? Write a poem or creative piece inspired by this poem. If you feel comfortable, share with your class. 

8. Extension for Grades 9-12: Read more of Langston Hughes’s poems. Then in small groups, use these discussion questions to further explore Hughes’s poetry. If you have the time, participate in a few mini-discussions. (Teachers, you may wish to preselect poems and discussion groups.) 

“The ‘dreary times’ Hughes mentions likely refers to the civil rights struggles of the 1960s and the escalating war in Vietnam. However, August of 1966 was a particularly troubled time in American history. In the first week alone, the country witnessed a mass shooting at the University of Texas at Austin, race riots in Lansing, Michigan, and Martin Luther King’s civil rights march in Chicago that ended with King being struck by a rock thrown by white protesters.” Read a letter from our archives from Hughes in response to an invitation to read at the Guggenheim Museum, as well as context about what was happening in American history at the time the letter was written.

The term anaphora refers to a poetic technique in which successive phrases or lines begin with the same words, often resembling a litany. The repetition can be as simple as a single word or as long as an entire phrase. Read more.