Langston Hughes poem “Harlem- A Dream Deferred” was written in 1951.The blacks were distraught with dreams and disillusionment after the Civil War had freed them from the shackles of slavery. Though they were liberated and granted the rights to vote by federal laws, the blacks were marginalized in all other significant spheres as they were limited to segregated schools .They were not attributed with the capacity to think and were restricted to menial work. Earlier, if the system of slavery downgraded the blacks openly, the current state of affairs had a ‘sophisticated’ way of doing it. The abolition of slavery was a dream the blacks nurtured. However, it transformed into –‘a dream deferred’ as though the dream was always reserved for the future tense. The raw comparisons verging on revolting images reflects the language of the blacks devoid of any sophisticated erudition, and is straight to the point.
The revision to the U.S. Constitution as approved in the post-Civil War period established basic rights to black Americans as American citizens. Nevertheless, the court and legislative laws later weakened the officially permitted security of the blacks. For instance, the U.S. Supreme Court declared in 1896 (Plessy v. Ferguson) that it was lawful to provide “separate but equal” accommodations for passengers of Louisiana’s railroads.…
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