I, Too

I, Too

 
I, too, sing America.

I am the darker brother.
They send me to eat in the kitchen
When company comes,
But I laugh,
And eat well,
And grow strong.

Tomorrow, I’ll be at the table
When company comes.
Nobody’ll dare Say to me,
“Eat in the kitchen,”
Then.

Besides,
They’ll see how beautiful I am
And be ashamed—

I, too, am America.

I, Too (1945), published in "The Collected Poems of Langston Hughes", demonstrates a yearning for equality through perseverance while disproving the idea that patriotism is limited by race. Langston Hughes, in writing this poem and many others, helped define the Harlem Renaissance, a period in the early 1920s and 30s of newfound cultural identity for blacks in America who had discovered the power of literature, art, music, and poetry as a means of personal and collective expression in the scope of civil rights.

In the poem, Hughes describes a ubiquitous racial oppression that degrades African Americans at the time. He writes from the perspective of an inferior servant to a domineering white family that shoos him away to the kitchen whenever company arrives.