123 School Work

Dreams of Harlem

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  Dreams of Harlem
  For most black people Harlem was the place to be from the 1920s through the 1930s. During the Harlem Renaissance Blacks were "setting his (sic) mark in politics, art, literature, music, science, the social sciences and every aspect of American life" (Harlem Renaissance 1). Harlem was a place where blacks could escape from racism and find jobs with decent pay. It was also a place where they could go out on Saturday nights, with white people, dancing and listening to the sounds of the "saxophone, trumpet, and drums" (Harlem Renaissance 1). Even though Harlem and the Harlem Renaissance did so much for black people and brought out many well-respected blacks such as Langston Hughes, Zora Neale Hurston, Countee Cullen, and Claude McKay; it still had its flaws. For example, although whites went out to places blacks did, "it was often out of curiosity" (Harlem Renaissance 1) the whites were there too. It was that most whites just wanted to see how Blacks lived. Langston Hughes's poem "Passing" tells about Harlem and those that have left. Hughes's poem captures a nostalgic memory dreamed by the Blacks that have been fortunate enough to leave Harlem since Harlem changed and became a "ghetto."
       In Hughes's poem he starts describing typical Sunday afternoons and it sounds like typical American Sunday afternoons with the way he says
  [] when the air is one interminable ball game and grandma cannot get her gospel hymns from the Saints of God in Christ on account of the Dodgers on the radio []...