How is Langston Hughes a socially committed poet?

Langston Hughes was a pillar of the African American
community in Harlem, New York, during the 1920s and 1930s. He was an integral part of
what came to be known as the "Harlem Renaissance," a collective movement of artists
committed to celebrating their own artistic achievements and exposing the hypocrisy of
segregation and the harm it causes not only to the black citizens of the United States,
but to the white populace as well.

Consider his poem,
"Theme for English B." In this poem, the speaker is a young African American male, the
only black student at a university that had heretofore been a "whites-only"
establishment. While the speaker can point to many things that are different in his day
versus those of his white counterparts, ultimately, he decides, that they are not very
different at all. All people, he realizes, love many of the same things: food, music,
and companionship. The big lie has been that whites and blacks are separated by more
than race. The truth is, they are more alike than
different.

Another of Hughes' poems, "I, Too, Sing
America," was written in response to a late 1800s poem by Walt Whitman. Whitman's poem,
"I Hear America Singing," recounts the joys of being alive and in harmony in this
country. Whitman's poem celebrates the joys of work and leisure, America and Americans.
What Whitman leaves out is what Hughes puts in: the unfairness, poverty, and cruelty of
being black in America.

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I, too, sing
America

They send me to 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,

They'll see
how beautiful I am,

And be
ashamed.

I, too, am
America.

This poem nicely
encapsulates the themes that Hughes employs throughout his work. First, he speaks of the
mistreatment of the black man. Then, there is a call to action. Finally, once the fight
is over, the sameness of both whites and blacks will be acknowledged, equality will be
achieved, and reparations will be made.

Social commitment
to change and a better world is what Hughes is all about.