Freedom

BY LANGSTON HUGHES

Freedom will not come

Today, this year

            Nor ever

Through compromise and fear.

I have as much right

As the other fellow has

            To stand

On my two feet

And own the land.

I tire so of hearing people say,

Let things take their course.

Tomorrow is another day.

I do not need my freedom when I’m dead.

I cannot live on tomorrow’s bread.

            Freedom

            Is a strong seed

            Planted

            In a great need.

            I live here, too.

            I want my freedom

            Just as you.   

"Even though its founding documents profess an egalitarian vision of opportunity and equal treatment of its citizens, rights and liberties deemed inalienable, the United States has struggled to live up to its avowed values of fairness and equality and to extend the privileges of freedom that animated its foundational cause for self-determination and sovereignty after hard-won battles against a progressively tyrannical British monarchy.

Its unapologetic history of white supremacy; genocide of Native Americans fueled by a cultural belief in Manifest Destiny; enslavement of African people; racial segregation and its lingering effects in employment practices, education, housing, medical care, and public facilities; persistence of police murders and other acts of terrorism against ethnic communities and people; confining Japanese Americans and illegal immigrants in internment camps subject to food shortages and substandard sanitation; economic exploitation of and fearmongering among migrant workers; the racial disparity of rates of mass incarceration; palpable class divisions and financial inequality caused by an ever-widening racial wealth gap across ethnic groups; the dismantling of unions and social organizations that laudably fought to bring a sense of dignity to working-class and poor people; and hegemonic cultural attitudes and vocal intolerance of new Americans are just a few of the politically documented abuses that have prevented the country from actualizing as a single “nation, indivisible, with liberty and justice for all.”

An oft-celebrated aspect of its poetry, most audibly evoked in the poems of Walt Whitman, celebrates and idealizes the spirit of American democracy and its possibility, chiefly evidenced in its diversity of people and expansive landscapes. However, another important and equally principled tradition of poems written in the United States has long spoken to that space between the progressive idea of a country that promises equality, freedom, and liberty for its citizens and its long history of political injustice, systemic racism, oppression, and ethnic strife. In this regard, American poetry has served as a measure by which readers become acquainted with the difficulties and suffering of citizenship and how the United States might become a more perfect union. In this regard, because such poems, like the country itself, are born of a spirit of resistance and righteousness, tonally and thematically, they represent in literature the true spirit of what being an American means—they affirm founding values of freedom of speech and assembly in the promotion, pursuit, and expressions of a better tomorrow. In advancing a collective vision of what and who Americans are, these poems bear witness, challenge assumptions, and give substance to the country’s most elemental ideals of justice.

The poems gathered here document important historical struggles for dignity and justice; they praise political heroes; they express pride, frustration, and rage. They call for collective action and individual accountability, sometimes loudly yet always compellingly. They promote positive identities and self-esteem and make a claim for the sanctity of all humans. If you have any recommendations for poems to include in this collection, please contact us."

The nature is free. All animals are born free. So do humans. 
However, we must live together. Humanities teach us how to live 

harmoniously together. But it comes with the price of restricted freedom. 
Civilization meant to be how we exercise the restricted freedom the best

way we can. 

Frederick Douglass 

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BY ROBERT HAYDEN

When it is finally ours, this freedom, this liberty, this beautiful

and terrible thing, needful to man as air,   

usable as earth; when it belongs at last to all,   

when it is truly instinct, brain matter, diastole, systole,   

reflex action; when it is finally won; when it is more   

than the gaudy mumbo jumbo of politicians:   

this man, this Douglass, this former slave, this Negro   

beaten to his knees, exiled, visioning a world   

where none is lonely, none hunted, alien,   

this man, superb in love and logic, this man   

shall be remembered. Oh, not with statues’ rhetoric,   

not with legends and poems and wreaths of bronze alone,

but with the lives grown out of his life, the lives   

fleshing his dream of the beautiful, needful thing.

--------

What a poem!

It speaks the truth nothing but the truth.

This poem by Robert Hayden stirs my heart to the core each time I read.

This is what poetry is all about.

This one certainly is one of my few favorites.

Frederick Douglas' life well deserves the embodiment of this outstanding poem.

Frederick Douglass (born Frederick Augustus Washington Bailey; c. February 1818 – February 20, 1895)^[3][4]was an American social reformer, abolitionist, orator, writer, and statesman. After escaping from slavery in Maryland, he became a national leader of the abolitionist movement in Massachusetts and New York, becoming famous for his oratory^[5] and incisive antislavery writings. Accordingly, he was described by abolitionists in his time as a living counter-example to slaveholders' arguments that slaves lacked the intellectual capacity to function as independent American citizens.^[6][7] Likewise, Northerners at the time found it hard to believe that such a great orator had once been a slave.^[8]

Frederick Douglass
Douglass in 1879
United States Minister Resident to Haiti
In office November 14, 1889 – July 30, 1891
President	Benjamin Harrison
Preceded by	John E. W. Thompson
Succeeded by	John S. Durham
Personal details
Born	Frederick Augustus Washington Bailey February 14, 1818 (assumed date) Cordova, Maryland, U.S.
Died	February 20, 1895 (aged 77) Washington, D.C., U.S.
Resting place	Mount Hope Cemetery
Political party	Republican
Spouse(s)	Anna Murray ​ ​ (m. 1838; died 1882)​ Helen Pitts   ​ (m. 1884)​
Parents	Harriet Bailey[1]and, allegedly, Anthony Aaron[2]
Relatives	Douglass family
Occupation	Abolitionist, suffragist, author, editor, diplomat
Signature

Douglass wrote several autobiographies, notably describing his experiences as a slave in his Narrative of the Life of Frederick Douglass, an American Slave (1845), which became a bestseller, and was influential in promoting the cause of abolition, as was his second book, My Bondage and My Freedom (1855). Following the Civil War, Douglass remained an active campaigner against slavery and wrote his last autobiography, Life and Times of Frederick Douglass. First published in 1881 and revised in 1892, three years before his death, the book covers events both during and after the Civil War. Douglass also actively supported women's suffrage, and held several public offices. Without his approval, Douglass became the first African-American nominated for Vice President of the United States as the running mate and Vice Presidential nominee of Victoria Woodhull, on the Equal Rights Party ticket.^[9]

Douglass was a firm believer in the equality of all peoples, be they white, black, female, Native American, or Chinese immigrants.^[10] He was also a believer in dialogue and in making alliances across racial and ideological divides, as well as in the liberal values of the U.S. Constitution.^[11] When radical abolitionists, under the motto "No Union with Slaveholders," criticized Douglass' willingness to engage in dialogue with slave owners, he replied: "I would unite with anybody to do right and with nobody to do wrong."^{[12](from Internet)}

Analysis of ‘Frederick Douglass’

Posted onDecember 30, 2015 by damilinks

The problem of race is indeed America’s greatest dilemma as recounted in the book titled (The Major Writings of Martin Luther King. Jr.).No wonder Robert Hayden picks on this phenomenon in his biography of Frederick Douglass. Frederick who was born in 1818 in Maryland at a period when slavery was heightened, grew to become an orator for the abolition of this inhuman acts which in turn spur many African-Americans in the South to fight for their freedom.
“Frederick Douglass” as a poem, is a psychological revolutionist scheme fashioned by Hayden to engage the black Americans into seeing the need for freedom. This dramatic monologue strives in prosaic form and then create rooms for innate and visible imageries of what the fight for freedom really is. As we see in the conversational tone that begins the poem wherein the persona envisions the particular time when the importance of fighting for freedom will be understood as seen in “When it is finally ours, this freedom, this liberty, this beautiful/ and terrible thing, needful to man as air,”[1-2]. At this point, the realization of what freedom is that of a dare need (‘needful as air’, ‘usable as earth’). The poet tries to picture freedom as an entity to sustain the black race. He goes further to say, “when it belongs at last to all,[3]”(note, emphasis is place on communal effort,meaning, the need for freedom should grow beyond the ideologies of few persons), “when it is truly instinct, brain matter, diastole, systole, and reflex action;”[4]meaning the times the fight for freedom becomes an unconscious act. He goes on to say “when it is finally won;[5]( meaning, when freedom is finally owned by blacks), and “when it is more than the gaudy mumbo jumbo of politicians”[6]( that is, when the urge for freedom surpasses political ideologies of corrupt leaders(activists) then and only then can the invaluable idea of Douglass be founded.
This poem which is a complex sentence, transcends the ideas of future times to the reality of fighting for freedom. Rather, it explores the personality of “this man, this Douglass, this former slave, this Negro/ beaten to his knees, exiled, visioning a world/ where none is lonely, none hunted,alien,”[7-9] to buttress his message. Not only did he give hints to Frederick as a person, he also exposes his ideologies as seen in “this man, superb in love and logic”[10].  He continues by showing the immortality that succeeds this act as we find in “this man /shall be remembered, oh, not with statues’ rhetoric, /not with legends and poems and wreaths of bronze alone,/ but with the lives grown out of his life,”[10-14]( here, the notion of fighting for freedom presented to the blacks whom i guess were the persona’s audience then is that for ‘posterity sake’. It grows beyond fighting to win, no, it is a fight that will forever count in the existence of the Black race as seen in the different concept that grew in Africa like : Negritude, Pan- Africanism, ‘Nigerianism’,’Biafranism’ etc. Hayden at this point tries to arouse the rebellious nature of his black audience to seeing the need to arise and fight against racism, oppression and slavery from their white counterparts so that they can become “the lives fleshing his(Frederick’s) dream of the beautiful, needful thing(known as freedom which is needful for the sustenance of the black race)[14].
In conclusion, racism though may stand tall in this American society but Hayden through his poem which is a biography has shown the black Americans a way out and that is for them to stand to fight for their freedom.

Written by:
Damilola O. Ogunojuwo.

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Today is Martin Luther King's Day, and here are his visionary, prophetic words 

we all Americans must imprint on our hearts to remember.

King delivered a 17-minute speech, later known as "I Have a Dream". In the speech's most famous passage – in which he departed from his prepared text, possibly at the prompting of Mahalia Jackson, who shouted behind him, "Tell them about the dream!"^[158][159] – King said:^[160]

I say to you today, my friends, so even though we face the difficulties of today and tomorrow, I still have a dream. It is a dream deeply rooted in the American dream.

I have a dream that one day this nation will rise up and live out the true meaning of its creed: 'We hold these truths to be self-evident: that all men are created equal.'

I have a dream that one day on the red hills of Georgia the sons of former slaves and the sons of former slave owners will be able to sit down together at the table of brotherhood.

I have a dream that one day even the state of Mississippi, a state sweltering with the heat of injustice, sweltering with the heat of oppression, will be transformed into an oasis of freedom and justice.

I have a dream that my four little children will one day live in a nation where they will not be judged by the color of their skin but by the content of their character.

I have a dream today.

I have a dream that one day, down in Alabama, with its vicious racists, with its governor having his lips dripping with the words of interposition and nullification; one day right there in Alabama, little black boys and black girls will be able to join hands with little white boys and white girls as sisters and brothers.

I have a dream today.