Langston Hughes’s “The Negro Speaks of Rivers”: The Assertion of African-American Identity

“The Negro Speaks of Rivers” stretches from the earliest moments of human civilisation all the way to American slavery, emphasising that black people have both witnessed and participated in the key moments of human history. In the face of centuries of slavery and oppression in America, the poem’s speaker asserts the perseverance of black cultural roots.

One can assume that the speaker is black, as it is “I” who speaks of “rivers.” The opening line, “I’ve known rivers,” is repeated at the beginning of the second line. These are not just any rivers that he has known, but ones that are as “ancient as the world.” These bodies of water are vastly important to the history of the earth. The final lines of this section state that the speaker’s soul has “grown deep like the rivers.” It has taken on the ancient and multi-layered aspects of rivers as well as their progression through a landscape. His soul is like the most ancient and longest of rivers.

The speaker lists a number of rivers he visited and came to know. The four lines of this section begin with “I.” It is in these four lines that the speaker moves from the Euphrates to the “Mississippi,” telling the story of his life: “I bathed in the Euphrates when dawns were young.”

The first place he takes the reader to is the “Euphrates” River, which flows through the south of Turkey and into Iraq. It is one of the longest rivers in the world. This body of water is deeply connected to mythology and ancient history. It is recorded that the city of Babylon was erected on its banks. It is often linked with the Tigris. Together, they make up the Tigris-Euphrates river system. It was here that he experienced the young “dawns”—a reference to the beginning of time, or at least to the beginnings of human civilisation.

Next, the speaker takes the reader to the Congo, the second-longest river in Africa, which flows through three different countries: the Republic of the Congo, the Democratic Republic of the Congo, and Angola. He built his hut there on its banks and allowed it to lull him to sleep. This is quite an intimate way to get to know a river. Every moment he spends with each of these bodies of water is similar in that way. He has a personal connection with them.

In the next lines, he goes on to speak about the River Nile, one of the longest rivers in the world. It flows from the south to the north in north-eastern Africa. From his position in time, the speaker is looking “upon the Nile” while helping to build the pyramids. This clearly places him among the workers who worked for the pharaohs of Egypt.

Finally, he moves on to more modern times and the “Mississippi” River. He was listening to the sound of the Mississippi River while “Abe Lincoln / went down to New Orleans.” This is a reference to a particular journey taken by Abraham Lincoln, the sixteenth president of the United States. When he was a young man, he guided a boat down the river, which gave him his first glimpse of what slavery was like. The marketplace in New Orleans was one of the largest slave markets in the United States. In the concluding line of this section, he says that he has seen the muddy banks of the river turn “golden” due to the setting sun.

In the last three lines of this piece, the speaker returns to the repetition that marked the beginning of “The Negro Speaks of Rivers.” The lines are mostly the same, with a slight change in the middle. He begins with the third repetition of the phrase, “I’ve known rivers.” He has been present at some of the world’s most important historical occasions, all due to his friendship and dedication to these bodies of water. They are described as being “dusky” and “ancient.”

The poem argues that people of African descent have not simply been present throughout human history; they have also been a guiding force in shaping civilisation. In this sense, the poem is an ode to black perseverance. The speaker of the poem acts as a representative figure. After all, the title is “The Negro Speaks of Rivers,” not “A Negro…” (At the time of the poem’s writing, “Negro” was a common term and was not generally considered offensive.) In this sense, the speaker models how he or she thinks the black community as a whole should relate to its history and culture.

As an almost mythical figure, the speaker emphasises the depth of his or her experience, which turns out to represent the entire history of black people. The speaker has “known rivers ancient as the world” and “bathed in the Euphrates when dawns were young.” The Euphrates is a river in the Middle East associated with an area called the Cradle of Civilisation, where early agriculture and urban societies developed. As such, the speaker is saying that he or she was present at the very beginning of human history, implying that black people have helped shape the world as we know it.

Invoking this deep history establishes the fact that black experience extends as far back as that of any other people, creating a profound sense of community and connection among black people. In fact, the speaker has “known rivers … older than the flow of human blood in human veins”—suggesting that black history existed even before human existence. This connects the speaker to the natural world. On the one hand, such a connection could be considered problematic, since racist discourses often oppose “civilised” white populations to “natural” or “uncivilised” black peoples. Because of these racist ideas, Hughes himself veered away from such characterisations in some of his later work.

On the other hand, this connection can be seen as asserting a sense of wisdom and peace, such as when the Congo “lulled” the speaker to sleep, in the face of slavery and oppression, which the poem alludes to later on. In addition to the speaker’s deep historical experience, he or she has also witnessed recent events, such as “the singing of the Mississippi”—a river on the American continent, thousands of miles away from the Euphrates—when “Abe Lincoln went down to New Orleans.” The line alludes to a famous trip Lincoln took down the Mississippi as a young man, which exposed him to the realities of slavery. The speaker invokes these examples to show the breadth of black experience—which includes moments of triumph, like building the pyramids, as well as moments of suffering and oppression.