~a column by Colleen O’Brien
My good friend Chris sent me a gift that is nearly a century old, a copy of a poem I read many years ago but forgot. It was written by Langston Hughes, published in 1936 in New York during the Harlem Renaissance. Because it is in the Public Domain, it is history; it is also as fresh as today.
The gift came at a serendipitous time because I’ve been engaged in a long-running conversation with my daughter, who is hating America as I am hating not the country but certain Americans tearing it apart.
It is a difficult discussion because it is the Americans hated by one side who are creating an exhausted majority of Americans — 80 to 86 percent of our population – on the other. Gallup (the polling entity devised by George Gallup of Jeffferson, IA) calls it “historically polarized ideologically.” [2-14-25] The Wall Street Journal calls it “A total breakdown in trust.” [10-2-25]
“Who wants to live in this country now?” my girl asks.
“We have to stick it out and do everything to keep the democracy,” I say.
“Protests and calls to your reps don’t seem to be helping much, do they?” she asks.
I have no answer other than what I just said.
Click below for Langston Hughes’ entire poem, not a salve but a vow.
