The Broken Heart: Black Community in Langston Hughes' "Song for a Dark Girl"

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The Broken Heart: Black Community in Langston Hughes' "Song for a Dark Girl"
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                                                                                                               Exposé 2006-2007

Victoria Crutchfield

The Broken Heart: Black
Community in Langston Hughes’
“Song for a Dark Girl”
   Song for a Dark Girl
Way Down South in Dixie
  (Break the heart of me)
  They hung my dark young lover
  To a cross roads tree.
Way Down South in Dixie
  (Bruised body high in air)
  I asked the white Lord Jesus
  What was the use of prayer.
Way Down South in Dixie
  (Break the heart of me)
  Love is a naked shadow
  On a gnarled and naked tree.
—Langston Hughes, 1927

T
          he brevity of Langston Hughes’ “Song for a Dark Girl” gives it a charming illusion of
          simplicity. It is a scant twelve lines, quite short, of which several are repeated; the diction is
          straightforward, pictorial. There is little to suggest that this is anything but exactly what it
appears to be: a powerful condemnation of lynching. But Hughes is doing more in this poem than
elaborating on the truism that lynching is a terrible thing. Although “Song for a Dark Girl” does
narrate events, its overwhelming effect is to set a scene rather than to tell a story, and while in the
story it is clear who the wrongdoers are, the scene is more complex, hued with memories of the past
and hopes for the future, less concerned with wrong and right than with circumstance and effect.
The last two lines in particular adopt a descriptive rather than a narrative tone: “Love is a naked
shadow/ on a gnarled and naked tree” (Hughes, 11-12). In a poem focused intently and concretely
on the individual girl of the title and her “dark young lover” (3), these last two lines create a surprising
tension by their jump from the specific to the general, the literal to the metaphoric—from “my lover”
to “Love.”
    This leap in the last two lines from the individual to the universal invites the reader to consider
the individuals in the poem in relation to their broader environment, and even though only one
element of that environment makes an appearance in the text—the white lynchers, the unspecified
“they” of the first stanza—the Black community must be considered as well. Hughes was just as
demanding of the Black community in his work as he was of the White, if not more so. In his essay
“The Negro Artist and the Racial Mountain,” he dismantles and decries the Black drive toward
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Exposé 2006-2007

                    assimilation. Whether he intended it or not,          categorization—a racial label (Collected Poems,
                    there are soft echoes of this paper in the poem,      104). The fact that the race of the “they” is
                    published only one year later. There is no question   unidentified reflects the assumptions of the
                    that in “Song for a Dark Girl” Hughes condemns        greater society for which “they” act: that to be
                    White behavior; but one can also see where the        White is the default, the norm, a state requiring
                    problem of assimilation in the Black community        no adjectival modification, while to be Black is
                    contributes to the pain of the individual Black       in some way an aberration and cannot go
                    girl for whom he writes this song. Hughes             unmentioned. That the speaker should adhere to
                    suggests that assimilation, by forcing Blacks to      this practice of only qualifying the “aberration”
                    subordinate their individual experience to the        suggests resignation to the White worldview.
                                 “universal” norms of White language           This hint of resignation can also be felt in
                                 and religion, robs the Black commu-      the thrice-repeated line “Way Down South in
         The fact that the nity of the strength to support                Dixie” (1, 5 and 9) which establishes an ironic
                                 its own against the poison of            comparison between this song and the traditional,
     race of the “they” is White violence.                                upbeat ditty “Dixie” whose pride in Dixieland
                                       The first stanza establishes the   that refrain evokes: “I wish I was in Dixie.
 unidentified reflects the tension between the dominant                   Hooray! Hooray! /...Away, away, away down
                                 White worldview and the subjugated       south in Dixie” (Emmett, 7, 10). “Song for a
       assumptions of the Black experience which struggles to             Dark Girl,” by contrast, does not characterize
                                 express itself within the White          Dixie with interjections of “hooray”—the
       greater society for world. The racial divide “Down                 analogous parenthetical expression in Hughes’
                                 South in Dixie” is characterized by      poem is “break the heart of me” (2 and 10),
   which “they” act: that the use of personal pronouns, which             indicating a deep pain, not pride, associated
                                 pits the individual and solitary         with Dixieland. This irony could be perceived as
        to be White is the speaker (“me” [2]) against an                  a tool for indicting Whites for hypocrisy, but
                                 unidentified “they” (3). This tension    as such it is a double-edged sword. With this
     default, the norm, a could be read as a simple us/them               reference to “Dixie” the speaker still uses White
                                 antagonism, the indication of a clear    words to frame the Black experience, even if the
state requiring no adjec- boundary between the good and the               intent is to use their words against them, so that
                                 bad, but it does not operate that        one feels the force of the dominant White
 tival modification, while way in the poem. There is no “us”              culture just as much in this opposition to it as
                                 in combat with “them,” but only a        anywhere else. Just as “they” are assumed to be
   to be Black is in some lonely “me,” which makes the fact               white without being named so, Emmett’s song
                                 that the word “they” is plural stand     does not suggest that it expresses only one
   way an aberration and out at least as much as the fact that            group’s experience of Dixieland. Thus the
                                 it is third person. The absence of an    relationship between White and Black established
cannot go unmentioned. antecedent indicates that “they” are               by the first stanza is one of antagonism and vio-
                                 acting not as individuals or even as     lence, but laced with a subtler victimization: the
                                 a particular faction but en masse, in    poison of coerced assimilation, which forces the
                    this case as the agents of White society at large.    Black community to adopt the supposedly univer-
                    Today we would be unlikely to use “they” in           sal language of Whites, despite its biases against
                    reference to a lynch mob without first defining       them and its ignorance of Black experience.
                    them as such; the speaker’s use of “they” implies          In the second stanza Hughes and the speaker
                    an understanding of lynching as a part of             turn to religion. Religion can be the bond of a
                    mainstream society, not the action of a particular    particular individual to a community, and the
                    subgroup requiring specification. In fact “they”      bond of a particular community to a concept of
                    are not even identified as White; only their          universal truth; but Hughes suggests that “Way
                    victims—the “Dark Girl” of the title and her          Down South in Dixie” those are the bonds of
                    “dark young lover” (3)—are qualified with             Black subjugation, a reinforcement of the ten-
                    racial identifiers. Hughes changed the “dark          sion established in the first stanza. Here we find
                    young lover” to a “black young lover” in a later      the only use of the word “white”—a two-fold
                    printing of the poem, further emphasizing that        epithet when applied to Jesus, since it can also
                    the adjective is less a description than a            mean “spiritually pure,” “innocent.” In this
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                                                                                                                     Exposé 2006-2007

                                                                                                            Kara Walker, Do You Like
                                                                                                            Creme in Your Coffee
                                                                                                            and Chocolate in Your
                                                                                                            Milk? 1997, water color,
                                                                                                            colored pencil, graphite
                                                                                                            on paper, 8-3/16 x 11-
                                                                                                            5/8.” Collection Walker
                                                                                                            Art Center, Minneapolis.
                                                                                                            Justin Smith Purchase
                                                                                                            Fund, 1998.

case it is a mockery of that usage, however.           of what prayers or actions would be useful. Left
By labeling Jesus a “white Lord,” the speaker          unresolved, her conflict with the only religion
identifies him with the slaveholders of old as         she can think to turn to illustrates how accepting
well as with continuing oppression. In addition,       White religion—embracing the “white Lord”—
the use of the racial qualifier here reminds the       leaves her, antithetical to the purpose of
reader that Christianity came to the Black com-        religion, helpless and alone.
munity through White oppression; it betrays the             The inability of Blacks to replace the “white
White pretense that theirs is the god of all, theirs   Lord Jesus” with a god of their own is subtly
the truly universal religion. The speaker’s            implicated as a part of the speaker’s sorrow
questioning of this “white Lord” (“I asked the         through a suggestion that the martyrs among
white Lord Jesus/ What was the use of prayer”          their own community might be more worthy of
[7-8]) reveals that she is aware of the futility of    their reverence. The lynch victim is presented as
their relationship, but provides no indication         an alternate Christ figure “hung...to a cross
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Exposé 2006-2007

                   roads tree” (3-4). The use of the word “cross”          insistence on the youth of both (she could have
                   (4), especially separated from “roads” instead of       been a woman; he need not have been “young”)
                   as a compound noun, casts the “dark young               makes their loneliness particularly pitiful. Since
                   lover” (3) in that role, and the placement of           one fundamental purpose of community is to
                   those words at the same point in the stanza and         raise and support its own, by the very fact of its
                   in the rhythm of the line as the “white Lord            absence in the poem we might read this as an
                   Jesus” of the second stanza draws an analogy            elegy for the community as well. The individual
                   between them. However, this image of a Black            elegy becomes universal.
                   Christ is not developed; like the “bruised body               We return, then, to “Love is a naked shadow/
                   high in air” (6) to which no one has yet given          On a gnarled and naked tree” (11-12), and the
                   burial, it is left hanging, un-revered and              leap from the individual to the universal these
                   impotent. There is no indication in the poem of         two lines effect. What might “love” be in this
                   the type of communal mourning that succeeded            context? On the most literal level the love the
                   Jesus’ death, no hint of the type of reception          speaker refers to is her lover, who has been hung
                   that could make this victim a martyr or a god           naked from a bare, gnarled tree, and whose
                   (his “bruised body” is emphasized rather than           body casts a shadow. Moving away from the
                   his spirit). The suggestion of a Black Christ is        literal we can read the “shadow” as representing
                   less an answer to the speaker’s frustration             her lover’s “dark” body, and also as his stunted
                   with the “white Lord” than it is an intensification     life, like a shadow in its transience and its
                   of it.                                                  impotence. “Love” could also be taken to mean
                        It is the profound sense of the speaker’s loss,    more than just the object of her love, but the tie
                   of course, that the reader feels most keenly,           of affection itself; in this way “naked” could
                   rather than the nuances of social understanding         also mean “barren,” thus a barren relationship
                   revealed by the words that create it. For above         stunted by her lover’s premature death. A
                   all this poem is an elegy—but for whom? The             “gnarled and naked tree,” also barren, is
                   poem shares its focus between the lynch victim          furthermore perverse—it no longer fills its natu-
                                  and his mourner: while he is the         ral role of putting forth fruit and leaves, and it
                                  literal subject of the elegy, in fact    is literally twisted. Thus, if we read the tree as a
      So we have moved it is she “for” whom the poem is                    traditional symbol of life we can interpret the
                                  written. Indeed, “Song for a Dark        lines to mean that the speaker experienced love
    through these three Girl” is an elegy for the girl as well,            as a brief and barren episode in a perverse and
                                  since she is almost as completely        barren life. But the line reads “Love,” not “my
     stanzas from a false destroyed by the murder she                      love,” and so while all these readings are
                                  describes as its direct victim is. The   evoked, there is also a less personal meaning
White universality being repeated line “break the heart of                 intended. “Love” often stands in for Jesus, his
                                  me” (2 and 10), while emphasizing        love for his flock and theirs for him; or “love”
  imposed on the Black the individual rather than commu-                   could be all romantic love, and that would be
                                  nal character of her pain, expresses     painful enough; but there is no reason for us to
     minority to a single much more than romantic heart-                   stop there, for in light of the repression of
                                  break. While “my heart” is a com-        community pointed to in the first two stanzas
       Black body being mon expression long established as                 there is reason for us to continue to broaden the
                                  referring to the seat of emotional       meaning of this word to include all love: familial
    suggested as a truly attachment, its inversion to “the                 love, communal love, love of the neighbor, love
                                  heart of me” suggests “the very core     of the self, even the concept of love. These lines
universal representative of my being.”                                     are so heart-shatteringly sad because the impli-
                                       But though the speaker’s pain is    cation is that in the South, in the eyes of the
     of human suffering. individual, her very loneliness,                  speaker, all of this, everything that can be called
                                  emphasized by the contrast between       “love,” is reduced to “a naked shadow/ on a
                   the “They” of the first stanza and the “I” (7) of       gnarled and naked tree”—barren, perverse,
                   the second, suggests a failure on the part of her       and brief.
                   community akin to a death. There is no “we” in                And it would be a mistake to forget, in
                   this poem, nor any reference to family—there is         culling from the poem so much meaning for the
                   only the girl and her murdered lover. Hughes’           Black community, that the White community is,
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                                                                                                            Exposé 2006-2007

after all, equally (if not more) present in the       Works Cited
poem, and equally implicated in these last lines.     Emmett, Daniel Decatur. “Dixie.” 6 March 2006.
The word is “Love,” not “our love.” The Black           14 October 2006. .
representative not only of Black but of universal     Hughes, Langston. The Collected Poems of Langston
suffering—including the suffering of a society          Hughes. New York: Vintage, 1995.
which like Sartre’s anti-Semite represses its own     Hughes, Langston. “Song for a Dark Girl.” Double-
humanity in denying the humanity of others. So          Take: A Revisionist Harlem Renaissance Anthology.
we have moved through these three stanzas               Ed. Venetria K. Patton and Maureen Honey. New
from a false White universality being imposed           Brunswick: 2001, Rutgers University Press. 469.
on the Black minority to a single Black body          Hughes, Langston. “The Negro Artist and the Racial
being suggested as a truly universal representative     Mountain.” Double-Take: A Revisionist Harlem
                                                        Renaissance Anthology. Ed. Venetria K. Patton
of human suffering.
                                                        and Maureen Honey. New Brunswick: 2001,
     As well as being an acute commentary on            Rutgers University Press. 40-44.
American race relations, Hughes’ suggestion in
this poem is a lesson on poetry: what makes a
poem true and powerful is not when it is blandly
(and falsely) universal, telling us all over again
things we already knew about love, life, death;
but when it describes an individual situation
with subtlety and insight, as “Song for a Dark
Girl” does. Hughes saw it as within the power
of this kind of poetry to combat the assimilation
pointed to in “Song for a Dark Girl” and dealt
with explicitly in “The Negro Artist and the
Racial Mountain.” He argued in the latter work
that it was the duty of the Black artist to create
works that celebrated the particularity of Black
experience rather than trying to identify their
voices with the White worldview that devalued
them. These works would help free Black
individuals and the Black community from the
mental prison that worldview imposed. If there
is hope in “Song for a Dark Girl,” it is this hope
that the Black community might soon embrace
the Black Christ offered by the poem, and in so
doing, embrace and free itself.
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