The Broken Heart: Black Community in Langston Hughes' "Song for a Dark Girl"
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17
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 toward18
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 this19
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 cross20
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,21
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.You can also read
