Mother to Son

It was referenced by Martin Luther King Jr. several times in his speeches during the civil rights movement, and has been analyzed by several critics, notably for its style and representation of the mother.

Langston Hughes was a prominent figure in the Harlem Renaissance – the African-American cultural revival that spanned the 1920s and 1930s – and he wrote poetry that focused on the Black experience in America.

[1] His poem "Mother to Son" was first published in 1922 in The Crisis (official magazine of the National Association for the Advancement of Colored People),[2] and in 1926 it was included in his first poetry collection, The Weary Blues.

Hughes's poems "Mother to Son", "The Negro Speaks of Rivers", and "Harlem" were described in the Encyclopedia of African-American Writing as "anthems of black America".

One critic notes that "it seems as though the mother’s spartan accommodation, hardscrabble life, and unadorned language all converge on the word bare.

She goes on to urge her son to not "turn back", but breaks the pattern established in the two previous sections by only repeating the concept three times, instead of four.

[6]: 35 Martin Luther King Jr., an American civil rights activist and leader, referenced "Mother to Son" at least 13 times in his public appearances, including during his "I Have a Dream" speech.

[9][10] W. Jason Miller describes these references as "overt" and argues that Barack Obama "inadvertently" alluded to the poem in his speech at the 2008 Democratic National Convention.