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DJOCKOUA MANYAKA TOKO

UNIVERSITY OF YAOUNDE I

AMERICA AND THE AFRICAN DIASPORA: COMMON DESTINIES AMERICA A LAND OF BONDAGE AND AMERICA A NATION In the works of American writers, two antithetical representations of America (The United States of America) disclose the intricate relationship that exists between America and the African Diaspora. To the people of the Diaspora, the U.S. appears both as a land of bondage (slavery) and a nation. This vision of the host country or the new homeland appears in the works of African and European American writers of different centuries. The purpose of this paper is to examine these antithetical representations from the eighteenth century to the twentieth century with the intention to demonstrate that America and the African Diaspora share common destinies shaped by history. The corpus of this analysis includes two political speeches and seven poems. In Quest-ce quune nation? (What is a Nation?), Ernest Renan, the French theorist, defines a nation thus: A nation is a soul, a spiritual principle. Two things, which in truth are but one, constitute this soul or spiritual principle. One lies in the past, one in the present. One is the possession in common of a rich legacy of memories; the other is present-day consent, the desire to live together, the will to perpetuate the value of the heritage that one has received in an undivided form A nation is therefore a large-scale solidarity, constituted by the feeling of the sacrifices that one has made in the past and of those that one is prepared to make in the future. It presupposes a past; it is summarized, however, in the present by a tangible fact, namely, consent, the clearly expressed desire to continue a common life. (Becoming National: A Reader 52-54) According to Renans definition, two key elements link an individual to his/her nation: the common past (memories) he/she shares with other members and the individuals will to live a common life and consent to sacrifice. The Slave trade and other factors that displaced millions of Africans from their traditional territories gave rise to what is termed the African Diaspora. According to the British socialist Robin Cohen, Diaspora is a group of people who live outside their natal (or imagined natal) territories and recognize that their traditional homelands are reflected deeply in the languages they speak, religions they adopt, and the cultures they produce. In the context of our study, African Diaspora therefore refers to people of African descent who live in the U.S. outside their homeland or imagined homeland (Africa). From the foregoing definitions, it appears clear that every representation of America leads to an explicit or implicit representation of the natal or

imagined natal Africa. The paper will examine the following poems and speeches: Phillis Wheatleys On Being Brought from Africa to America (1773), Henry Wadsworth Longfellows The Slaves Dream(1842), Frederick Douglasss The Meaning of July Fourth for the Negro: Speech at Rochester, New York, July 5,1852, Abraham Lincolns A House Divided: Speech Delivered at Springfield, Illinois, at the Close of the Republican State Convention, June16, 1858, Claude McKays Africa (1921), and America, (1921), Langston Hughess I, too, sing America (1926), and Maya Angelous Africa. (1975) and America (1975). These poems have been selected because most of them juxtapose the images of Africa and the U.S. The speeches, closely linked to the abolition of slavery, examine the integration of the Diaspora into the American nation from a historical perspective. Although the writers are from different centuries and racial backgrounds, their worldviews are similar in the writings selected.

Phillis Wheatleys On Being Brought from Africa to America brings together natal Africa and host land America that respectively symbolize paganism and Christianity, darkness and knowledge. The first two introductory lines of the octave T'was mercy brought me from my pagan land, / Taught my benighted soul to understand reveal the ironic tone of the poem as they implicitly hint at the slaves journey (referred to as a good fortune) from her land of freedom to America, a land of bondage. The physical journey from one land to another becomes a psychological journey from immaturity to maturity, a passage from ignorance to knowledge, as the phrase benighted soul and the verbs Taught and understand clearly demonstrate. Yet this spiritual enlightenment gotten in America in the third and fourth lines That theres a God, that theres a Savior too: /Once I redemption neither sought nor knew is equally acknowledgement of sin which the speaker ignored in her traditional dark homeland. The Savior, Jesus Christ, a symbol of sacrifice, brings to the limelight peoples sins and their dire need for redemption which the persona neither sought nor knew in her pagan continent. Africa becomes associated with innocence; it is nature in its moral and pure dimension. This mythic representation of the natal land retrieves the Rousseauistic myth of the noble savage and mans goodness in the state of nature. The idea that man is corrupted by civilization, seems to be the keynote of the fifth and sixth lines: Some view our sable race with scornful eye. / Their color is a diabolic dye. The poets use of Some and our to refer to white Christians and the black race, points at the color bar and prejudices of the host land where the black slave is synonymous with inferiority and evil so well expressed by the comparison of the black color to diabolic dye, and the simile in line seven black as Cain which leads to a biblical allusion: the dark mark God made on Cains face after he (Cain) had murdered his brother Abel (Genesis 4.1-15). Although the speakers direct message to Christians in the last two lines: Remember, Christians, Negroes, black as Cain, / May be refined, and join the angelic train may be a protest against the color bar, it is more an assertion of the African Diasporas ability to integrate the American nation. The sentence Negroes may be refined translates, in a way, the black slaves will to consent to sacrifices and changes in order to join the angelic train, a metaphor for the American nation, embodiment of knowledge and Christianity. The regular rhyme pattern aa bb cc dd whose rhymes are for the most part masculine, assimilates the octave to a mild protest, a mild plea for the slaves integration into the host land. Like Wheatleys poem, Henry Wadsworth Longfellows poem The Slaves Dream juxtaposes the slaves natal territory and his host country. In this poem, like in the previous one, Africa is a myth, a paradigm of freedom, peace and primeval innocence while America is paradigmatic of bondage, suffering and death. Although the poem slurs over the ills of slavery by

allocating only two stanzas to the mans suffering in America and six stanzas to the description of Africa, it is also a mild protest against bondage. The opening stanza: Beside the ungathered rice he lay, His sickle in his hand; His breast was bare, his matted hair Was buried in the sand. Again, in the mist and shadow of sleep, He saw his Native Land presents America as a land of bondage. The spatio-temporal setting is pregnant with meaning: on a very hot day the slave is lying in a rice field where he has been working all day long. The sickle in his hand, a symbol of hard manual labor in the poem, leads to the deterioration of the workers health. The naked breast and unkempt hair, signs of misery and hard working conditions, point at the slaves wretchedness in his host land, which has been an inferno for the African immigrant. To shun this hell, he dreams of Africa, his Native Land, glorified through capitalization, and the length of its description (six stanzas). This dream, oriented towards the past, contrasts the first European immigrants dream of the Promised Land, which was oriented towards the future. The slaves dream predicts its failure since it falls within the realm of the unattainable. For the 18th and 19th centuries American slaves, Africa was a myth, the unattainable as demonstrated in the first line of the second stanza. The line Wide through the landscape of his dreams, displays a contrast between the utopian and idyllic environment that nurtures the dreams and the harsh real setting in which the slave is lying. In the dream, the lordly Niger embodies power that is transfused into the wretch in the field. Having gained power, the slave is once more a king (l. 9). The repetition of once more at the commencement of the third stanza He saw once more his dark-eyed queen/ Among her children stand; reiterates the difference between the native land and the host land, the African king and the wretched worker. In Africa, the slave is loved and honored. His children and wife clasped his neck, they kissed his cheeks (l.15). The natal homeland becomes an icon of human warmth, which arouses the personas emotions; he thus recovers his humanity. A tear [that] burst from the sleepers lids/ And fell into the sand (l. 18) expresses the mans feelings: his sorrow and sadness. But the tear is also a sign of weakness that the brave African king quickly overcomes in stanza four. As he rode at furious speed Along the Nigers bank (l. 19-19), he changes into a conqueror, and his power is depicted by the poets diction: golden chains, martial clank, and scabbard of steel (l.21-23). In stanzas five, six and seven, the animals and the forests welcome the African conqueror. The bright flamingoes, compared to a blood-red flag,(25-26) crown the conquerors victory after he has surmounted obstacles. The African trekker hears the roar of the lion, the scream of the hyena, the noise of the hippopotamus which all symbolize a blissful

homecoming that peaks when the forests, with their myriad tongues shouted liberty (39-40). The slave is freed from his bondage embedded in the drivers whip, a tool of torture and enslavement. On the one hand, Longfellows long descriptive poem of eight sextains reflects the American transcendentalists celebration of nature as a symbol of freedom and harmony that Ralph Waldo Emerson presents in Each and All. On the other hand, it highlights the opposition between the natural law, which stipulates that all men are born free (one of the key principles of the United States Declaration of Independence), and slavery, which annuls the slaves freedom and transforms him into worn-out fettered humanity. The slaves death at the end of the poem is the ultimate sacrifice. It binds the African to the American nation: the slaves blood and flesh mingle with the dust of the American soil where he is buried. Having paid such a heavy price to the nation, the slave expects the latter to accept him as its citizen, a request that resounds in Frederick Douglasss speech. In The Meaning of July Fourth for the Negro: Speech at Rochester, New York, July 5,1852, Frederick Douglass sturdily advocates the abolition of slavery and the integration of the African Diaspora into the American nation. His argument is founded on the American War of independence, the American Declaration of Independence, and the U.S. Constitution, documents which assert Americans freedom and right to revolt. Praising the founders of the American nation, Douglass notes that their fight against the British government was a living example of their belief that Nothing was settled that was not right. With them, justice, liberty and humanity were final; not slavery and oppression (Baym 2061). This statement implies that the institution of slavery which, was not right could not withstand the test of time because it was contrary to American ideals and principles clearly written in the Declaration of Independence: We hold these truths to be self-evident, that all men are created equal, that they are endowed by their Creator with certain unalienable Rights, that among these are Life, Liberty and the pursuit of Happiness.(Ritchie 100) As slavery annihilates equality and liberty, perpetrating this evil means deviating from the principles that constitute the foundation of the American nation. In his diatribe, Douglass attacks the proslavery American government, congressmen and clergymen who for economic reasons misused the Constitution to back slavery. The Fugitive Slave Law, adopted in 1850, was not only anti-constitutional, but also unnatural and unchristian. The speaker holds that by favoring mans law to the detriment of the natural and divine laws, these political and religious decision makers transformed America into a land of bondage for the African Diaspora. As a consequence, the Fourth of July that commemorates freedom became a day of mourning for the black slaves as the orator points out:

I am not included within the pale of this glorious anniversary! Your high independence only reveals the immeasurable distance between us. The blessings in which you, this day, rejoice, are not enjoyed in common. The rich inheritance of justice, liberty, prosperity and independence, bequeathed by your fathers, is shared by you, not by me. The sunlight that brought light and healing to you, has brought stripes and death to me. This Fourth July is yours, not mine. You may rejoice, I must mourn. (Baym 2063) The anniversary, a bond of union and freedom, was paradoxically the dividing line between the slaves and the rest of the nation. The use of synecdoche in I to represent the enslaved group and you the free members of the country, underscores exclusion (from the first group) which is evident in opposite pairs such as I/you, light and healing/ stripes and death, yours/mine, rejoice/ mourn. In clear terms, the slaves are rejected by the American nation. However, underneath Douglasss attacks on slavery and its perpetrators, there is a prophetic counter-discourse that presages the insertion of the African Diaspora into this very nation. The speakers rhetorical questions: For who is there so cold, that a nations sympathy could not warm him? Who so obdurate and dead to the claims of gratitude, that would not thankfully acknowledge such priceless benefits? Who so stolid and selfish, that would not give his voice to swell the hallelujahs of a nations jubilee, when the chains of servitude had been torn from his limbs? I am not that man. In a case like that, the dumb might eloquently speak, and the lame man leap as an hart. (Baym 2063) These lines show the slaves acquiescence in celebrating the nations independence. The orators appeal to his audience does not mask the African Diasporas dire need to belong to their new homeland. Put differently, the speech is a cry for the beloved country which should emerge strong and undivided among other nations if it rids itself of an evil which Douglass terms a horrible reptile [which] is coiled up in [the] nations bosom (2073). In Slave and Citizen: The Life of Frederick Douglass , Irvin Huggins notes that Douglass was against the return of the Afro American to Africa and he instead held that The African was the ultimate test of American civilization. The American had a higher calling: to achieve the will of God in this world. But to do that, he must see the sin against God of slavery and racism and accept the Afro American as a man, a citizen, and a brother. Only then could the American civilization come into its own. (75)

This assertion clearly means that America and the African Diaspora shared a common destiny. As a consequence, the nation should absorb the African. Similarly, the African must absorb its new homeland in order to thrive. In the final analysis, Douglasss speech is a message of hope: Allow me to say, in conclusion, notwithstanding the dark picture I have this day presented, of the state of the nation, I do not despair of this country (2075). He hopes that the U.S will become a slaveless nation that fosters brotherhood not only among its citizens but also equally among the citizens of other nations because no nation can now shut itself up from the surrounding world and trot round in the same old path of its fathers without interference...Walled cities and empires have become unfashionable... Oceans no longer divide, but link nations together. (2075) Through this statement, Douglass appears as an advocate of brotherhood of the nations and a forecaster of globalization. In the 19 th century, he already foresaw the birth of international organizations such as the United Nations Organization (1945), the European Union (1992) and the African Union (2001), all embodiments of his brotherhood of the nations. The fall of walled cities and empires and the presence of oceans that link nations together set the foundation of the present-day global village that promotes the slogan unity in diversity. Douglasss appeal strongly echoes in Abraham Lincolns A House Divided: Speech Delivered at Springfield, Illinois, at the Close of the Republican State Convention, June16, 1858. Like Douglass, Lincoln firmly argues that as a factor of division and animosity, slavery undermines the growth of the American nation. In his speech, Lincoln shows a slaveless nation that stands erect and proud to bring together all its members, and the other one, the slave nation, which knits its own ruin. The statement: A house divided against itself cannot stand. I believe this government cannot endure, permanently half slave and half free (Baym 1582) is a warning to the proslavery members of the Republican State, a critique of the Kansas Nebraska Bill of 1854 and the Dred Scott decision. Lincoln perceives the Act and the Decision as part of a stratagem to underpin slavery and the division of the country. He openly denounces President James Buchanans complacent attitude vis--vis the proslavery government of Kansas. In his conclusion: But clearly, he [Judge Douglas] is not now with us, he does not pretend to behe does not promise to ever be (1587), Lincoln castigates his democratic opponents (Judge Stephen Douglass) lack of interest in the abolition of slavery. Being with us, means joining the antislavery faction that believes that America should be a nation for the African Diaspora. The election of Abraham Lincoln to the presidency in 1860, and his Emancipation Proclamation that declared freedom for four million black slaves were in the 19th century a stepping stone to the Civil Rights Act in1964.

The study of the selected poems and speeches of the 18th and 19th centuries has brought out the two antithetical representations of America and the mythic representation of Africa (in Wheatleys and Longfellows poems). The analysis of some twentieth century poems will show that while America is still viewed as a land of bondage and a nation, Africa, the natal homeland, loses its mythic dimension and is clothed in a garb made of great achievements, blatant gross injustices and failures. In Africa, Claude Mckay recalls the grandeur of the pre-slavery and pre-colonial Africa. Africa was the cradle of civilization and knowledge: Lines two and three of the sonnet The sciences were sucklings at thy breast/When all the world was young in pregnant night refer to Egypt whose pyramids and University (the University of Alexandria) were all vestiges of the mighty African civilization. But in McKays poem, Africa, the former cradle of power, has lost its entire luster as seen in the following lines: Cradle of Power! Yet all things were in vain! Honor and Glory, Arrogance and Fame! They went. The darkness swallowed thee again. Thou art the harlot; now thy time is done, Of all the mighty nations of the sun. (Baym 1408) These lines are a lament for a continent, which has collapsed. The poem portrays a land that has failed to preserve its glorious past. Although the causes of the decline are not mentioned, the poet points an accusing finger at slavery, colonialism, and other evils perpetrated in African countries. Returning to darkness, mythic Africa (with primeval innocence) of the first part has transmuted into a dishonored continent, a beggar that cannot feed its sons and daughters. This flaw forces the African sons and daughters to leave their traditional homeland to settle in Europe, Asia, and America. They then constitute what may be termed the New African Diaspora. Although this picture of Africa is gloomy, it reveals the poets interest in his natal land. His sonnet that juxtaposes the glorious past and the present, is a means he uses to raise consciousness. The poem is his indignation at the course of colonial history and a rallying call that reminds all Africans that their bounden duty is to restore Africas past glory and fame. If in this poem he shows interest in Africa, the poet also feels concern for America in the next poem. Mckays America, underlines the ambiguous relationship between America and the African Diaspora (I). The use of Although at the beginning of the poem contrasts the first three lines and the fourth line: Although she feeds me bread of bitterness, And sinks into my throat her tigers tooth, Stealing my breath of life, I will confess I love this cultured hell that tests my youth! (Hughes & Bontemps 100) She implies personification and feminization of America that becomes a mother who feeds the child. She and me hence symbolize the mother and

the child, the nurturer and the nurtured, binary oppositions, which augur dependence and domination that breed enmity shown in the phrases bread of bitterness, and tigers tooth. The childs bitterness is a consequence of the mothers cruelty that the metaphor tigers tooth suggests. The tigers tooth that sinks into the throat stifles the child: America, the mother, is not a motherland; it is a land of oppression that takes away the breath of life. It stands for repression and death, a rationale for the bitterness of the persona. Yet the love expressed in the fourth line counterbalances the hatred felt at the beginning of the poem. In this line, America changes into a nation whose destiny is linked to the Diasporas. The test imposed on the youth enables him to adjust to his homeland whose vigor flows like tides into [his] blood. This line establishes closeness and communion. The relationship between the speaker and his country is a blend of love and hatred. The rhyme pattern of the Shakespearean sonnet abs cod ef ef gg emphasizes contrast between the personas past memories and his present feelings, between his protest, manifest in the poets use of the sonnet, and his acceptance of the nations demand. The African Diaspora must strive to assert its own identity within the big nation. Once the strife is over, America and the Diaspora share a common destiny through mutual acceptance. Because he has been accepted as part of the nation, the maverick in lines eight, nine and ten Yet as a rebel fronts a king in state, / I stand within her walls with not a shred /of terror, malice, not a word of jeer is also accepted by America. The last couplet that presents the personas apocalyptic vision of priceless treasures sinking in the sand beneath the touch of Times unerring hand, shows the Diasporas concern for the future of the homeland. The vision is in a way the sons advice to the mother to preserve her achievements (might and granite wonders) against the destructive effect of time. The same concern for America is visible in Langston Hughess I, Too, Sing America. The opening line of the poem I, too, sing America displays the speakers desire to belong to his country and to celebrate a nation of which he would like to feel himself a part. Yet in the next stanza he is discriminated against. I am the darker brother. They send me to eat in the kitchen When company comes. But I laugh, And eat well, And grow strong. (Hughes & Bontemps 182) The ambivalent relationship between America and the African Diaspora is visible in Hughess poem. The darker brother (the African Diaspora), though fed by the new homeland, does not enjoy the same rights as other members. He is sent to eat in the kitchen whereas the others eat at the table in the diningroom. Eating in the kitchen suggests a lower social status in the country, it

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implies menial jobs and more hardships. As in Mckays poem, the eater in this poem is subjected to a test of endurance in his land that restricts his opportunities. When the persona affirms that he laughs and eats well, he confirms his ability to overcome the ordeal and his strong belief in a better future which these lines clearly show: Tomorrow, / Ill sit at the table/ When company comes. Sitting at the table means being accepted as a full citizen of the nation, which leads to the conclusion: I, too, am American. This closing line completes the opening one and both are opposed to the stanza above cited. The relationship of American and the African Diaspora is therefore characterized by exclusion and inclusion. The first term is associated with the repellent land of bondage while the second term is linked to the nation which, according to Renan, reflects the desire to live together. Likewise, Maya Angelou shows antithetical images of America and Africa in her poems Africa and America. The first poem Africa describes the continent before, during, and after the slave trade and colonization. The first stanza brings back the mythic Dark Continent in Thus she had lain/Black through the years (Oh Pray My Wings 28). Black through the years implies that unconquered Africa stands for peace and purity as earlier mentioned. But this myth is quickly destroyed by the intrusion of the slave masters and the colonizers who are referred to as brigands ungentled who took her [Africas] young daughters and sold her strong sons. If Africa is seen as a victim of slavery, it is also shown as the accomplice of the slave master and the colonizer. Its passivity expressed in the line Thus she has/had lain, a leitmotif in the poem, underlines Africas complicity in the sale and enslavement of its own sons and daughters. In this case, both the imagined natal land (Africa) and the new homeland (America) are represented as lands of bondage. The Christian Church with its belief in sin and redemption unknown to pagan Africa, is also imposed on the Black continent. These lines of the last stanza: remember her pain/remember the losses/her screams loud and vain depict presentday Africa. They replicate its vain screams and regrets after its self-destruction. The end of the poem combines despair and hope: the repetition of the verb remember retrieves memories full of pain and losses: loss of riches but also loss of history or identity. Despite all her losses, Africa is now rising (l. 18), now she is striding/although she had lain (l.25). These sentences presage the continents awakening after a long slumber. There is hope that Africa will correct its mistakes since it has acknowledged them. The same blend of hope and despair is traceable in Angelous America which paints the U.S. as a land of illusions that lures but cannot satisfy the African. The first stanza of two lines: The gold of her promise/has never been mined (Oh Pray My Wings 29) questions the American Dream that did not come true for many Americans. As she calls into question the Dream, the speaker indirectly exposes her wish to see it come true. This poem is a replica of

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Langston Hughess Let America Be America Again. James Presley notes that Hughes keeps on saying that the American Dream is bruised and often made a travesty for Negroes and other underdogs (South West Review 1963) (www.english.uiuc.edu). According to Hughes and Angelou, the dream is a sham for the browbeaten since America does not represent justice for the wronged (Her borders of justice /not clearly defined), food for the hungry (Her crops of abundance/ the fruit and the grain/Have not fed the hungry) and relief for the suffering masses. So described, the homeland is a place of suffering for the African immigrant. Yet, the line Discover this country suggests two discourses: the said and the not said. In the first discourse, the persona wants the African immigrant to see his/her host country as it really is: It is a land where the American forebears Dream of upward mobility is thwarted not only for the African Diaspora but also for a good number of Americans. In the second discourse, Discover this country becomes an invitation to visit the United States in order to discover the numerous possibilities that this country can offer in terms of politics, economics, and culture. Today, these possibilities, couched in American films, haunt thousands of Africans who leave their natal territories to settle in America. They thus bind their destinies to that of the U.S. This paper has examined the relationship between America and the African Diaspora through antithetical representations of the United States in the works of American writers from the 18 th century to the 20th century. From our analysis, the following conclusions have been drawn. The relationship between the two parties is ambivalent, characterized by protest and submission, love and hatred, exclusion and inclusion, (Claude Mckays America, Hughess I, Too, Sing America, Angelous America.) embedded in two opposite images: America a land of bondage and a nation. Similarly, the representation of Africa has proved that the continent was a myth for the black slaves in the 18 th and 19th centuries (Wheatleys On Being Brought, and Longfellows The Slaves Dream). In the twentieth century, Africa has degenerated into a harlot, a land of suffering that still has a gleam of hope of recovery. This paper has also shown the African Diasporas attachment (devotion to) for the two nations: the natal or imagined natal territory (Africa) and the new homeland (America). Despite some difficulties, America endeavored to be a nation for the African Diaspora in the past (Frederick Douglasss and Abraham Lincolns Speeches). Today, the U.S is still endeavoring to fulfill this mission through diplomatic, commercial, educational and cultural links it establishes with numerous African countries. It thus expands its frontiers through what may be called its new frontierism and its multiculturalism. WORKS CITED

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Angelou, Maya. Africa. Oh Pray My Wings Are Gonna Fit Me Well. New York: Random House,1975, 28. _____________. America. Oh Pray My Wings Are Gonna Fit Me Well. New York: Random House,1975, 29. Douglass, Frederick. The Meaning of July Fourth for the Negro: Speech at Rochester, New York, July 5,1852. The Norton Anthology of American Literature. Vol.1 Nina Baym, ed. New York &London: W.W. Norton & Company, 1998, 2057-2076. Huggins, Irvin Nathan. Slave and Citizen: The Life of Frederick Douglass. Boston: Little, Brown and Company, 1980. Hughes, Langston. I, too, sing America. The Poetry of the Negro. Langston Hughes &Arna Bontemps, eds. New York: Doubleday &Company, Inc.,1970, 182. Lincoln, Abraham. A House Divided: Speech Delivered at Springfield, Illinois, at the Close of the Republican State Convention, June16, 1858 The Norton Anthology of American Literature. Vol.1 Nina Baym, ed. New York &London: W.W. Norton & Company, 1998, 1582-1588. Longfellow, Wadsworth Henry. The Slaves Dream The Norton Anthology of American Literature. Vol.1 Nina Baym, ed. New York &London: W.W. Norton & Company, 1998, 1453-1454. McKay, Claude. Africa The Norton Anthology of American Literature. Vol.2 Nina Baym, ed. New York &London: W.W. Norton & Company, 1998, 1408. ____________ . America The Poetry of the Negro. Langston Hughes &Arna Bontemps, eds. New York: Doubleday &Company, Inc.,1970, 100. Presley, James. On Let America Be America Again. www.english.uiuc.edu/maps/poets/g_l/hughes/america.htm April 25, 2005 Renan, Ernest. What is a Nation? Becoming National: A Reader. Eley, Geoff and Suny, Ronald Grigor, ed. New York & Oxford: Oxford University Press,1996, 41-55. Ritchie, Donald A., Margaret Altoff, Richard, Richard Wilson. Heritage of Freedom: History of The United States. New York: Macmillan Publishing Company,1985. Wheatley, Phillis On Being Brought from Africa to America The Norton Anthology of American Literature. Vol.1 Nina Baym,ed. New York &London: W.W. Norton & Company, 1998, 825.