Song for a Dark Girl

Song for a Dark Girl by Langston Hughes was the essentially what most black, young lovers were feeling during the 1920’s. The young girl is heart-broken because her lover is being hung and there is absolutely nothing she can do about it. In her mind she knows that this is wrong, but what can a black woman do? The answer is nothing; she can do nothing to save the man she loves from being hung on a tree. In the poem the woman says, “I asked the white Lord Jesus what was the use of prayer.” The young woman is losing hope in the Lord and hope in everything that stands for right because she and her lover have been done so wrong. She still loves the man who hangs on the tree, but he cannot love her back because his love hangs on a gnarled and naked tree. The woman feels like her joy has been taken and this is the song that most African American women would sang during the times of lynching and racial discrimination. “Way down South in Dixie” shows that most of the wrongful lynching’s were taken place in the deep south, which made sense. Hughes made this poem graphic and brought to light the “Song for a Dark Girl.”