Langston Hughes

"Song for a Dark Girl"

"Song for a Dark Girl" consists of three short stanzas of four lines each.  The first line of each stanza is identical and reads:  "Way Down South in Dixie," which alludes to a Civil War minstrel song.  One is reminded of the famous song "Strange Fruit," which was written by Billie Holiday and first recorded in 1939.  Since Holiday also lived in Harlem for a time, she was probably familiar with Hughes's poetry.  Popular culture in the United States has had a very strong African American influence since the time of the Civil War and increasingly thereafter.  Jazz, the blues, and eventually rock n' roll were all inventions of the Black subculture and "Song for a Dark Girl" is written like a languid, mournful song.  The poem is about the phenomena of lynching, which primarily took place in the deep south.  Hughes imagines himself in love with a girl who has been lynched and mourns his loss.
"They hung my black young lover
To a cross roads tree."
"Love is a naked shadow
On a gnarled and naked tree."
The imagery evoked by the poem is stark and morbid but realistic:  "(Bruised body high in air)".
One phrase in particular stands out and is placed right in the middle of the poem:
"I asked the white Lord Jesus
What was the use of prayer."
This phrase is particularly powerful in conveying the message of the poem.  This singular phrase is one that would have resonated deeply with the disenfranchised African Americans who's lives had been rife with imposed oppression, pain, and suffering.
Hughes and other Harlem Renaissance poets wrote in a lyrical style which was quite different from the styles being explored by white poets of the time.  It is distinctly American, distinctly Black, and makes no apologies for its honesty.  Mournful poems such as "Song for a Dark Girl" reminds one of the Biblical prophet Jeremiah who perfectly transcribed his suffering and oppression with brutal honesty.