Today

Langston Hughes in Harlem in 1958. Robert W. Kelley/The LIFE Picture Collection/Getty Images

Langston Hughes’ 1938 poem, “Let America Be America Again,” has been on our minds ever since the the wave of pipe bombs sent to critics of President Trump and the attack on the Tree of Life synagogue in Pittsburgh.

It used to be easy to think of America as a place asymptotically, if haltingly, approaching the ideal of becoming “America” to all who lived there. Now that feels so naive. Maybe you agree or don’t, but it’s worth reading this poem and reflecting on why. A few stanzas are below, and the full text is here.

O, let America be America again— The land that never has been yet— And yet must be—the land where every man is free. The land that’s mine—the poor man’s, Indian’s, Negro’s, ME— Who made America, Whose sweat and blood, whose faith and pain, Whose hand at the foundry, whose plow in the rain, Must bring back our mighty dream again. Sure, call me any ugly name you choose— The steel of freedom does not stain. From those who live like leeches on the people’s lives, We must take back our land again, America! O, yes, I say it plain, America never was America to me, And yet I swear this oath— America will be! Out of the rack and ruin of our gangster death, The rape and rot of graft, and stealth, and lies, We, the people, must redeem The land, the mines, the plants, the rivers. The mountains and the endless plain— All, all the stretch of these great green states— And make America again!