Walt Whitman And His African-American Contemporaries

Walt Whitman, considered to be the frontrunner in the establishment of the Modernism Era of literature, often wrote about the connectivity of everyone in the whole world. Every person, he believed, was linked (not physically) to each other and how nature also combined with humans as well. Yet, through all his touting of the togetherness of humanity, not everyone seems to be included. Despite Whitman’s claim that he sees everyone and how they’re connected, his ignorance of African-Americans, while it may not have been intentional, did not go unnoticed by a few of his successors. Poet Langston Hughes outright presents the exclusion of the African-American population in Whitman’s writings. In Whitman’s poem “Crossing Brooklyn Ferry”, he mentions quite a bit how people are able to come together as one and be simply human, no matter where or when you’re from: “The other that are to follow me, the ties between me and them, / The certainty of others, the life, love, sight, hearing of others”. Even though Whitman says he’s seeing the people, Hughes believes that does not include himself and other African-Americans. Though Hughes does not respond in his poem “I, Too” with anger about Whitman’s statements; he declares proudly, with an air of defiance, “Tomorrow, / I’ll be at the table / When company comes… They’ll see how beautiful I am / And be ashamed- / I, too, am America”. Hughes wants Whitman to know that while African-Americans may not currently be held to the same standard and respect as white people, their time is coming and all people, specifically Americans, will be truly united.

Hughes’ poem was published in 1925, amid racial segregation and injustice for the black community, and Hughes wants to proclaim that while this may be so at the present time, they should not be forgotten and erased from the narrative of America. Even though Whitman didn’t have representation of African-Americans in his writings, some of his black followers, like poet Yusef Komunyakaa, praise his work and expand on his assertions of human connectiveness. In his poem “Kosmos”, mimicking Whitman’s poem of the same name, Komunyakaa takes his journey through Whitman’s ideas and makes reference to things of African-American importance: “Walt, you shanghied me to this / oak, as every blood-tipped leaf / soliloquized “Strange Fruit” / like the octoroon in New Orleans”. “Strange Fruit” refers to the song by African-American singer Billie Holiday, which is about the lynching of black people during the time of Jim Crow law. Komunyakaa is saying that Whitman has captured him like the “Strange Fruit”, but in an inspirational, positive way. He sees Whitman’s ideas of everyone and everything being connected and applauds them, but he also makes a point to add in some acknowledging statements pointing towards African-Americans so that readers will get an updated manuscript of Whitmanian ideals.

Whitman himself was a white man, which would make a bit more sense as to why he didn’t mention African-Americans in his poems, even though he talked about all of humanity being one with each other. But the lack of visibility of the black community is highlighted by writers like Hughes and Komunyakaa, who do not condemn Whitman for his oblivion. Instead, their own additions of African-American reference to the Whitman canon bring more attention to the progress that African-Americans saw during the early 20th century and how this can help readers be more aware of their strife throughout history.z