A Nearly Forgotten Poem

It is sometimes important to put things into perspective.  Our Constitution  is what we just celebrated, but it has survived only because We the People and those we have elected have respected and honored it.  When we forget the role each person must play, it is no longer following the roles the founding fathers intended  A famous poem published in 1936 explains that.    

    Let America be America  Again.  Let it be the Dream it used to be.   Let it be the Pioneer on the Plain   Seeking a home where he himself is free.

    Let America be the dream the dreamers dreamed--     Let it be the great strong land of love     Where never kings connive nor tyrants' scheme     That any man be crushed by one above.

    O, let my land be a land where Liberty     Is crowned with no false patriotic wreath    But Opportunity is real, and life is free, Equality is in the air we breathe.

Ten more stanzas follow the three I have shared.  However, I left out the brief lines between the stanzas. "America never was America to me.  It never was America to me.  There's never been equality for me, Nor freedom in this "homeland of the free."  As you can see from the portion of the poem I shared, he loved America, but it did not always live up to people like him. 

The author of the poem was Langston Hughes, a Black man who lived 1902-1967 in Joplin Missouri.  Both of his great grandmothers were enslaved, and both great grandfathers were their owners.  Hughes himself was a famous, successful man, although not without challenges of his own. 

When I came across this poem, I could not but wonder if people today sometimes feel as Hughes felt, loving America but feeling left out. I am not talking about those who love America so much that they enter illegally.  I am talking about those yanked from their car because their skin is the wrong color. I am talking about those going through the legal requirements to become citizens and being jailed  I am talking about Americans abused or killed because they exorcised their constitutional right to demonstrate.    

I am a conservative person when it comes to abiding by the law.  Our founding fathers employed checks and balances to protect that our laws work, but they only work when elected officials honor the responsibilities, they are elected to perform.  They are not honoring their responsibilities when getting reelected is more important than serving the purpose for which the people elected them.  Serving a political party, as Washington warned, is not what the Constitution intended.  They were geniuses but their intelligence in crafting our Constitution only works when each person in the checks and balances honor their responsibility.  Greed and personal selfishness are the only things the Founding Fathers could not entirely protect against, unless enough of us are willing to protect and defend the Constitution.