I TOO

BY LANGSTON HUGHES
I, too, sing America.
I am the darker brother.
They send me to eat in the kitchen
When company comes,
But I laugh,
And eat well,
And grow strong.
Tomorrow,
I’ll be at the table
When company comes.
Nobody’ll dare
Say to me,
“Eat in the kitchen,”
Then.
Besides,
They’ll see how beautiful I am
And be ashamed—
I, too, am America.
Thirty-three High Schools came to Texas City High School to participate in a tournament challenging their abilities in Debate, Prose, Impromptu Speaking and many other categories. For two days, members of the TCHS Speech and Debate Team, guided judges to and from assigned rooms, assisted visiting students looking for where they were to go. They created a warm and inviting space for the visiting students to compete and the judges, many first-timers, were properly trained and equipped to judge the competitions.
As one of those judges, I was genuinely impressed with the sophistication and courage of the participants. They tackled difficult and complex topics; from immigration to skin color to absent parents. In a time when effective communication is in short shrift, these young people are learning the value of listening, studying, preparing in order to truly understand a topic. They are learning what kind of impact they can have sharing their own, deeply personal life experiences to flesh out social constructs we all find deeply troubling and uncomfortable.
 
Our TCHS team did not compete in this tournament, instead, they promoted, organized and implemented a very ambitious and extremely successful opportunity for young people from far and wide to gain experience, share their talents, hone their skills. As a result, not only hosts and presenters but those community members fortunate enough to play a small role in the event by judging the competitors, went away from the experience better, wiser, stronger with the knowledge that our future is bright because teachers like Victoria Graves bring out the very best in these young people who will be defining the direction our cities and our country take in the years to come. BRAVO!
“I, Too”
Carl Sandburg and Walt Whitman were great early influences on Hughes, and this poem from his first book, Weary Blues (1926), might be read as a reckoning with these literary forebears. “I, Too repurposes Whitman’s demotic language and democratic I to do what Whitman could not: imagine a truly equal place at the table for “the darker brother.” Like many of his Harlem Renaissance counterparts, Hughes focused on just this sort of imagination. By giving voice to black America, he shows, as he puts it here, “how beautiful” black experience is.”
Editors Note: Langston Hughes found his voice through prose, poetry and debate to become the voice of an era. These young people exhibit the same courage, the same fearless, serious reflection of their own time in history. To see the events that helped shape Hughes visit: https://langstonhughes.ku.edu/about-langston-hughes