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Abstract
The chief purpose of this paper is to present the experience of African-American poet Langston Hughes through the realms of racial humiliation to recognition among the white. The present research work is an attempt to exhibit the poet how he acquires recognition in America after passing through different stages of crisis vis-à-vis self-identity. The credit of nourishing the black literature and inventing the cultural integration goes to James Mercer Langston Hughes (1902-1967). A streak note of racial humiliation and struggle for self –recognition runs through the whole poetry of Langston Hughes. The feelings of racial humiliation, struggle for self-recognition and discrimination lands the poet into a world of double consciousness in which the poet always hangs in doubt whether he thinks himself an American or an Outsider. The attitude of the white forces the poet to feel that he is not a native of America but an alien. It results that the poet suffers from what Soren Kierkegaard, a Danish Philosopher termed as Existentialism which emphasizes on individual existence, freedom, choice and decision. It is completely based on the human existence. After passing through a number of difficulties during his life time, the poet does not lose hope. He remains optimistic and tried to recognize himself in the white society. The structural elements of Langston Hughes’ poetry (alliteration, rhyme, assonance and tone) exhibits racial discrimination between the black and the white. The poetry of Langston Hughes also reflexes the racial discrimination. One can see the glimpse of negritude and the revolutionary ideas in his poetry that takes the readers into a world of mysticism The chief purpose of the present study is to exhibit how the blacks were compelled to leave their native countries and were made slaves in certain parts of the world as in America.