Abstract

Since Langston Hughes’ 1951 publishing of Montage of a Dream Deferred, critics have treated the text as an epic poem built on avant garde bebop rhythms and motifs so as to reaffirm Hughes’ own treatment of it in his preface. Historicizing the text, however, reveals that Hughes published poems from Montage on an individual basis in Little Magazines, using this context to speak to and rally the everyday African-American through more emphatic blues poems. Under these conditions, Hughes transforms into a crusader alongside his fellow African-Americans rather than the invincible narrator of Montage of a Dream Deferred.

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