High to Low

“High to Low” is a poem by the canonized poet, novelist, and essayist Langston Hughes, who first published the lyric in Midwest Journal (1949). In the same literary publication, Hughes published the companion poem “Low to High.” Both poems appeared in his collection, Montage of a Dream Deferred (1951), which Hughes thought of as one large poem capturing the exhilarating atmosphere and attitudes of the predominantly Black New York City neighborhood of Harlem. Hughes lived in Harlem and was a key member of the Harlem Renaissance—the formidable artistic movement that featured Black creators like the writer Zora Neale Hurston and the jazz musician Duke Ellington. The movement prompted Black artists to express themselves with abandon, and as with many of Hughes’s other poems, “High to Low” uses a rhythmic, blues-like pace to document the complex dynamic of the Black community. The poem is less famous than Hughes’s other poems, such as “I, Too” (1926) or “The Weary Blues” (1926). However, “High to Low” is applicable to the evergreen discourse about race and socioeconomics, addressing themes like Class Antagonism Within the Black Community, How Behavior Links to Money, and The Pressure of Representation. 

Content Warning: The source poem and this guide feature discussions of racism.

Poet Biography

Langston Hughes (1901-67) was born in Joplin, Missouri. His mother, Carrie Langston, was a creative person from a successful family. Her father was a prosperous farmer and grocer, and her younger brother became the president of Howard University. When Carrie and Hughes’s father—James Nathaniel Hughes—separated, James moved to Mexico and Carrie left Hughes with her mother in Kansas. Living with his grandmother, Hughes developed an appreciation for literature and started composing poetry in middle school. As a young adult, Hughes visited his father, worked on ships, and matriculated at Columbia University. 

Living in New York City, Hughes became a central part of the Harlem Renaissance—the name people gave to the group of Black artists in the titular New York City neighborhood. The white writer Carl Van Vechten was an ally to many of the Black artists, and he showed Hughes’s poetry to the prominent publisher Alfred A. Knopf, who published his first collection The Weary Blues (1926). Prolific, Hughes would publish numerous other books and articles, including the controversial collection of poems Fine Clothes to the Jew (1927), the autobiographical novel Not Without Laughter (1930), and Montage of a Dream Deferred (1951), which features “High to Low.” 

Hughes became a famous literary figure, synonymous with providing a voice for the Black experience. He criticized Black writers like Richard Wright and Amari Baraka for publishing works that presented the Black experience as volatile and violent. In turn, Black authors such as James Baldwin knocked Hughes for sounding overly amenable. A point of contention was Hughes’s commitment to people from the working class and communism. In the 1930s, Hughes voiced support for communism or a non-capitalistic ideology. During the Second Red Scare of the 1950s, when Wisconsin Senator Joseph McCarthy began tarnishing people with any kind of association with communism, Hughes distanced himself from communism and modified his views on the tensions between socioeconomic classes. 

Literary and political discord aside, Hughes remained productive and in the spotlight. He published Selected Poems (1959), and he became a part of the National Institute of Arts and Letters. In 1962, he began writing a column for The New York Post. Hughes was one of the few writers who could support himself solely by writing. He never married or had children, and he died in 1967 of cancer.

Poem Text

Hughes, Langston. “High to Low.” 1949. West-Linn Wilsonville School District.

Summary

Hughes’s poem imagines a one-sided conversation between two Black people. The speaker is an upper-class Black person (the “high” in “High to Low”), and they are addressing a Black person with a less affluent socioeconomic status (the “low” in “High to Low”). The speaker acknowledges that Black people have many “troubles” (Line 2), and the main problem is Black people without as much money. The speaker believes their behavior reflects badly on the entire Black community. They claim Black people without as much money yell, use vulgar words, and “look too black” (Line 6). The speaker says they lack motivation, and they don’t “care” (Line 9) about their lives or how others perceive them. 

The Black person from the affluent class goes on to reproach the Black person from the less monied class for enrolling their children in less prestigious schools. Their kids don’t bother to pull up their “stockings” (Line 11), and the adults are too loud in their church. Outside of church, they idle near their homes as if they were still in the southern part of the United States. The speaker calls the addressee a “clown” (Line 18). Repeating their thesis, the speaker tells the less affluent Black person that they’re letting every Black person down, subverting the fine example set by Black people with money and status.