Langston Hughes's "Mississippi—1955": a note on revisions and an appeal for reconsideration

African American Review, Spring, 2003 by Christopher Metress

We will not forget Emmett Louis Till
In tomorrow's problems or last week's good
    news.
We will not forget him in breakfast food
Or in the rush of winter bells.
We promise the voice that commands our
  attention
The earth that was his earth
Will not wilt and die in a quick hour's decision.
--from Richard Davidson's "A Cause for
   Justice"

"Mississippi" does not hold a high place in the Hughes canon, although Hughes obviously felt the poem deserved attention. He selected it as one of only two poems for contribution to Negro Digest's special poetry section in September 1965, and he reworked the poem again for inclusion in The Panther and the Lash. But when Hughes put together his Selected Poems in 1959, he did not include "Mississippi" -- in part, one assumes, because "Mississippi" had not yet appeared in any collection, but also, in part, because Hughes did not think as highly of this poem as he did of others. Certainly, "Mississippi" does not have the status of such classics as "A Negro Speaks of Rivers," "The Weary Blues," "Theme for English B," or "A Dream Deferred." Still, it is a bit surprising that some of the most comprehensive and influential studies of Hughes fail to mention the poem. James E. Emanuel's Langston Hughes (1967), Richard K. Barksdale's Langston Hughes: The Poet and His Critics (1977), Faith Berry's Langston Hughes: Before and Beyond Harlem (1983), and R. Baxter Miller's Art and Imagination of Langston Hughes (1989) do not refer the poem, and even Rampersad's monumental two-volume Life of Langston Hughes (1988) does not mention it.

More egregious than this neglect of "Mississippi," however, is the total failure to recognize the existence of "Mississippi--1955." Rampersad and Roessel's Collected Poems does acknowledge "Mississippi--1955" as the source for "Mississippi," but other than this no other study or collection takes notice of the poem. Even the most thorough bibliographic and textual studies of Hughes's work overlook "Mississippi--1955." In A BioBibliography of Langston Hughes, 1902-1967, Donald C. Dickson does not list the poem. He does list a poem under the title "Mississippi" in his bibliography, but he is here referring to the 21 August 1961 New Republic poem, which is not a revision of "Mississippi--1955" but an entirely different poem altogether--the one subtitled "(Words for a Plastic Sax)." Thus, Dickson's study not only fails to acknowledge the poem Hughes originally dedicated to Emmett Till, but it also omits completely any of its revisions. Peter Mandelik and Stanley Schatt's more comprehensive Concordance to the Poetr y of Langston Hughes (1975) lists the revised "Mississippi" but not "Mississippi--1955." Because Mandelik and Schatt are working from poetry collections, failing to acknowledge "Mississippi--1955" is an understandable oversight, especially when we consider that the copyright acknowledgments found in The Panther and the Lash identify Negro Digest as the place where the poem was "first published." Still, their thorough concordance ignores the poem completely.