The poem “Harlem” (1951) by Langston Hughes alludes to the Great Migration, the mass movement of African Americans from the South to Northern and Midwestern cities in the 20th century, in its famous last line: “Or does it explode?” Hughes’s poem considers the barriers faced by Black Americans and the potential consequences of white society’s withholding of equal opportunity. The last line is interpreted by some readers to refer to the population boom caused by the Great Migration, as well as the racial violence that Black Americans were met with and their struggle for civil rights.
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