I, Too

By Langston Hughes

“I, Too” is Langston Hughes’s 1925 poem about a Black man who is sent to eat in the kitchen and promises that he will one day sit at America’s table. Written in Genoa, Italy, in 1924 and first printed in Survey Graphic in March 1925, its 18 lines of free verse later closed his first book, The Weary Blues (1926), under the title “Epilogue.”

Our reading is that the poem is less a protest than a family argument. The speaker calls himself the “darker brother,” so the house is his house too, and the kitchen becomes the place where he grows strong enough to take his seat. The last line then moves the claim from singing America to being America.

ON THIS PAGE
Summary · The Poem · Background · Analysis and Themes · Form and Technique · Notable Lines · Themes · FAQ
In Popular Culture · Related Poems

Summary

The speaker opens by announcing that he, too, sings America. He is the “darker brother,” sent to eat in the kitchen whenever guests arrive, but instead of resenting it, he laughs, eats well, and grows strong. Tomorrow, he says, he will sit at the table with the company, and no one will dare send him away. They will see how beautiful he is and be ashamed, and the poem ends with a bolder claim: “I, too, am America.”

In The Weary Blues, the poem is called “Epilogue” and closes the book’s final section, “Our Land,” so Hughes’s first collection ends on this promise.

The Poem

The text below follows the first edition of The Weary Blues (Alfred A. Knopf, 1926), where the poem is titled “Epilogue.”

I, too, sing America.

I am the darker brother.
They send me to eat in the kitchen
When company comes,
But I laugh,
And eat well,
And grow strong.

Tomorrow,
I’ll sit at the table
When company comes.
Nobody’ll dare
Say to me,
“Eat in the kitchen,”
Then.

Besides,
They’ll see how beautiful I am
And be ashamed,—

I, too, am America.

Background

Hughes wrote the poem in 1924 in Genoa, Italy, where he was stranded after his passport and money were stolen. He tried to work his way home as a deckhand, but American ships turned him away because their crews would not work with a Black man. He mailed the poem to New York, hoping to sell it.

It first appeared as “I, Too” in the March 1925 issue of Survey Graphic, a special number on Harlem edited by Alain Locke, and later that year in Locke’s anthology The New Negro. In 1926, Alfred A. Knopf published The Weary Blues, Hughes’s first book, with the poem as its final piece under the title “Epilogue.”

The wording changed over the years. The 1926 text has the speaker say “I’ll sit at the table,” while the version most often reprinted today reads “I’ll be at the table.” The change is small, but it turns a physical act into a simple statement of presence, as if the speaker no longer needs to take his seat because he was always entitled to it.

Analysis and Themes

“I, Too” is often taught as a protest poem, but its tone is calm, even amused. We read it as a family quarrel settled by patience: the speaker never asks to be let into America, because he already lives in the house.

A Brother, Not a Guest

The key word in line 2 is “brother.” Hughes does not present the speaker as a stranger asking to be admitted but as a member of the household who is hidden away when “company comes.” The family’s embarrassment is about appearances in front of visitors, and that is exactly what the poem turns around: in the end, the family will be ashamed of how it has treated him.

The Kitchen as a Training Ground

Lines 5 to 7 are the quiet center of the poem. “But I laugh, / And eat well, / And grow strong” turns exclusion into preparation. Each line is three words long, as steady as a heartbeat, and the speaker’s answer to insult is not anger but health and time. The kitchen, meant as a place to hide him, becomes the place where he builds the strength to walk into the dining room.

Beauty Instead of Revenge

The third stanza sounds like a warning: “Nobody’ll dare / Say to me, / ‘Eat in the kitchen,’ / Then.” But the fourth stanza opens with “Besides,” and the argument changes. The deeper reason he will be welcomed is not that he is strong but that he is beautiful, and the dash after “ashamed” leaves the family’s shame hanging in the silence before the final line.

From “Sing” to “Am”

The first and last lines frame everything. “I, too, sing America” answers Walt Whitman, whose “I Hear America Singing” pictures the nation as a chorus of working voices, and Hughes adds the voice that Whitman’s list left out. By the last line, the verb has changed. Singing is something a person does about a subject, while being is not open to debate, so the speaker ends not by asking for a place in the song but by claiming to be the country itself.

Form and Technique

“I, Too” is written in free verse: 18 lines in five stanzas, with no rhyme scheme and no fixed meter. Its lines range from a single word (“Tomorrow,” and “Then.”) to seven words (“They send me to eat in the kitchen”), and the rhythm comes from speech rather than from a metrical pattern.

The shape is symmetrical. One-line stanzas open and close the poem, and the two middle stanzas mirror each other: stanza 2 describes the present (“They send me”), stanza 3 the future (“Tomorrow”), and the phrase “When company comes,” repeated in lines 4 and 10, locks them together. The short fourth stanza, only three lines, turns from the practical to the personal.

Hughes uses anaphora in lines 6 and 7, which both begin with “And,” to give the speaker’s patience a steady beat. He also gives three words lines of their own, tomorrow, then, and besides, so the reader pauses at each turn in the argument.

Notable Lines

Three passages carry most of the poem’s weight.

I am the darker brother.
They send me to eat in the kitchen
When company comes,

Lines 2 to 4

In three lines, Hughes sets up the whole situation: a family, a segregated house, and a front room kept for appearances. The word “darker” makes the difference one of shade, not kind, and the brothers are still brothers.

But I laugh,
And eat well,
And grow strong.

Lines 5 to 7

Three lines of three words each. The speaker’s response to being shut away is to laugh, eat, and grow, a patient kind of resistance that the rest of the poem depends on.

Besides,
They’ll see how beautiful I am
And be ashamed,—

I, too, am America.

Lines 15 to 18

“Besides” is the most surprising word in the poem. It sets aside the argument from strength and replaces it with beauty, and after the dash, the poem ends on its boldest claim.

Themes

Four ideas run through the poem’s 18 lines.

The central theme is belonging. The speaker never asks whether he is American; he states it in the first line and restates it more strongly in the last.

The kitchen stands for the segregation of Jim Crow America, when Black Americans were kept out of restaurants, railroad cars, and front rooms. Hughes names the injustice without once using the word “race.”

The speaker’s confidence rests on patience. “Tomorrow” is not a wish but a forecast, and his laughter suggests he already knows how the story ends.

The final argument is about beauty. Once America really looks at the speaker, the poem says, it will be ashamed of having hidden him, an idea at the heart of the Harlem Renaissance.

Frequently Asked Questions

These are the questions readers most often ask about “I, Too.”

What Is “I, Too” by Langston Hughes About?

It is about a Black American who is sent to eat in the kitchen when guests arrive and who promises that one day he will sit at the table with everyone else. Hughes uses that household scene to stand for segregation and to claim that Black Americans are fully part of the nation.

When Did Langston Hughes Write “I, Too”?

Hughes wrote “I, Too” in 1924, while he was stranded in Genoa, Italy. It was first published in Survey Graphic in March 1925 and collected in The Weary Blues in 1926.

What Is the Theme of “I, Too”?

The main theme is belonging: Black Americans are as much a part of America as anyone else. Around that idea, the poem explores segregation, patience, and pride in Black beauty.

What Type of Poem Is “I, Too”?

It is a free-verse lyric of 18 lines in five stanzas, with no rhyme scheme or regular meter. Its rhythm comes from plain speech and from repeated words and phrases such as “When company comes.”

Why Did Langston Hughes Write “I, Too”?

He wrote it after American ships in Genoa refused to take him on as a deckhand because of his race. The poem answers that experience, and Walt Whitman’s celebration of American voices, by insisting that he, too, belongs.

In Popular Culture

The poem’s last line has become one of the best-known phrases in American writing.

The words “I, too, am America” are inscribed on the wall of the National Museum of African American History and Culture in Washington, D.C., which opened in 2016.

At the museum’s dedication on September 24, 2016, President Barack Obama closed his speech by quoting the line.

In 2014, Black students at Harvard University launched “I, Too, Am Harvard,” a photo campaign and play about their experiences on campus, which inspired similar projects at Oxford, MIT, and other universities.

Bryan Collier’s picture book I, Too, Am America (2012) illustrates the poem through the life of a Pullman porter and won the 2013 Coretta Scott King Illustrator Award.

Related Poems

If you found “I, Too” powerful, these poems share its subject, its voice, or its conversation with America.

• I Hear America Singing by Walt Whitman: The poem Hughes answers, a catalog of American workers each singing their own song.
• The Negro Speaks of Rivers by Langston Hughes: Hughes’s first famous poem, which claims a history older than America itself.
• Let America Be America Again by Langston Hughes: A longer, angrier return to the same question a decade later.
• We Wear the Mask by Paul Laurence Dunbar: An earlier poem about the faces Black Americans were forced to show the world.
• If We Must Die by Claude McKay: A Harlem Renaissance sonnet that meets injustice with defiance rather than patience.