Adapted from a chapter in Carl McRoy’s Black from the Past.

Did you know Langston Hughes wrote his first published poem just after graduating high school . . .

on the back of an envelope . . .

in only ten or fifteen minutes . . .

while riding on a train?

“The Negro Speaks of Rivers” first appeared at the bottom of page 71 in the June, 1921 issue of the NAACP’s The Crisis magazine. It didn’t receive prime placement, but it drew rave reviews. Let’s lift some lines from the lyrical lever that opened the door for this Harlem Renaissance legend.

I’ve known rivers:

I’ve known rivers ancient as the world and older than the flow of human blood in human veins. . .

I bathed in the Euphrates when dawns were young. . .

I looked upon the Nile and raised the pyramids above it. . .

I’ve known rivers:

Ancient, dusky rivers.

My soul has grown deep like the rivers.

A Bridge from the Mississippi to the Motherland

Langston Hughes wrote this poem as he traveled across the Mississippi River on a trip to Mexico City to see his father. He was moved by the contemplation of what it meant to be a slave “sold down the river.” He also reflected on the story of Abraham Lincoln’s trip down that river to New Orleans and how the scene of slave auctions impacted his life’s trajectory.

Then Hughes’s mind goes from the Mississippi to biblical rivers—the Euphrates and the Nile. These rivers branched out from the Garden in which human blood first flowed through human veins.    

Genesis 2:14 names the Euphrates as the fourth river to diverge from the fountainhead that flowed from Eden (Gen. 2:10–14). This river, as we know it today, runs through modern Turkey, Syria, and Iraq. Genesis 2:13 names Gihon (meaning bursting forth, or gushing) as the second branch and says it “flows around the entire land of Cush” (NLT). The ancient Greek translations of the Old Testament (known as the Septuagint) refer to Cush as Ethiopia. The first-century historian Josephus, along with the King James Version, agrees.

We must understand that Cush, or Ethiopia, as its often rendered, was a term representing a much larger area of Africa than the boundaries of modern Ethiopia. The Hebrews borrowed the word Cush from the Egyptians, who used it to refer to the area below their southern border. The Greeks often used “Ethiopian” as a general term for dark-skinned people.

As an example of how inclusive these terms can be, 2 Kings 19:9 tells of King Tirhakah of Cush/Ethiopia, who was on his way to make war against the Assyrians. Most historians and commentators agree this refers to Taharqa, a Nubian pharaoh, who ruled much of the area that today we call Sudan and Egypt.

A river by any other name

What does this pharaoh have to do with Eden’s Gihon or Langston Hughes? Taharqa, like the river of Genesis 2:13, was bursting forth and encompassing the lands of Ethiopia, Sudan, and Egypt—the land of Cush. Taharqa knew this river, whether as Gihon in Genesis, by its later name, the Nile, or some other name. So did our Creator.

When the dawns were young, our Father knelt down and muddied his knees as he fashioned us in his image. His fingernails were caked with colorful clay after he molded our ancestors from Edenic soil somewhere near the source of ancient dusky rivers—the Nile in Africa and the Euphrates in Asia.

People of color in America are often tempted to have a complex about our complexions as we journey through life. We can succumb to feeling like exiles in a hostile land because of how people prejudge us, or we can let our souls grow deep. . .

. . . and know that we belong.

We might be physical transplants, but we can stretch our spiritual roots to the rivers of water from which we came and bear fruit in our season.