on the road langston hughes essay

“On the Road” by Langston Hughes Essay

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Introduction

First of all, it is necessary to mention, that the poem “on the road” by Langston Hughes is the narration of the periods of the Great Depression. The protagonist of this play ‑ Sargeant, an African American vagabond, seeks food and shelter. He arrived in Reno, Nevada during the serious snowstorm, however, he does not feel the snowflakes, burning his face. He is too hungry, sleepy, and looking for shelter. Langston Hughes’s story deals with a commentary of situations befalling African Americans during the Depression Era. This situation appears to be rather difficult, as the position of those who are different from the others (by race, religion, or class). From the feminist point of view, the poem does not touch upon the issues of sexual discrimination during the Great Depression. Originally, the author aimed to explore, what happens, when a weakened person acts only basing on his conditions. The short story reveals the distraction and consequent violent actions of one human’s homeless dilemma on a snowy winter evening. From the feminist point of view, this idea is not worth attention, and the fact, that the desperation may cause the appearance of the additional powers is not essential from the feminist point of view, as the feminist movement was not based on desperation, but only with strong determination.

The theme of the poem deals with the conditions that African American community challenges during the Great Depression. From the feminist criticism point of view, this discrimination of the African American population worsened the situation for the African American women, who were discriminated against for two reasons: they were African American, and they were women. As for the plot, that is aimed to reveal the destiny of the African American man, searching for shelter. There was no way to search for shelter, while lots of women suffered from hunger. The character should search not the shelter, but all the efforts should be directed for the help of the starving women.

The main character of the poem is the African American man, named Sargeant. The feminist activists would not bear the fact, that only men can achieve success and overcome all the difficulties and challenges that life offers for them. Langston Hughes should not devote the whole poem to the man protagonist. He should also point out, that women are also powerful enough to overcome all the challenges.

Motiff, that made the author write this poem was to show all the challenges, that American citizens (mostly African Americans) challenged during the Great Depression period. The fact is that these matters, were described by lots of other poets and novelists, however, few devoted their creation to the challenges of women and the consequences of the feminist movements during the Great Depression Era.

In conclusion, it is necessary to mention, that the feminist point of view, that may be applied to this poem can not fit the plot and the theme. As the poem touches upon the issues of the Great Depression, there is no sense in criticizing it from the feminist viewpoint. However, the protagonist is led not only by his hunger but also by the ideas. That would be appreciated by the feminists, who are always firm.

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Bibliography

IvyPanda . ""On the Road" by Langston Hughes." October 15, 2021. https://ivypanda.com/essays/on-the-road-by-langston-hughes/.

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On the Road by Langston Hughes, Essay Example

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The story “On the Road” by Langston Hughes provides an exciting perspective on a vagabond’s life. Sargeant is the focus of the narration and provides insight into a vagabond’s life in society. Each character and location of events offer valuable insight into the viewpoint the audience should contemplate through the reading. An analysis of each aspect and character reveals more details about the nature of the vagabond’s life. Sargeant, the Reverend Mr. Dorset, the Christ from the cross, and the Church prove useful through their ironical nature. The contrast each character, event, and location provide is also helpful in illustrating various elements of the life Sargeant experienced. Another characteristic that ties in with the theme of the literature piece is the title, which provides a form of oversight into the writing’s purpose. The paper analyzes each component and explores the contributions they provide in comprehending the experiences of a vagabond in the streets.

The first character that catches the reader’s attention is Sargeant. Sargeant is a vagabond who seems to be depressed. The author points out the apparent lack of response to conditions that would otherwise catch any other healthy person’s attention. He seems oblivious to the chilly conditions prevailing outside, as seen in the first paragraph. The writer records that Sargeant seemed not to feel the snow’s cold and wetness either on his neck or in his shoes (Hughes 1). Even his eyes failed to catch the sight of snow falling through the air in the bright light. Confusion and disorientation also point to the lack of calmness in Sargeant’s mind. The fifth paragraph of page one indicates his feelings of hunger and conflicting thoughts of being lost while not feeling lost. His circumstances and reflections point to the prolonged period in which the vagabond lived in a poor mental state. The weather also paints the picture of his bleak and hopeless outlook on life. Snowy conditions offer a gloomy view of the environment (Hughes 1), reflecting the hopeless perspective Sargeant had about his life. The economic conditions of the time also reinforce the observation. The narration points to a period of economic depression in the first paragraph of page one. His economic life experienced the same problem. Additionally, even the weather and economic environment seemed to reinforce the hardship the man experienced.

Reverend Mr. Doset provides useful insight into the difficult natureof the life Sargeant experienced. The interaction between the two men enables the reader to understand the quality of social interactions the vagabond experienced in society. Sargent had a poor social life. Mr. Doset appears as an authority figure that would be in a position to help Sargeant. He is a church leader, has access to resources the man needs, and should be able to tend to the vagabond based on his job description. As a representative of the church, the pastor should be able to assist the needy in society. He does the opposite in this case, contrary to the reader’s expectation. When Sargeant comes for help, the Reverend shuns him and sends him away, as we see in the second and third paragraphs (Hughes 1). He refers the vagabond to a shelter down the street, where the man has already faced rejection. The occurrence is ironic since the pastor would be in the best position to get the man whatever he needs. The scenario serves to reinforce the reader’s understanding of the hopelessness and desperation Sargeant experiences. It is evident that the vagabond has to be on the road because he has nowhere to go. Nobody is willing to aid him yet the authority figures and institutions available have the capacity to help him. Such a circumstance may help to explain why the man suffers depression. One would expect that the shelters would have their door open to anyone in need yet Sargeant fails to find assistance. The situation seems to reflect the failure the vagabond has experienced to acquire and utilize opportunities available to him. He may have been unaware of the opportunities or failed to qualify to get them.

The church is also symbolic of the life of Sargeant. The place correlates to the representation of the Reverend and the shelters. Sargeant fails to find assistance when he decides to go to the building (Hughes 2). He had hoped to find solace at the church but instead, the building collapsed. The incident seems to point to the dashed hopes that the vagabond has experienced whenever he sought help. Our understanding of the church is as a place of sanctuary. Church members tend to promote the location as an area for finding solutions. The opposite is true as the church seems to generate more problems for the vagabond. Sargeant ends up demolishing the building and gets into trouble with the police and other bystanders, who mistake him for a criminal. It is ironic that the church fails to serve its purpose. His efforts end up sending him to a prison cell (Hughes 4). The incident points out once more to the hopelessness and desperation in Sargeant’s life. Nothing seems to offer solutions to the hardship he faces.

The character of the Christ Sargeant sees is useful in understanding the nature of the society. The church tends to serve as an emblem of freedom. It is ironical that the church becomes a prison for their source of freedom-the Christ. The observation is evident through the conversation Sargeant seems to have with Christ in the second and third pages (Hughes 3). Christ seems relieved that he got an opportunity to be free from the cross, where the church had pinned him. Such a representation contradicts the freedom through resurrection that the church upholds. Christ was supposed to be free from death after the resurrection yet the church had still nailed him to the cross. The scenario demonstrates the lack of freedom the congregation, and perhaps the community, experienced. The beliefs the people have embraced seem to fail to produce the results they expect to receive. Sargeant has the same problem, which contributes to his depressive state.

The paper has provided an analysis of the state of Sargeant’s life perspective. The characters, locations, and activities in the story have enabled the comprehension of the life the vagabond lives. It is evident through the weather, the economic period, the Reverend, and the church and its ideals that the life of a vagabond is hopeless, desperate and depressive. Whatever opportunities and channels available to the individual for help fail to serve their purpose. The vagabond therefore remains on the road, wandering about in life.

Hughes, Langston. On the Road. (1902-1967)

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Langston Hughes: Poems

Intimacy through point of view in "on the road" alex nichamin.

Langston Hughes’ “On the Road” takes place during the depression and chronicles a homeless black man’s search for a place to stay the night. This man, Sargeant, first attempts to stay at a parsonage, but is turned down by the Reverend. He then sees the church next to the parsonage and decides he will sleep inside of it. The door is locked and no one answers his knocks, so he pushes against the door and he is able to break the door open. As the door breaks open two cops arrive and try to pull him away from the door, but Sargeant grabs onto a stone pillar at the front of the church and refuses to let go. Gradually, the front of the church falls down, and then the whole thing falls onto the cops and onto Sargeant, who is knocked unconscious by the debris. While unconscious, Sargeant has a dream that he is talking to Christ and at the end of the dream, when Sargeant tries to get on a train, he wakes up and realizes that he is in jail. The intimacy of the second person point of view evokes from the reader a sympathy for Sargeant. This is done through the narrator’s use of language, the narrator’s omniscience, and the narrator’s seeming firsthand knowledge of being in a situation similar to Sargeant’s.

The narrator uses simple,...

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Home — Essay Samples — Literature — Langston Hughes — Church’s Controversy in The Story “On The Road” by Langston Hughes

Church's Controversy in The Story "On The Road" by Langston Hughes

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Published: Jun 29, 2018

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Langston Hughes

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Langston Hughes was a central figure in the Harlem Renaissance , the flowering of black intellectual, literary, and artistic life that took place in the 1920s in a number of American cities, particularly Harlem. A major poet, Hughes also wrote novels, short stories, essays, and plays. He sought to honestly portray the joys and hardships of working-class black lives, avoiding both sentimental idealization and negative stereotypes. As he wrote in his essay “ The Negro Artist and the Racial Mountain ,” “We younger Negro artists who create now intend to express our individual dark-skinned selves without fear or shame. If white people are pleased we are glad. If they are not, it doesn’t matter. We know we are beautiful. And ugly too.”

This approach was not without its critics. Much of Hughes’s early work was roundly criticized by many black intellectuals for portraying what they thought to be an unattractive view of black life. In his autobiographical The Big Sea, Hughes commented:

Fine Clothes to the Jew [Hughes’s second book] was well received by the literary magazines and the white press, but the Negro critics did not like it at all. The Pittsburgh Courier ran a big headline across the top of the page, LANGSTON HUGHES’ BOOK OF POEMS TRASH. The headline in the New York Amsterdam News was LANGSTON HUGHES THE SEWER DWELLER. The Chicago Whip characterized me as ‘the poet low- rate of Harlem.’ Others called the book a disgrace to the race, a return to the dialect tradition, and a parading of all our racial defects before the public. … The Negro critics and many of the intellectuals were very sensitive about their race in books. (And still are.) In anything that white people were likely to read, they wanted to put their best foot forward, their politely polished and cultural foot—and only that foot.

In fact, the title Fine Clothes to the Jew, which was misunderstood and disliked by many people, was derived from the Harlemites Hughes saw pawning their own clothing; most of the pawn shops and other stores in Harlem at that time were owned by Jewish people. Lindsay Patterson, a novelist who served as Hughes’s assistant, believed that Hughes was

critically, the most abused poet in America. … Serious white critics ignored him, less serious ones compared his poetry to Cassius Clay doggerel, and most black critics only grudgingly admired him. Some, like James Baldwin, were downright malicious about his poetic achievement. But long after Baldwin and the rest of us are gone, I suspect Hughes’ poetry will be blatantly around growing in stature until it is recognized for its genius. Hughes … was unashamedly black at a time when blackness was démodé. He had the wit and intelligence to explore the black human condition in a variety of depths, but his tastes and selectivity were not always accurate, and pressures to survive as a black writer in a white society (and it was a miracle that he did for so long) extracted an enormous creative toll.

Nevertheless, Hughes, more than any other black poet or writer, recorded faithfully the nuances of black life and its frustrations. In Hughes’s own words, his poetry is about "workers, roustabouts, and singers, and job hunters on Lenox Avenue in New York, or Seventh Street in Washington or South State in Chicago—people up today and down tomorrow, working this week and fired the next, beaten and baffled, but determined not to be wholly beaten, buying furniture on the installment plan, filling the house with roomers to help pay the rent, hoping to get a new suit for Easter—and pawning that suit before the Fourth of July."

Hoyt W. Fuller commented that Hughes "chose to identify with plain black people … precisely because he saw more truth and profound significance in doing so. Perhaps in this he was inversely influenced by his father—who, frustrated by being the object of scorn in his native land, rejected his own people. Perhaps the poet’s reaction to his father’s flight from the American racial reality drove him to embrace it with extra fervor.” (Langston Hughes’s parents separated shortly after his birth and his father moved to Mexico. The elder Hughes came to feel a deep dislike and revulsion for other African-Americans.)

Although Hughes had trouble with both black and white critics, he was the first black American to earn his living solely from his writing and public lectures. Part of the reason he was able to do this was the phenomenal acceptance and love he received from average black people. A reviewer for Black World noted in 1970: "Those whose prerogative it is to determine the rank of writers have never rated him highly, but if the weight of public response is any gauge then Langston Hughes stands at the apex of literary relevance among Black people. The poet occupies such a position in the memory of his people precisely because he recognized that ‘we possess within ourselves a great reservoir of physical and spiritual strength,’ and because he used his artistry to reflect this back to the people." Hughes brought a varied and colorful background to his writing. Before he was 12 years old he had lived in six different American cities. When his first book was published, he had already been a truck farmer, cook, waiter, college graduate, sailor, and doorman at a nightclub in Paris, and had visited Mexico, West Africa, the Azores, the Canary Islands, Holland, France, and Italy. As David Littlejohn observed in his Black on White: A Critical Survey of Writing by American Negroes: "On the whole, Hughes’ creative life [was] as full, as varied, and as original as Picasso’s, a joyful, honest monument of a career. There [was] no noticeable sham in it, no pretension, no self-deceit; but a great, great deal of delight and smiling irresistible wit. If he seems for the moment upstaged by angrier men, by more complex artists, if ‘different views engage’ us, necessarily, at this trying stage of the race war, he may well outlive them all, and still be there when it’s over. … Hughes’ [greatness] seems to derive from his anonymous unity with his people. He seems to speak for millions, which is a tricky thing to do. Hughes reached many people through his popular fictional character, Jesse B. Semple (shortened to Simple). Simple is a poor man who lives in Harlem, a kind of comic no-good, a stereotype Hughes turned to advantage. He tells his stories to Boyd, the foil in the stories who is a writer much like Hughes, in return for a drink. His tales of his troubles with work, women, money, and life in general often reveal, through their very simplicity, the problems of being a poor black man in a racist society. “White folks,” Simple once commented, “is the cause of a lot of inconvenience in my life.” Simple’s musings first appeared in 1942 in “From Here to Yonder,” a column Hughes wrote for the Chicago Defender and later for the New York Post. According to a reviewer for Kirkus Reviews, their original intent was “to convince black Americans to support the U.S. war effort.” They were later published in several volumes. A more recent collection, 1994’s The Return of Simple, contains previously unpublished material but remains current in its themes, according to a Publishers Weekly critic who noted Simple’s addressing of such issues as political correctness, children’s rights, and the racist undercurrent behind contraception and sterilization proposals. Donald C. Dickinson wrote in his Bio-Bibliography of Langston Hughes that "[the] charm of Simple lies in his uninhibited pursuit of those two universal goals, understanding and security. As with most other humans, he usually fails to achieve either of these goals and sometimes once achieved they disappoint him. … Simple has a tough resilience, however, that won’t allow him to brood over a failure very long. … Simple is a well-developed character, both believable and lovable. The situations he meets and discusses are so true to life everyone may enter the fun."

A reviewer for Black World commented on the popularity of Simple: “The people responded. Simple lived in a world they knew, suffered their pangs, experienced their joys, reasoned in their way, talked their talk, dreamed their dreams, laughed their laughs, voiced their fears—and all the while underneath, he affirmed the wisdom which anchored at the base of their lives.” Hoyt W. Fuller believed that, like Simple, "the key to Langston Hughes … was the poet’s deceptive and profound simplicity. Profound because it was both willed and ineffable, because some intuitive sense even at the beginning of his adulthood taught him that humanity was of the essence and that it existed undiminished in all shapes, sizes, colors and conditions. Violations of that humanity offended his unshakable conviction that mankind is possessed of the divinity of God." It was Hughes’s belief in humanity and his hope for a world in which people could sanely and with understanding live together that led to his decline in popularity in the racially turbulent latter years of his life. Unlike younger and more militant writers, Hughes never lost his conviction that “ most people are generally good, in every race and in every country where I have been.” Reviewing The Panther and the Lash: Poems of Our Times in Poetry, Laurence Lieberman recognized that Hughes’s “sensibility [had] kept pace with the times,” but he criticized his lack of a personal political stance. “Regrettably, in different poems, he is fatally prone to sympathize with starkly antithetical politics of race,” Lieberman commented. “A reader can appreciate his catholicity, his tolerance of all the rival—and mutually hostile—views of his outspoken compatriots, from Martin Luther King to Stokely Carmichael, but we are tempted to ask, what are Hughes’ politics? And if he has none, why not? The age demands intellectual commitment from its spokesmen. A poetry whose chief claim on our attention is moral, rather than aesthetic, must take sides politically.” Hughes’s position in the American literary scene seems to be secure. David Littlejohn wrote that Hughes is "the one sure Negro classic, more certain of permanence than even Baldwin or Ellison or Wright. … His voice is as sure, his manner as original, his position as secure as, say Edwin Arlington Robinson’s or Robinson Jeffers’. … By molding his verse always on the sounds of Negro talk, the rhythms of Negro music, by retaining his own keen honesty and directness, his poetic sense and ironic intelligence, he maintained through four decades a readable newness distinctly his own."

The Block and The Sweet and Sour Animal Book are posthumously published collections of Hughes’s poetry for children that position his words against a backdrop of visual art. The Block pairs Hughes’s poems with a series of six collages by Romare Bearden that bear the book’s title. The Sweet and Sour Animal Book contains previously unpublished and repeatedly rejected poetry of Hughes from the 1930s. Here, the editors have combined it with the artwork of elementary school children at the Harlem School of the Arts. The results, noted Veronica Chambers in the New York Times Book Review, “reflect Hughes’s childlike wonder as well as his sense of humor.” Chambers also commented on the rhythms of Hughes’s words, noting that “children love a good rhyme” and that Hughes gave them “just a simple but seductive taste of the blues.” Hughes’s poems have been translated into German, French, Spanish, Russian, Yiddish, and Czech; many of them have been set to music. Donald B. Gibson noted in the introduction to Modern Black Poets: A Collection of Critical Essays that Hughes

has perhaps the greatest reputation (worldwide) that any black writer has ever had. Hughes differed from most of his predecessors among black poets, and (until recently) from those who followed him as well, in that he addressed his poetry to the people, specifically to black people. During the twenties when most American poets were turning inward, writing obscure and esoteric poetry to an ever decreasing audience of readers, Hughes was turning outward, using language and themes, attitudes and ideas familiar to anyone who had the ability simply to read. He has been, unlike most nonblack poets other than Walt Whitman , Vachel Lindsay, and Carl Sandburg, a poet of the people. … Until the time of his death, he spread his message humorously—though always seriously—to audiences throughout the country, having read his poetry to more people (possibly) than any other American poet.

Hughes died on May 22, 1967, due to complications from prostate cancer.

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Langston Hughes: “Harlem”

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POETRY (Published by Knopf, except as indicated)

The Weary Blues, 1926.
Fine Clothes to the Jew, 1927.
The Negro Mother and Other Dramatic Recitations, Golden Stair Press, 1931.
Dear Lovely Death, Troutbeck Press, 1931.
The Dream Keeper and Other Poems, 1932.
Scottsboro Limited: Four Poems and a Play, Golden Stair Press, 1932.
A New Song, International Workers Order, 1938.
(With Robert Glenn) Shakespeare in Harlem, 1942.
Jim Crow's Last Stand, Negro Publication Society of America, 1943.
Freedom's Plow, Musette Publishers, 1943.
Lament for Dark Peoples and Other Poems, Holland, 1944.
Fields of Wonder, 1947.
One-Way Ticket, 1949.
Montage of a Dream Deferred, Holt, 1951.
Ask Your Mama: Twelve Moods for Jazz, 1961.
The Panther and the Lash: Poems of Our Times, 1967, reprinted, Vintage Books, 1992.
The Collected Poems of Langston Hughes, Knopf (New York, NY), 1994.
The Block: Poems, Viking (New York, NY), 1995.
Carol of the Brown King: Poems, Atheneum Books (New York, NY), 1997.
The Pasteboard Bandit, Oxford University Press (New York, NY), 1997.
Not Without Laughter, Knopf, 1930.
Tambourines to Glory, John Day, 1958.

SHORT STORIES

The Ways of White Folks, Knopf, 1934.
Simple Speaks His Mind, Simon & Schuster, 1950.
Laughing to Keep from Crying, Holt, 1952.
Simple Takes a Wife, Simon & Schuster, 1953.
Simple Stakes a Claim, Rinehart, 1957.
Something in Common and Other Stories, Hill & Wang, 1963.
Simple's Uncle Sam, Hill & Wang, 1965.
The Return of Simple Hill & Wang, 1994.
Short Stories of Langston Hughes, Hill & Wang (New York, NY), 1996.

AUTOBIOGRAPHY

The Big Sea: An Autobiography, Knopf, 1940.
I Wonder as I Wander: An Autobiographical Journey, Rinehart, 1956.
A Negro Looks at Soviet Central Asia, Co-operative Publishing Society of Foreign Workers in the USSR, 1934.
(With Roy De Carava) The Sweet Flypaper of Life, Simon & Schuster, 1955.
(With Milton Meltzer) A Pictorial History of the Negro in America, Crown, 1956, 4th edition published as A Pictorial History of Black Americans, 1973, 6th edition published as A Pictorial History of African Americans, 1995.
Fight for Freedom: The Story of the NAACP, Norton, 1962.
(With Meltzer) Black Magic: A Pictorial History of the Negro in American Entertainment, Prentice-Hall, 1967.
Black Misery, Paul S. Erickson, 1969.
(With Arna Bontemps) Popo and Fifina: Children of Haiti, Macmillan, 1932.
The First Book of Negroes, F. Watts, 1952.
The First Book of Rhythms, F. Watts, 1954, also published as The Book of Rhythms, Oxford University Press (New York, NY), 1995.
Famous American Negroes, Dodd, 1954.
Famous Negro Music Makers, Dodd, 1955.
The First Book of Jazz, F. Watts, 1955, revised edition, 1976.
The First Book of the West Indies, F. Watts, 1956 (published in England as The First Book of the Caribbean, E. Ward, 1965).
Famous Negro Heroes of America, Dodd, 1958.
The First Book of Africa, F. Watts, 1960, revised edition, 1964.
The Sweet and Sour Animal Book, Oxford University Press (New York City), 1994.
Four Lincoln University Poets, Lincoln University, 1930.
(With Bontemps) The Poetry of the Negro, 1746-1949, Doubleday, 1949, revised edition published as The Poetry of the Negro, 1746-1970, 1970.
(With Waring Cuney and Bruce M. Wright) Lincoln University Poets, Fine Editions, 1954.
(With Bontemps) The Book of Negro Folklore, Dodd, 1958.
An African Treasury: Articles, Essays, Stories, Poems by Black Africans, Crown, 1960.
Poems from Black Africa, Indiana University Press, 1963.
New Negro Poets: U.S., foreword by Gwendolyn Brooks, Indiana University Press, 1964.
The Book of Negro Humor, Dodd, 1966.
The Best Short Stories by Negro Writers: An Anthology from 1899 to the Present, Little, Brown, 1967.
(With Mercer Cook) Jacques Roumain, Masters of Dew, Reynal & Hitchcock, 1947, second edition, Liberty Book Club, 1957.
(With Frederic Carruthers) Nicolas Guillen, Cuba Libre, Ward Ritchie, 1948.
Selected Poems of Gabriela Mistral, Indiana University Press, 1957.

OMNIBUS VOLUMES

Selected Poems, Knopf, 1959.
The Best of Simple, Hill & Wang, 1961.
Five Plays by Langston Hughes, edited by Webster Smalley, Indiana University Press, 1963.
The Langston Hughes Reader, Braziller, 1968.
Don't You Turn Back (poems), edited by Lee Bennett Hopkins, Knopf, 1969.
Good Morning Revolution: The Uncollected Social Protest Writing of Langston Hughes, edited by Faith Berry, Lawrence Hill, 1973.
The Collected Poems of Langston Hughes, Knopf, 1994.
The Collected Works of Langston Hughes (18 volumes), University of Missouri Press, 2001, 2002.
(With Bontemps) Arna Bontemps-Langston Hughes Letters: 1925-1967, edited by Charles H. Nichols, Dodd, 1980.
(With Zora Neale Hurston) Mule Bone: A Comedy of Negro Life (play), HarperCollins, 1991.
Langston Hughes and the Chicago Defender: Essays on Race, Politics, and Culture, 1942-62, edited by Christopher C. De Santis, University of Illinois Press, 1995.
Remember Me to Harlem: The Letters of Langston Hughes and Carl Van Vechten, 1925-1964, edited by Emily Bernard, Knopf, 2001.

Author of numerous plays (most have been produced), including Little Ham, 1935, Mulatto, 1935, Emperor of Haiti, 1936, Troubled Island, 1936, When the Jack Hollers, 1936, Front Porch, 1937, Joy to My Soul, 1937, Soul Gone Home, 1937, Little Eva's End, 1938, Limitations of Life, 1938, The Em-Fuehrer Jones, 1938, Don't You Want to Be Free, 1938, The Organizer, 1939, The Sun Do Move, 1942, For This We Fight, 1943, The Barrier, 1950, The Glory round His Head, 1953, Simply Heavenly, 1957, Esther, 1957, The Ballad of the Brown King, 1960, Black Nativity, 1961, Gospel Glow, 1962, Jericho-Jim Crow, 1963, Tambourines to Glory, 1963, The Prodigal Son, 1965, Soul Yesterday and Today, Angelo Herndon Jones, Mother and Child, Trouble with the Angels, and Outshines the Sun. Also author of screenplay, Way Down South, 1942. Author of libretto for operas, The Barrier, 1950, and Troubled Island. Lyricist for Just around the Corner, and for Kurt Weill's Street Scene, 1948. Columnist for Chicago Defender and New York Post. Poetry, short stories, criticism, and plays have been included in numerous anthologies. Contributor to periodicals, including Nation, African Forum, Black Drama, Players Magazine, Negro Digest, Black World, Freedomways, Harlem Quarterly, Phylon, Challenge, Negro Quarterly, and Negro Story. Some of Hughes's letters, manuscripts, lecture notes, periodical clippings, and pamphlets are included in the James Weldon Johnson Memorial Collection, Beinecke Library, Yale University. Additional materials are in the Schomburg Collection of the New York Public Library, the library of Lincoln University in Pennsylvania, and the Fisk University library.

ARTS & CULTURE

A lost work by langston hughes examines the harsh life on the chain gang.

In 1933, the Harlem Renaissance star wrote a powerful essay about race. It has never been published in English—until now

Steven Hoelscher

It’s not every day that you come across an extraordinary unknown work by one of the nation’s greatest writers. But buried in an unrelated archive I recently discovered a searing essay condemning racism in America by Langston Hughes—the moving account, published in its original form here for the first time, of an escaped prisoner he met while traveling with Zora Neale Hurston.

In the summer of 1927, Hughes lit out for the American South to learn more about the region that loomed large in his literary imagination. After giving a poetry reading at Fisk University in Nashville, Hughes journeyed by train through Louisiana and Mississippi before disembarking in Mobile, Alabama. There, to his surprise, he ran into Hurston, his friend and fellow author. Described by Yuval Taylor in his new book Zora and Langston as “one of the more fortuitous meetings in American literary history,” the encounter brought together two leading lights of the Harlem Renaissance. On the spot, the pair decided to drive back to New York City together in Hurston’s small Nash coupe.

The terrain along the back roads of the rural South was new to Hughes, who grew up in the Midwest; by contrast, Hurston’s Southern roots and training as a folklorist made her a knowledgeable guide. In his journal Hughes described the black people they met in their travels: educators, sharecropping families, blues singers and conjurers. Hughes also mentioned the chain gang prisoners forced to build the roads they traveled on.

A Literary Road Trip

Three years later, Hughes gave the poor, young and mostly black men of the chain gangs a voice in his satirical poem “Road Workers”—but we now know that the images of these men in gray-and-black-striped uniforms continued to linger in the mind of the writer. In this newly discovered manuscript, Hughes revisited the route he traveled with Hurston, telling the story of their encounter with one young man picked up for fighting and sentenced to hard labor on the chain gang.

I first stumbled upon this Hughes essay in the papers of John L. Spivak, a white investigative journalist in the 1920s and 1930s, at the Harry Ransom Center at the University of Texas at Austin. Not even Hughes’ authoritative biographer Arnold Rampersad could identify the manuscript. Eventually, I learned that Hughes had written it as an introduction to a novel Spivak published in 1932, Georgia Nigger . The book was a blistering exposé of the atrocious conditions that African-Americans suffered on chain gangs, and Spivak gave it a deliberately provocative title to reflect the brutality he saw. Scholars today consider the forced labor system a form of slavery by another name. On the final page of the manuscript (not reproduced here), Hughes wrote that by “blazing the way to truth,” Spivak had written a volume “of great importance to the Negro peoples.”

Hughes titled these three typewritten pages “Foreword From Life.” And in them he also laid bare his fears of driving through Jim Crow America. “We knew that it was dangerous for Northern Negroes to appear too interested in the affairs of the rural South,” he wrote. (Hurston packed a chrome-plated pistol for protection during their road trip.)

But a question remained: Why wasn’t Hughes’ essay included in any copy of Spivak’s book I had ever seen? Buried in Spivak’s papers, I found the answer. Hughes’ essay was written a year after the book was published, commissioned to serve as the foreword of the 1933 Soviet edition and published only in Russian.

In early 1933, Hughes was living in Moscow, where he was heralded as a “revolutionary writer.” He had originally traveled there a year earlier along with 21 other influential African-Americans to participate in a film about American racism. The film had been a bust (no one could agree on the script), but escaping white supremacy in the United States—at least temporarily—was immensely appealing. The Soviet Union, at that time, promoted an ideal of racial equality that Hughes longed for. He also found that he could earn a living entirely from his writing.

For this Russian audience, Hughes reflected on a topic as relevant today as it was in 1933: the injustice of black incarceration. And he captured the story of a man that—like the stories of so many other young black men—would otherwise be lost. We may even know his name: Hughes’ journal mentions one Ed Pinkney, a young escapee whom Hughes and Hurston met near Savannah. We don’t know what happened to him after their interaction. But by telling his story, Hughes forces us to wonder.

Foreword From Life

By Langston Hughes

I had once a short but memorable experience with a fugitive from a chain gang in this very same Georgia of which [John L.] Spivak writes. I had been lecturing on my poetry at some of the Negro universities of the South and, with a friend, I was driving North again in a small automobile. All day since sunrise we had been bumping over the hard red clay roads characteristic of the backward sections of the South. We had passed two chain gangs that day This sight was common. By 1930 in Georgia alone, more than 8,000 prisoners, mostly black men, toiled on chain gangs in 116 counties. The punishment was used in Georgia from the 1860s through the 1940s. , one in the morning grading a country road, and the other about noon, a group of Negroes in gray and black stripped [sic] suits, bending and rising under the hot sun, digging a drainage ditch at the side of the highway. Adopting the voice of a chain gang laborer in the poem “Road Workers,” published in the New York Herald Tribune in 1930, Hughes wrote, “Sure, / A road helps all of us! / White folks ride — /And I get to see ’em ride.” We wanted to stop and talk to the men, but we were afraid. The white guards on horseback glared at us as we slowed down our machine, so we went on. On our automobile there was a New York license, and we knew it was dangerous for Northern Negroes to appear too interested in the affairs of the rural South. Even peaceable Negro salesmen had been beaten and mobbed by whites who objected to seeing a neatly dressed colored person speaking decent English and driving his own automobile. The NAACP collected reports of violence against blacks in this era, including a similar incident in Mississippi in 1925. Dr. Charles Smith and Myrtle Wilson were dragged from a car, beaten and shot. The only cause recorded: “jealousy among local whites of the doctor’s new car and new home.” So we did not stop to talk to the chain gangs as we went by.

But that night a strange thing happened. After sundown, in the evening dusk, as we were nearing the city of Savannah, we noticed a dark figure waving at us frantically from the swamps at the side of the road. We saw that it was a black boy.

“Can I go with you to town?” the boy stuttered. His words were hurried, as though he were frightened, and his eyes glanced nervously up and down the road.

“Get in,” I said. He sat between us on the single seat.

“Do you live in Savannah?” we asked.

“No, sir,” the boy said. “I live in Atlanta.” We noticed that he put his head down nervously when other automobiles passed ours, and seemed afraid.

“And where have you been?” we asked apprehensively.

“On the chain gang,” he said simply.

We were startled. “They let you go today?” In his journal, Hughes wrote about meeting an escaped convict named Ed Pinkney near Savannah. Hughes noted that Pinkney was 15 years old when he was sentenced to the chain gang for striking his wife.

“No, sir. I ran away. In his journal, Hughes wrote about meeting an escaped convict named Ed Pinkney near Savannah. Hughes noted that Pinkney was 15 years old when he was sentenced to the chain gang for striking his wife. That’s why I was afraid to walk in the town. I saw you-all was colored and I waved to you. I thought maybe you would help me.”

Gradually, before the lights of Savannah came in sight, in answer to our many questions, he told us his story. Picked up for fighting, prison, the chain gang. But not a bad chain gang, he said. They didn’t beat you much in this one. Guard-on-convict violence was pervasive on Jim Crow-era chain gangs. Inmates begged for transfers to less violent camps but requests were rarely granted. “I remembered the many, many such letters of abuse and torture from ‘those who owed Georgia a debt,’” Spivak wrote. Only once the guard had knocked two teeth out. That was all. But he couldn’t stand it any longer. He wanted to see his wife in Atlanta. He had been married only two weeks when they sent him away, and she needed him. He needed her. So he had made it to the swamp. A colored preacher gave him clothes. Now, for two days, he hadn’t eaten, only running. He had to get to Atlanta.

“But aren’t you afraid,” [w]e asked, “they might arrest you in Atlanta, and send you back to the same gang for running away? Atlanta is still in the state of Georgia. Come up North with us,” we pleaded, “to New York where there are no chain gangs, and Negroes are not treated so badly. Then you’ll be safe.”

He thought a while. When we assured him that he could travel with us, that we would hide him in the back of the car where the baggage was, and that he could work in the North and send for his wife, he agreed slowly to come.

“But ain’t it cold up there?” he said.

“Yes,” we answered.

In Savannah, we found a place for him to sleep and gave him half a dollar for food. “We will come for you at dawn,” we said. But when, in the morning we passed the house where he had stayed, we were told that he had already gone before daybreak. We did not see him again. Perhaps the desire to go home had been greater than the wish to go North to freedom. Or perhaps he had been afraid to travel with us by daylight. Or suspicious of our offer. Or maybe [...] In the English manuscript, the end of Hughes’ story about the convict trails off with an incomplete thought—“Or maybe”—but the Russian translation continues: “Or maybe he got scared of the cold? But most importantly, his wife was nearby!”

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Steven Hoelscher | READ MORE

Steven Hoelscher is a professor at the University of Texas at Austin.

On the Road

Jack kerouac, ask litcharts ai: the answer to your questions.

Welcome to the LitCharts study guide on Jack Kerouac's On the Road . Created by the original team behind SparkNotes, LitCharts are the world's best literature guides.

On the Road: Introduction

On the road: plot summary, on the road: detailed summary & analysis, on the road: themes, on the road: quotes, on the road: characters, on the road: symbols, on the road: theme wheel, brief biography of jack kerouac.

Historical Context of On the Road

Other books related to on the road.

Full Title: On The Road
When Written: Late 1940s to 1951
Where Written: New York City
When Published: 1957
Literary Period: The Beat Movement
Genre: Novel
Setting: Various locations across the United States (especially New York, Denver, San Francisco, Chicago, Virginia, New Orleans, Los Angeles), Mexico.
Climax: In Part Four, Sal travels with Dean to Mexico on one last crazy trip. Dean abandons Sal while Sal he is sick with a fever.
Antagonist: There is no one antagonist throughout the entire novel. At times, the police are the antagonists for Sal, Dean, and their friends.

Extra Credit for On the Road

On The Scroll. While Kerouac spent much time brainstorming and planning ideas for On The Road , when he finally sat down to write the novel, he wrote the whole thing in three weeks on one long, continuous scroll he made by attaching sheets of typewriter paper. The long, unpunctuated, unedited scroll survives to this day, and a transcribed version of this original draft of the novel was even published in 2007.

Beryl power outage updates: Hundreds of thousands of CenterPoint customers won’t have electricity until next week

The Category 1 hurricane wreaked havoc on power poles and electricity infrastructure, creating a crisis across southeastern Texas.

CenterPoint Energy Executive Vice President Jason M. Ryan speaks during a Public Utilities Commission meeting on Thursday, July 11, 2024. Leaders of various energy companies spoke to the committee about the status of their progress in restoring power in the aftermath of Hurricane Beryl.

Hundreds of thousands of CenterPoint customers will remain without power into next week

CenterPoint Energy estimates that hundreds of thousands of customers will remain without power into next week. As of Friday morning, 877,000 households and businesses it serves lacked electricity.

Across the state, more than 1 million businesses and households across several counties still lacked electricity as of Friday morning.

The longer-lasting outages were likely to be in the hard-hit areas of Matagorda County, Brazoria County and parts of Galveston County, along with some pockets elsewhere, said Jason Ryan, executive vice president of regulatory services and government affairs for CenterPoint, at a Public Utility Commission of Texas meeting on Thursday.

The slower work will involve rebuilding large spans of infrastructure, Ryan told the commissioners, such as poles broken and toppled onto the ground.

“We know that we still have a lot of work to do and we will not stop the work until it is done,” Ryan said.

The Houston-area utility says it is planning to restore power to hundreds of thousands of customers each day through this weekend.

Nearly 3 million electricity customers lost power in Texas after Hurricane Beryl swept across the southeastern portion of the state Monday.

Electric trucks line up to provide support with major power outages after Hurricane Beryl in Houston, on Wednesday, July 10, 2024.

Centerpoint exudes chaos, but also appears to be restoring power faster than it previously has.

July 11, 2024

Frustrations at CenterPoint, the Houston-area electric utility, have boiled over after it bungled its communications to the public amid yet another massive Texas power outage. The company appeared in chaos as it worked to turn on power for angry people who faced days in dangerous heat without air conditioning, including stressed customers struggling to manage health issues without electricity. More than 48 hours after the storm left the region, the company still had no clear timeline for when people could expect their electricity to be restored.

Yet even as elected officials piled onto everyday Texans’ scathing criticisms of how long the outages are lasting, CenterPoint appears to be restoring power to people faster than it has after recent storms.

“We have never restored more than a million customers a little over two days after a hurricane before and you can only do that with significant readiness,” Ryan said at the PUC meeting Thursday.

Entergy CEO Eliecer "Eli" Viamontes speaks during a Public Utilities Commission meeting on Thursday, July 11, 2024.

According to PowerOutage.us, Entergy Texas, which serves College Station and Beaumont, sill has 70,000 customers without power; Texas-New Mexico Power, serving some areas of Houston and around Brazoria on the Gulf Coast, has 40,000 customers lacking power; and AEP Texas, which stretches from Brownsville to Bay City, has 2,000 customers without power.

Utility representatives made the case to state regulators on Thursday that they were prepared for the storm. PUC Chairman Thomas Gleeson told Ryan that the utility needed to get out in the community to listen to feedback when the repairs were done.

“The public expects more communication, more frequent communication, different modes of communication,” Gleeson said. “And so I think it’s definitely incumbent on all of us to look at the way we communicate going forward.”

— Emily Foxhall, Alejandra Martinez and Dante Motley

Matagorda County was "hardest hit" by Beryl, Patrick says

Some 2,500 households in the unincorporated coastal community of Sargent may not have power for another two weeks, Matagorda County Judge Bobby Seiferman said Wednesday during a press briefing about Hurricane Beryl's aftermath.

The hurricane struck the Texas coast early Monday and knocked out power for millions of Texans along the Gulf Coast, greater Houston and in Deep East Texas. Matagorda County was the “hardest hit” of all 121 counties included in the state’s disaster declaration, Lt. Gov. Dan Patrick said at the briefing.

Community members drop off donated goods such as water and food to the Sargent Fire Department on Wednesday, July 10, 2024, in Matagorda County.

Days after Beryl, Texans toil to cope with debris, heat, rain and no power

“And Sargent was the hardest hit of that part, of that county,” he said.

Patrick is serving as acting governor while Gov. Greg Abbott is on an economic development trip in Asia. Since Monday, Patrick has traveled to Houston, Galveston and now Bay City to provide updates on storm recovery. He couldn’t visit Sargent because of the bad weather and there wasn’t a suitable place for his helicopter to land, he said.

Sen. Joan Huffman , a Republican who represents Matagorda County, also attended the briefing and promised to work with local and federal officials to help the county deal with the storm’s aftermath, including restoring power and cleaning up debris.

Matagorda County officials have asked the state to help set up cooling stations, remove debris and get food to residents beyond “ready-to-eat” meals, Patrick said.

Tony Cantu, 58, surveys the damage to his property due to Hurricane Beryl on Wednesday, July 10, 2024, in Sargent, Texas.

“They’ve asked for a lot because there are a lot of issues,” he said. “We are going to do everything we can to check every box that they asked us to check.”

He added that the state will provide additional security personnel to Sargent as well as food, water and ice.

— Pooja Salhotra

Outages make it hard to discharge hospital patients, leading to backups

NRG Arena was being converted into a temporary medical facility on Wednesday. The facility will have 250 beds for hospital patients who have been discharged and can’t return to homes without power in Houston, according to Lt. Gov. Dan Patrick.

Several Houston-area hospitals are having trouble making room for new patients because they can’t discharge patients to homes without power, Lt. Gov. Dan Patrick said Tuesday.

“In fact, we had a police officer who was shot in the leg, and when the mayor went down to see him the next day, he still didn’t have a room,” he said.

Beryl power outages crowd hospitals, delay new admissions

July 10, 2024

Patrick, who has served as acting governor amid the storm, said NRG Arena will be converted into a temporary medical step-down facility to free up space in local hospitals. It will have 250 beds available.

Texas Division of Emergency Management Chief Nim Kidd said hospitals, physicians and patients will decide who goes to NRG Arena. Any of the regional hospitals can send a patient to the arena, as most of them are in a crisis, he said.

Millions of Texans are still without power after Hurricane Beryl caused regionwide power outages. Kidd said it was in patients’ best interest not to go back to their homes if they don’t have power and they can’t keep their medications refrigerated.

Kidd has also ordered 25 additional ambulances to come to Houston and assist this week.

“The City of Houston told us they had an ambulance shortage because all of their ambulances were in the emergency department waiting to offload patients,” he said. “Some had been sitting there for three-plus hours.”

This isn’t the first time the arena in Houston has been used during a crisis. In 2005, a medical facility was established in what was then known as the Astrodome to treat and shelter Hurricane Katrina evacuees.

— Stephen Simpson

Hurricane Beryl death toll rises to 10

Texas Division of Emergency Management Chief Tim Kidd, left, listens to Acting Governor Dan Patrick answer questions on Monday, July 8, 2024, at the State Operations Center, in Austin. Acting Governor Dan Patrick, Texas Division of Emergency Management Chief Tim Kidd and Chair of the State Utility Commission Thomas Gleeson spoke on the state’s preparations for Hurricane Beryl, noting the current damage estimates and how the storm is predicted to progress.

Hurricane Beryl, which brought fierce winds and heavy rains to a large portion of southeastern Texas, killed at least 10 people, according to state and local authorities.

In Harris County, two people waiting out the storm in their homes were killed in separate instances when trees fell on their residences. An Atascocita Fire Department spokesperson said that in the first instance, two people were in a residence when a tree fell, killing one and injuring the other. The second instance saw a 74-year-old grandmother die after a tree fell on her bedroom, according to Harris County Judge Lina Hidalgo.

Lt. Gov. Dan Patrick announced another person, a city of Houston employee, died from drowning in a flooded underpass on July 8. Acting Houston Police Department Chief Larry Satterwhite identified the man in a social media post as 54-year-old HPD information security officer Russell Richardson.

The Morales family works to unclog storm drains iacross the street from their house in Robindell during the aftermath of Hurricane Beryl on Monday, July 8, 2024, in Houston.

Tropical Storm Beryl: How to get help and help Texans

Updated: July 9, 2024

Harris County also reported two deaths from carbon monoxide poisoning during Beryl, Texas Division of Emergency Management Chief Nim Kidd said in a July 9 news conference. Kidd said that during the power outages, people run generators in unsafe places — like in a garage or near windows — allowing carbon monoxide to pool indoors. This can lead to asphyxiation.

In Montgomery County, two died inside a tent in a wooded area, according to a news release from the county’s emergency management office. No additional details surrounding their death were available. A third person, a man in his 40s, died in Montgomery County after a tree fell on him while he was on his tractor, the news release said.

In Galveston County, John Florence, an investigator with the county's Medical Examiner confirmed that 71 year-old Judith Greet died at Crystal Beach, a community in the Bolivar Peninsula. Greet was on oxygen for chronic obstructive pulmonary disease, a lung disease that blocks airflow and makes it difficult to breathe. When the hurricane knocked out power in her RV home, Greet’s oxygen machine ran out of battery and she died.

In Matagorda County, where thousands are still without power , county officials reported that one person died from heat.

The Houston Chronicle reported that a tenth person died in a house fire caused by lightning. Houston fire officials told The Texas Tribune that the cause is under investigation.

— Pooja Salhotra, Stephen Simpson, Dante Motley and Alejandra Martinez

Power restoration could take days and summer temperatures are rising

The Ha Family enjoys playing games together at Trini Mendenhall Community Cente, which is being offered as a cooling center, in Houston, on Tuesday, July 9, 2024.

Millions of Texans are heading into a third summer day without power after Hurricane Beryl wreaked havoc through several counties — including the state’s most populous one — and temperatures rose dangerously into the 90s. The heat index is projected to push past 100 degrees in some areas, compounding the risk for an already battered and worn-out area.

Power companies have deployed thousands of workers to restore power while state and local officials navigate residents’ frustrations at what’s becoming routine in Texas: massive power outages after winter storms, thunderstorms, tornadoes or hurricanes.

Electric workers gather supplies to provide support with major power outages after Hurricane Beryl in Houston, on Wednesday, July 10, 2024.

Millions of Texans face third day without power in summer heat

Updated: July 10, 2024

As of 6:22 p.m. Tuesday, 1.9 million electricity customers concentrated in the southeastern corner of the state that bore the brunt of Beryl’s fierce winds still didn’t have electricity. Power companies and elected officials said it could be days before everyone has electricity again, meaning people without air conditioning would have to figure out how to cope with the heat.

“The power system is a life saving critical infrastructure — it’s the difference between life and death,” said Costa Samaras, a professor of civil and environmental engineering at Carnegie Mellon University. “The era of nobody could have foreseen these conditions is over.”

Utility officials and state leaders have said it will likely take days to get everyone’s electricity back on — and temperatures are projected to rise steadily over the next week, National Weather Service Meteorologist Ryan Knapp said.

Temperatures in the 80s and 90s can create unsafe conditions for high-risk individuals, especially in a home with no power, and finding ways to keep cool will be paramount, he said.

“The upper 80s can obviously heat the inside of the home pretty quickly,” Knapp said.

— Pooja Salhotra, Jess Huff, Emily Foxhall and Kayla Gao

Federal disaster declaration approved, Patrick says

Texas Lt. Gov. Dan Patrick said President Joe Biden approved a Federal Emergency Disaster Declaration to aid Texans in the recovery from Hurricane Beryl. Following a phone call with Biden Tuesday, Patrick stated that he requested FEMA assistance to cover costs for debris removal and emergency protective measures.

“We are appreciative that the federal government will step in and they will pick up most of the cost as we go through recovery of the storm,” Patrick said at a Tuesday press briefing.

President Joe Biden gives remarks during a visit to Brownsville on Thursday, Feb. 29, 2024.

Biden says Texas officials delayed request for Beryl federal aid

Once the declaration is finalized and issued, the state’s homeowners and business will be able to access loans and grants to help with Beryl-related recovery costs. FEMA’s public assistance program is divided into categories. Part A covers the costs of debris removal, while part B covers emergency protective measures like medical care, transportation and evacuation. Patrick said the federal government would be covering “most of the cost” associated with storm recovery.

The declaration includes 121 impacted counties, Texas Division of Emergency Management Chief Nim Kidd said. Those counties include Brazoria, Galveston and Harris.

Kidd urged residents to adhere to local government regulations if they start doing their own debris cleanup.

Debris will need to be separated into three categories. Vegetative debris includes leaves and plants; construction and demolition debris includes building materials; appliances and white goods are another category.

“Please don’t put it all into one pile,” Kidd said. “It only slows the recovery process.”

On Monday, Biden spoke with Houston Mayor John Whitmire and said his administration is committed to supporting Texas, a White House spokesperson said.

“The U.S. Coast Guard and FEMA are on the ground and stand ready to support local response efforts,” the spokesperson said. “They will remain with the people of Texas every step of the way.”

–Alejandra Martinez and Pooja Salhotra

Texans begin to assess damage and plan clean-up efforts after bruising storm

Mikhail Kochukov surveys a tree that fell away from his house after strong winds caused by Hurricane Beryl on Monday, July 8, 2024, in Houston.

Hurricane Beryl plowed through the Houston region Monday and, according to local meteorologist Matt Lanza, keeping up hurricane strength until it got halfway across town. Only in the afternoon would the winds die down completely, allowing people to emerge to follow a routine many know well: assess the damage, check on others, clean up and wait for the power to return.

The storm jolted people awake as its winds roared, blowing at 90 miles per hour, pushing tree branches at windows and ripping shingles from rooftops. Ten to 15 inches of rain pounded homes, according to Houston Mayor John Whitmire.

Two sisters watch flooded Whiteoak Bayou waters flow next to downtown Houston on Monday, July 8, 2024. Rains from Hurricane Beryl overflowed the bayou but were not as significant as Hurricane Harvey.

“Just my luck”: Houston begins clean up after Beryl rips through Gulf Coast

July 9, 2024

The wind sounded to 31-year-old Elizabeth Alvarez in Houston like someone screaming. The mother of six woke up at 4 a.m., scared, and didn’t go back to sleep. She thought her window might break. She lost power and — hour by hour — more Houstonians did too, their air conditioning and refrigerated food going along with it.

Later, Alvarez would drag her pet birds in their cages onto her porch to feel the cooler air, while neighbors grilled corn and pork and others kicked a soccer ball. She would clutch a handheld, battery-powered fan, that was turned off to save for when she needed it.

Across the region, fences toppled. Awnings ripped from restaurants. Signs soared away from businesses. Traffic lights twisted askew. A local television station lost power and went off the air. Lt. Gov. Dan Patrick said on The Weather Channel, “Really, Houston is getting the brunt of the wind and the rain.”

The pops of transformers echoed. Entire trees crashed down.

And the damage pushed on from there, as Beryl uprooted trees and downed power lines into southeast Texas. In Liberty, a beloved pecan tree outside the historic courthouse was uprooted early on Monday, according to Bluebonnet News . The tree served as a meeting place for generations of residents.

“The rebuild is going to be significant. There was real damage. But the good news is for Houston, this ain’t our first rodeo,” U.S. Sen. Ted Cruz said at a Monday evening press conference.

— Emily Foxhall

How to prevent carbon monoxide poisoning from generators during power outages

When electrical power is knocked out after a hurricane, carbon monoxide poisoning from improperly used gas-powered generators is especially dangerous. The odorless, colorless gas is called an “invisible killer.” Early symptoms can include headache, dizziness, weakness and nausea, similar to the flu. To stay safe, experts recommend never connecting a generator directly to your home’s wiring, ensuring it's properly grounded, and always operate it outdoors away from windows and vents.

— Alejandra Martinez

What should I do after a hurricane hits?

Stay away from flood waters and damaged power lines. Don’t enter damaged buildings. Take photos and document damages to your home or property. Residents are also encouraged to document their storm damages and losses through a state-run online survey to help state officials understand the extent of the damages.

Organizations like the American Red Cross, Salvation Army and local volunteer organizations can help you find food, shelter and supplies, as well as even assist you with clean-up efforts.

Residents’ homes and possessions are submerged in floodwater following significant rainstorms in Coldspring, Texas, US, on Saturday May 4, 2024.

How to navigate FEMA during this year’s hurricane season

Government and community resources may be available to help with recovery. Disaster declarations from the governor and president may free up federal funds for recovery assistance from the Federal Emergency Management Agency . People cannot receive disaster aid and insurance assistance for the same damages, so insured Texans should file claims through their existing policies before applying for FEMA assistance.

— Maria Probert Hermosillo and Pooja Salhotra

Tornadoes pop up in East Texas after Beryl downgraded to a Tropical Storm

After downing trees and power lines across the Greater Houston area, Hurricane Beryl has been downgraded to a Tropical Storm, meaning wind speeds have lowered below 75 miles per hour.

Maximum sustained winds have decreased to about 60 miles per hour, a 1 p.m. advisory from the National Hurricane Center. Beryl is headed northeastward at about 14 miles per hour and is expected to increase in speed as it continues to move through East Texas, where some local officials asked residents to shelter in place.

The National Weather Service out of Shreveport is tracking three confirmed tornadoes on radar, two in Texas and the third in Louisiana. The first is south of Joaquin, which is north of Lufkin and near the Louisiana border, the second is north of Timpson, which is also near the border.

Forecasters urged Texans to use caution amid downed power lines and warned that improper generator use can cause carbon monoxide poisoning.

On the Texas coastline, a storm surge warning is still in effect north of San Luis Pass to Sabine Pass, an area that includes Galveston Bay. The tropical storm warning was discontinued from Port O’Conner to San Luis Pass.

The Coastal Bend, including areas like Corpus Christi, was spared from the brunt of the storm.

— Pooja Salhotra and Jess Huff

High winds persist into East Texas, prompting requests for residents to shelter in place

High winds have made their way north from the Texas coast into East Texas and counties have begun to ask residents to shelter in place as a way to keep emergency vehicles off the roads as well.

The storm kept up its momentum as a Category 1 hurricane all the way to Interstate 10, surprising meteorologist Matt Lanza at Space City Weather.

“The widespread wind gusts of 75 to 85 mph so far inland was really unnerving,” he wrote in an updated blog post.

Residents of San Jacinto, Liberty, Hardin and Tyler counties have been encouraged to shelter in place, especially to stay off the roads in an effort to also keep emergency vehicles off the road.

News outlets and emergency management teams throughout the region have reported downed power lines and trees throughout the region.

The National Weather Service issued a tornado watch until 10 p.m. Monday for counties between Montgomery and Texarkana counties, as well as Northwest and North Central Louisiana and Southern Arkansas. A wind advisory is in effect until Tuesday morning.

— Jess Huff

Storm passes over Lake Livingston Dam, which was inundated with rain in April

In Polk County, which is home to the Lake Livingston Dam, the storm began to peak around 11 a.m. with the worst of it located over the dam, according to Polk County Emergency Management. High winds are still top of mind, even as Beryl has been downgraded to a tropical storm.

The dam, which recently reported potential failures, was releasing 21,175 cubic feet of water per second as of 11 a.m. and the lake level is at 130.93 feet above sea level.

This is significantly less than the several hundred thousand cubic feet of water released in April, when storms required several hundred thousand cubic feet of water per second to be released for multiple days in a row.

The Trinity River Authority, in conjunction with the Federal Aviation Authority, initiated a temporary flight restriction over the dam as the authority also began construction to mitigate potential failures early Monday.

Houston officials ask residents to remain off roads as damage assessment begins

A truck drives through water and downed branches from Hurricane Beryl on Monday, July 8, 2024, in Houston.

Downed tree limbs and power lines, flooded streets, and power outages have Houston officials pleading with residents to stay home.

Houston mayor John Whitmire held a news conference Monday detailing the dire situation the city finds itself in as it took the brunt of Hurricane Beryl.

“We are dealing with a very serious amount of water. Around 10 inches of rain across the city and 90-mile-per-hour winds and hurricane conditions,” Whitmire said. “Please, Houstonians, shelter in place. We are in emergency and rescue mode.”

Whitmire said over 700,000 Houston electricity customers are currently without power, and the region’s two major airports are not open. However, city officials should better understand the situation now that the storm is moving away.

“We are experiencing the dirty side of a dirty storm,” Whitmire said.

The storm's sustained winds were still at 70 miles per hour as it moved from the Gulf Coast into the Houston area. The National Hurricane Center said that up to 10 inches of rain could fall in some places — and some isolated areas of the state may receive 15 inches. Some areas of Houston have already received nearly 10 inches of rainfall, according to data from the Harris County Flood Control District. On Monday morning, local officials in the Houston area said the storm had downed trees and caused street flooding. At least two people died when trees fell onto their residences.

In Rosenberg, a city 35 miles southwest of Houston, a downed tree hit a high water rescue vehicle returning from a rescue, police said on X . Officials there also urged residents to stay off roadways.

Houston Fire Department Chief Samuel Pena underscored the strain on resources due to the high demand for high-water rescues and live wire calls. These are currently the primary service requests, consuming a significant portion of their resources, and they have already helped eight people in high-water rescues.

“Earlier today, we saw a video of a high-water rescue , and you can see how resource-intensive those call types are. We can’t keep using those resources. Please be cautious and heed the warnings,” Pena said.

— Stephen Simpson, Pooja Salhotra and Emily Foxhall

Refineries begin reporting storm-related air pollution

Some refineries along the Texas coast have shut down due to Hurricane Beryl and are self-reporting instances of “unintentional” emissions.

In one instance, Freeport LNG, a large natural gas terminal on the coast of Brazoria County, reported releases of over 8,000 pounds of unplanned air pollution on Sunday. Pollutants included ethylene , a chemical with a faint sweet and musky odor, that can cause headache, dizziness, fatigue, and lightheadedness if people are exposed to it in large amounts overtime.

In their report to the state, the company wrote the facility was proactively shutting down before the hurricane winds caused power outages.

“[The shutdown] resulted in a subsequent unavoidable venting,” the report said.

Flaring, a process for burning unwanted gas to relieve pressure or clear pipes, usually happens before or during extreme weather events, said Luke Metzger, executive director of the nonprofit Environment Texas.

The Marathon Galveston Bay Refinery in Texas City, along the Houston Ship Channel, tweeted the facility was flaring Monday morning due to a brief power disruption during the storm. No report has been submitted to the state yet.

Metzger said Beryl’s pollution events are low compared to Hurricane Harvey’s 8.3 million pounds of air pollution reported to the state, but suspects more facilities will submit reports after the storm’s passing.

“I was surprised looking at the pollution reports that there has been relatively little pollution reported,” Metzger said. “That’s either good news because the storm had less of an impact [on refineries] or facilities [operators] have learned their lesson.”

Beryl makes landfall in Texas as Category 1 hurricane

Hurricane Beryl made landfall near Matagorda around 4 a.m. Monday as a Category 1 Hurricane, according to the National Hurricane Center. The storm strengthened through Sunday evening and had maximum sustained winds of 80 miles per hour when it came ashore. A 5 a.m. advisory from the National Hurricane Center warned about life-threatening storm surge and inland flooding Monday.

Hundreds of thousands of Texans are without power , including many in coastline counties such as Brazoria and Matagorda, according to PowerOutage.us. The full scope of the storm's damage is not yet clear — and it could cause more Monday as it moves northeast through the state.

The hurricane center said the coast was experiencing life-threatening storm surge. It also warned of flash floods throughout the southeastern portion of the state as the storm continues moving inland, bringing five to 10 inches of rain to some areas — or up to 15 inches in some isolated places.

Category 1 storms primarily damage unanchored mobile homes, shrubbery and trees. They can also do extensive damage to electricity lines and cause power outages that last several days.

Disclosure: CenterPoint Energy has been a financial supporter of The Texas Tribune, a nonprofit, nonpartisan news organization that is funded in part by donations from members, foundations and corporate sponsors. Financial supporters play no role in the Tribune's journalism. Find a complete list of them here .

Stephen Simpson , Maria Probert Hermosillo , Berenice Garcia , Kayla Guo and Dante Motley contributed to this report.

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Information about the authors

Pooja Salhotra

General assignment reporter.

[email protected]

@PoojaSalhotra

Alejandra Martinez

Environmental reporter.

[email protected]

@alereports

Emily Foxhall

Climate reporter.

[email protected]

East Texas Reporter

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@JessHuff16

Contributors

Stephen Simpson

Mental health reporter.

[email protected]

@Steve55Simpson

Maria Probert Hermosillo

Berenice Garcia

Rio grande valley reporter.

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@berenice__g

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Dante Motley

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