Here's some writing on "Song for a Dark Girl" by Langston Hughes

First, the actual poem:

Song for a Dark Girl by Langston Hughes

Way Down South in Dixie
(Break the heart of me)
They hung my black young lover
To a crossroads tree.

Way Down South in Dixie
(Bruised body high in air)
I asked the white Lord Jesus
What was the use of prayer.

Way Down South in Dixie
(Break the heart of me)
Love is a naked shadow
On a gnarled and naked tree.

"Song for a Dark Girl" by Langston Hughes is about the plight of African Americans in the South. The narrator, a young woman, is talking about how the white men lynched her lover and how Jesus is "white" and can't help her. This is a sad, morose tale that happens to be full of irony. One ironic thing in this poem is the fact that it's really only the white people creating the image that Jesus is white that makes people think that. In reality, he wasn't, as he was born in what is today the Middle East. I think that another ironic thing is that they 'nailed her black young lover to a crossroads tree'. For me, the word 'crossroads' means that two roads (or something a road is representing) are intersecting and converging. However, in this poem, I believe that it represents the fact that the two roads (or whites and slaves) could not merge; they could not intersect. It is ironic that they hung him there because it kind of symbolizes an obstacle in the path to desegregation and the intersecting and merging of the two races. The song Hughes incorporated in the poem is ironic, as well. "Way down south in Dixie" is something that racist whites would sing, and Hughes put it in his poem about the horrible injustices and crimes the African Americans had to go through. This poem is a sad reminder of the challenges and prejudices of the past and the challenges and prejudices we have yet to overcome.