“One Friday Morning” of Langston Hughes

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Langston Hughes was a very well-known American author from Kansas throughout the 20th century. He also attended schools in Topeka and Lawrence. At this time, racial tension was a subject of colossal weight in society. Thus, Hughes felt the need to write stories that would shed light on the ignored racial injustice and segregation at the time.

One instance in which, he displays such concern was when he wrote the story entitled One Friday Morning.

The story took a place in George Washington High where Nancy, a young colored girl excelled in the art of painting, It did not take time for her teacher, Miss Dietrich to take notice of Nancy's perfect talent in the art of painting. As a result, Miss Dietrich facilitated Nancy in entering the scholarship contest, which she won unknowingly. One day, Miss Oshay, the principal of Washington High called Nancy Lee in her office it was raining that day. Nancy was had skeptical, little did she know that she has won the art scholarship. During the same month, Miss Osha called Nancy and informed her that the people took the prize away from Nancy after knowing that she was a black.

This was evidence that racial discrimination was a matter of serious concern, and that was the idea that Hughes was trying to brought. 

In One Friday Morning, Hughes clearly narrates Nancy's point of view of the situation as a struggling biohack child who is block by the walls of racial tension. By doing so, Hughes showed empathy by depicting the unfair treatment of African American in the 20th century. This empathetic emotion can be seen in the scene in which Hughes go from Nancy (being happy after cow) being told that she won the prize, to Nancy being sad because the commuter takes the prize away. Moreover, refusing to give Nancy the scholarship art contest prize because of her skin color, evokes a theme of racial inequality as well as a sad recurring tone throughout the lines of Hughes' writing.

Hughes story could be contained in the event that Nancy Lee, an African American girl, had been denied the art scholarship contest prize, after she won it. This was due to the fact that Nancy Lee was a person of color. The conflict of that story resides in the fight for racial equality.

Although Nancy was denied ofthe prize she won because of racism, Nancy and her art teacher Miss O'Shay was however willing to speak up about it. In doing so, the plot of Nancy Lee's story evolves into a story with a theme anchored in equality for all. The first step in establishing that evolution was Nancy's relationship with her art teacher Dietrich who helped her improve her painting. The second step involves the triumph of Nancy, for she has won a prize, and the third is the refusal of her prize due to the opposing forces of racism. The refusal of the prize was the climatic event that triggered Nancy Lee to speak out against racism. Hence, the eventual action of Nancy to fight against racism along with Miss O' Shay constitutes the resolution of the story.

The author effectively communicated the theme of the story by narrating the story in a sequential manner. The grammar was on point, and the story flew naturally from the premise. It is to be noted that the story was structured in a way that conveys a lot of emotion. Ideas are expressed in complete sentences and are paraphrased correctly when needed, The text was well typed and there was no grammatical errors, bad punctuation and autograph.

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"One Friday Morning" Of Langston Hughes. (2021, May 22). Retrieved April 26, 2024 , from
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