Poet and writer Langston Hughes became one of the most visible proponents for African American civil rights prior to Martin Luther King, Jr. A major figure of the Harlem Renaissance, his writings regularly addressed important social issues. In a 1926 essay entitled "The Negro Artist and the Racial Mountain" published in the Nation, Hughes asserted, "We younger Negro artists now intend to express our individual dark-skinned selves without fear or shame. . . .We build our temples for tomorrow, as strong as we know how, and we stand on the top of the mountain, free within ourselves."

Composed when Langston Hughes was seventeen years old, dedicated to W. E. B. Du Bois, and published in The Crisis in 1921, "The Negro Speaks of Rivers" remains one of the poet’s best known works. Hughes often allowed his poems to be reworked into musical form, especially by two of his friends, the composers Margaret Bonds and Howard Swanson.