Who wrote 'The Negro Speaks of Rivers'?

• A. Maya Angelou
• B. James Weldon Johnson
• C. Langston Hughes
• D. Claude McKay

Answer: (C)

Langston Hughes wrote this poem. It’s a defining piece of his early work, using rivers as a powerful image to tie Black history across continents to the present. The speaker claims intimate knowledge of rivers—the Euphrates, the Congo, the Nile, and the Mississippi—showing a long, enduring thread of Black civilization and experience. This combination of historical breadth, humble yet monumental voice, and focus on heritage is a hallmark of Hughes’s Harlem Renaissance-era poetry, making him the natural author of this piece.

The other poets listed are known for different works and themes, so this particular meditation on rivers and lineage fits Hughes’s voice and time, not theirs.