ABSTRACT
This chapter draws attention to the lack of parks and nature recreation amenities during the 1920s and 1930s in predominantly African American city neighborhoods. It focuses on Langston Hughes’s political poetry, specifically his blues-inflected ballad “Park Bench.” Through the figure of the tramp/vagrant/bum, the poem voices a protest against inequality mapped into city space. Asserting that access to nature should be a fundamental condition of a democratic society, the poem situates the park bench as a charged site for public dialogue. The chapter argues that this poem and other poetry by Hughes join a constellation of black activist work in the United States and abroad which sought to address the customary and statutory exclusion of black Americans from parks, playgrounds, pools, and beaches.
