♪ ♪ ♪ ♪ (playing jazz tune) BILL CLINTON: What happens to a dream deferred?

What happens to a dream deferred?

What happens to a dream deferred?

What happens to a dream deferred?

CLINTON: What happens to a dream deferred?

Does it dry up like a raisin in the sun?

Or fester like a sore-- and then run?

Does it stink like rotten meat?

Or crust and sugar over, like a syrupy sweet?

Maybe it just sags like a heavy load.

Or does it explode?

ELISA NEW: When, in 1951, Langston Hughes published his book-length jazz poem "Montage of a Dream Deferred," it had been 30 years since he'd arrived in Harlem from Joplin, Missouri.

1920s Harlem was a capital of black culture, young with possibility.

From Harlem, journalists and poets, painters and sculptors, musicians, actors, and activists broadcast their confidence in the future in print and song and spectacle.

But 30 years later, in a seven-line poem that has come to be known as "Harlem," Hughes tells of hopes still unrealized, of souls parched.

"What happens to a dream deferred?"

That's where we started when I met with President Bill Clinton in his offices in Harlem to discuss a poem he'd chosen for us to read together.

Have you ever wondered about the word "deferred"?

Seems to me such a formal word.

- No, I think it's the perfect word for him, because what he's saying is, it didn't go away, the dream didn't die.

You just kept putting it off, or it was put off by circumstances beyond your control.

NEW: And that's where I started, too, with some students at the Harlem Children's Zone Promise Academy.

So, Elijah, what does "deferred" mean?

- Deferred is, like, to put on hold.

Like, you're going to keep it away for a little bit of time, but you might come back into, like, in a little while in your life.

Like, your dream, like, you can't make it to your dream, even though you want to, but things are in the way of it, or just, just not meant to be.

I have made every single high school reunion, and I've noticed that the classmates I had who are happy with their lives have not lived uneventful lives.

That is, many of them have had family problems or businesses failed, all kinds of things happen, but they just kept going.

- Mm-hmm.

The ones that were most unhappy, that seemed to age the most, were the ones who never looked themselves in the eye and said, "What do I want to do with my life?"

- Go for it, do it.

- And were willing to risk failure to do it.

So I think there's a personal message.

And I was wondering about the imagery of the poem.

I mean, it doesn't just describe people who have let their lives go by, precisely.

It's more visceral, more physical than that.

- Yeah, you can feel it when you read this.

(playing jazzy tune) NEW: After speaking to the president, I asked the jazz pianist and composer Herbie Hancock if he would improvise some music to Hughes' poem, and talk to me about what the poem says to him.

(notes fading) HANCOCK: What happens to a dream deferred?

The first sentence, the first question has a bit of sadness attached to it.

It's a dream deferred.

I mean, a dream is, like, a goal, what you reach for, you know?

What you aspire to, you know?

NEW: And you want to go for it.

- And you want to go for it.

"Deferred" means it's been deflected some kind of way.

- Yeah.

- Which is a disappointment, so there's disappointment involved.

And this is Langston Hughes, the title is "Harlem."

(playing rapid notes) (playing rippling notes) CLINTON: And then, because Langston Hughes was in Harlem, and because he was well aware of the continuing challenges of African-Americans, and of poor people generally, he knew that there was a social dimension to dreams deferred, that if you deferred dreams for a whole class of people, a definable group, that in the end it could compromise everybody else's dreams, too.

NEW: Mm-hmm.

NEW: His ashes are buried in a place of honor: beneath the lobby of Harlem's Schomburg Center for Research in Black Culture.

SONIA SANCHEZ: ♪ I woke up this morning ♪ ♪ With my eyes on Langston ♪ ♪ I say, woke up this morning with my eyes on Langston ♪ ♪ Woke up this morning with my eyes on Langston ♪ ♪ Gonna live, gonna love, gonna... ♪ NEW: I asked the poet Sonia Sanchez to read from her poem about Langston Hughes, and to tell me about the time she met him.

SANCHEZ: When I was very young, I went to see Langston Hughes read in Harlem.

I had to have been about 12 or 13, and I got in line, and I got up in front of him, and he said, "Yes?"

You know, and I said, "Uh, uh, uh..." (laughing): I'm a stutterer.

"Uh, uh, uh, uh... thank you."

You know, and I extended my hand and he shook it, and that was it.

And I thought, as I walked away, "Oh, why didn't you say, 'I write poetry, I love poetry, I love your poetry,' all those things?"

But I was actually dumbfounded.

And you know why?

Sometimes we like poets, but people loved Langston, because they knew that they would hear the truth.

They knew that he would talk about their lives with empathy, with sympathy, with love, with respect.

They knew that he would say, simply, "Whatever you have experienced, I, too, have experienced.

"I will chronicle you, I will tell your story here in a place called Harlem."

And he made Harlem go far beyond this Harlem, the Harlems of the world, and that's why I loved him so much.

HANCOCK: It was written in the '50s, and so this particular time period, discrimination against black people was much more extreme, but it still exists in Harlem today.

And then, in, you know, black neighborhoods throughout the United States, you know, almost no matter what... - Where dreams are... Where dreams are being deferred.

- Deferred, yeah.

'Cause it still ain't right.

(playing tune) What I felt from my reading of it was that blues is kind of the spirit of the poem.

SANCHEZ: What happens to a dream deferred?

Does it dry up like a raisin in the sun, or fester like a sore-- and then run?

Does it stink like rotten meat or crust and sugar over like a syrupy sweet?

Maybe it just sags like a heavy load.

Or does it explode?

(pounds high notes) (playing quickly descending notes, then intense low notes) CLINTON: Langston Hughes was heavily influenced by music, so there's a rhythm, there's a musical rhythm in this poetry.

It's a lot like jazz.

It's clearly one melody... - Yes.

- But there's some ad-libbing, some improvisation as you go along.

(quick notes and low chords playing) So the lines rhyme.

It's a different rhyming scheme, but it's enough to remind you that it's a poem, just like it'd be enough to remind you that it was a jazz song.

(jazzy tune playing over low chords) SANCHEZ: This whole piece, that, when you do it, you hear the jazz and blues, you know?

So you have to then take your mouth and make your tongue begin and respond.

What happens to a dream deferred?

(scat singing) Does it dry up like a raisin in the sun?

Or fester like a sore, sore, sore, sore, sore, sore.

♪ And then run, run, run, run, run.

♪ Does it stink like rotten meat or crust and sugar over like a syrupy sweet... ♪ Sweet, sweet, sweet, sweet?

♪ Maybe it just sags like a heavy ♪ load, load, load, load, load, load.

♪ ♪ Or does it explode?

♪ (rumbles in throat) (laughing) - He gives you... - Well, you just sang this all as bebop, right?

With some scat.

- Yeah.

I hear in "maybe it just sags like a heavy load" an older country blues.

(Hancock's tune playing) CLINTON: An enormous number of African-Americans had roots in the South, picking cotton, or doing some other kind of manual labor.

Which didn't change much after slavery was abolished.

HANCOCK: The roots of the blues, you know, from the South, black people that migrated from the South kind of went through Chicago, first, because of the Mississippi River.

You talked about the migration and, you know, I think you're referring to the Great Migration.

- Yes.

- You know, coming up the Mississippi River, and I hear that migration in this poem, too.

I hear a little bit of the South.

But that's in every black neighborhood.

There's a bit of that in every black neighborhood.

(playing tune) SANCHEZ: The joy about a poem, my dear sister, is that, I always say, it's not just what is written and what is read out loud, but the silences.

The first line is, "What happens to a dream deferred?"

Then, there's a big space.

In poetry, you know, you have, like, a little space, but there's this big space, which means that, if you're going to answer it, you got to come up with some answers, right?

Because, you know, this is no little question, you know.

And so, when you teach it, you go, "What happens to a dream deferred?"

And you look up at the students, right?

And they look up at you, like, "Whoa," you know, "What does happen to a dream deferred?"

CLINTON: Does it dry up like a raisin in the sun?

GIRL: It's, like, the raisin is the dream, and the sun is, like, taking the dream away from it.

NEW: Mm-hmm-- how does the sun take a dream away?

- By drying up the raisin.

When a raisin dries up, it gets, probably smaller.

It began as a grape, but as it was being deferred, it became a raisin over time, just sitting out in the sun, and it was maybe forgotten.

SANCHEZ: You know, raisins were very interesting things for people like my generation, you know, growing up.

They were these simple little things that you could take to school with you.

That was your dessert, that little tiny box of raisins, you know?

I hated raisins after a point, you know.

I really did.

It took me years to adjust to eat raisins again because I had so many bloody raisins.

They were cheap, it was cheap food.

- You pointed out that raisins are the food of poverty.

- Yeah, but also, it's a visual thing, too.

- Yes.

- It is the drying up of that grape, and it, you know, it is that drying up of that black face, right there, that raisin... - That wizened... - Yeah, so, it really is very much an image of blacks that, you know, that raisin... - Who are aged and dry.

- That's right, that's right, yeah.

And dried up, at some point.

CLINTON: Does it dry up like a raisin in the sun, or fester like a sore-- and then run?

SANCHEZ: You have to ask the question: why so close, the raisin and sore?

Because that raisin can look like a sore.

I think when a sore festers, it's, like...

It can only fester if it has been neglected or if it wasn't treated for.

And I think that's really what happens to the dream if it's delayed and you don't keep on trying to pursue the dream.

If you don't take care of it, it starts to become ugly and leaves a scar.

CLINTON: Does it stink like rotten meat?

I wondered, when I was reading this all over again, whether young people would catch the imagery as easily as somebody my age who grew up in a Southern town would.

You know, it's just...

It was so natural, it was so vivid, you know, you immediately know exactly what he's talking about.

Does it stink like rotten meat?

I can still remember when refrigerators were called "ice boxes" because they were cooled with big blocks of ice.

My grandfather, when I was a little boy, made a living carrying those heavy blocks of ice on his back to stick in ice boxes.

And there was... rotten meat was not a rare thing.

- And it's part of the world of poverty, right?

- Yeah.

- The very imagery here that we're given in a simile.

The dream is like rotten meat that stinks, and yet, an actual physical world of meat that's gone bad is conjured here.

I grew up in Harlem, I saw a lot of rotten meat along the way.

It wasn't-- it didn't look rotten.

It was stuck full of red dye, you know, that stuff to make it look good?

A rotten meat gets, like-- it decays over time, so, like, if you're holding onto a dream for a long time, you start to give up and believe you can't accomplish that dream.

It stinks if it's a dream deferred, that stinks.

Wow, that just stinks.

Oh, I didn't even think of that.

- Yeah.

- You know, that it just, it refers to the idiomatic or the slang, "That stinks."

- Yeah, exactly.

- That stinks.

- And we didn't say anything about the crusting and sugar sweet, like, what that means.

CLINTON: Does it stink like rotten meat, or crust and sugar over-- like a syrupy sweet?

For Langston Hughes, "sweet" was a noun, it could be, you know, a piece of cake, a piece of pie.

So he wasn't using this... We're not getting two adjectives there.

No, no, that's a noun for him.

- I see, "Like a syrupy sweet."

- It's a sweet.

That's, like, sugarcoating it, you know.

Doesn't feel good, but, you know, put on your...

Put on your smile, anyway, even though you feel like crap.

It's an over-sweetness, it's false sweetness.

It isn't helped that it comes right after, "Does it stink like rotten meat?"

- Oh, right, right, it's, like, the opposite.

But it also comes back to the raisin.

- Mm-hmm.

- One of the reasons why I didn't like the raisin, it was so bloody sweet.

It was so much concentration of sugar, there, and you really, at some point, you know, that is a dangerous thing to take in all that sugar.

NEW: Maybe it just sags like a heavy load.

CLINTON: Maybe it just sags like a heavy load.

Hughes was talking about carrying disappointment with you.

And, do you just carry it till you die, like a heavy load?

NEW: When you carry a heavy load for the first half-hour, it feels one way.

What about when you've carried it for another half an hour, and another half an hour?

- It gets heavier and heavier each time you walk.

When I hear, when he says, "Like a heavy load," I hear that your dream is too much on you and you really want to just give up.

I think of it as, like, a burden.

Your dream is like a burden that sags like a heavy load.

HANCOCK: We have "does it," "or does it," then there's a break.

So that automatically emphasizes what's going to be said next.

It's not a desert anymore.

Then it's, "Maybe it just sags like a heavy load."

As though that's a conclusion.

Is it this?

Is it this?

Is it this?

Maybe it's just this.

And then another idea appeared.

There could be another conclusion.

- And a more dangerous one, perhaps.

- That's... yeah.

- Maybe you weren't thinking about this.

You thought it would just get heavier and heavier and heavier.

And it has some of the power of a warning.

Yeah, yeah, yeah-- maybe it's worse than that.

(laughs) - Right, maybe it's worse than sagging like a heavy load.

- Worse than sagging like a heavy load.

Or maybe it will sag like a heavy load for only so long before... significant pause.

CLINTON: Or does it explode?

SANCHEZ: Or does it explode?

GIRL: Or does it explode?

GIRL: Or does it explode?

BOY: Or does it explode?

(playing tune) HANCOCK: When it says, "Or does it explode?

", there's anger.

The other statements are almost resigning oneself to the sadness.

The anger is a reaction to it.

(playing tune) It is much more than these few lines that are here, and it's more, much more of, "Does it explode," you know?

You know, it's more than just that, you know?

Because you and I understand if a dream is deferred, it explodes sometimes immediately, but also, it's a slow burn, quite often, too.

- Tick, tick, tick... - It's, like, tick-tock, that's right, yeah.

And it, maybe it will be, you know, years later, maybe it will be in many kinds of ways.

CLINTON: Langston Hughes sees it as both personal and a social matter.

The beginning you could read either way.

In the end, there's no ambiguity at all.

In the end, he's saying these people's dreams are deferred because of things other people did to keep them from pursuing their dreams.

SANCHEZ: I grew up at 152nd Street in Harlem, and I used to babysit for a woman.

She got pregnant and her husband said, "We cannot afford another child, we have four."

This dream deferred is that at some point, you don't make enough money, so you cannot have that child.

And one day, when I come home from school, my stepmother says, "Miss Jones is dead."

And all the women gather, all the people gather in that building, you know, in order to prepare her, you know, to be taken out, whatever.

And, you know, and I think, this husband who had said to her, "We cannot afford another child," what really happens to a dream deferred?

What happened to that man, that husband, those four children?

The thing I remember-- those women gathering together.

I should never forget them coming up and down the stairs.

NEW: It allows us, as you've been saying, to think about the whole community.

Yeah, yeah.

- Part of this poem.

But also, is this about one person's experience in one place and about how different generations process their disappointment differently?

- Right, they do.

- And I wonder if we can see any of that in this poem.

GIRL: What happens to a dream deferred?

Does it dry up like a raisin in the sun?

NEW: Or fester like a sore-- and then run?

CLINTON: Does it stink like rotten meat?

Or crust and sugar over-- like a syrupy sweet?

BOY: Maybe it just sags like a heavy load.

HANCOCK: Or does it explode?

CLINTON: Imagine this poem being spoken by multiple speakers in a play.

- Yeah, I think so.

- Where a young person says, "What happens to a dream deferred?"

And then somebody says, "Does it dry up like a raisin in the sun?"

Someone else says, someone else says... You can imagine this-- it almost...

If it weren't naturally a series of one-liners spoken by different people, it's almost like... You could imagine a Greek chorus saying it.

I absolutely agree.

I also think it's almost as though the separate stanzas function as separate instruments.

(playing intense, pounding chords) (notes rippling down) Oh, I mean, we could talk hours, because at some point, you need to do a dirge with this, you know?

You need classical music behind it to read it, you know?

You need to have a violin, the jazz violin behind it, you know?

You need all of that behind reading this poem.

(playing light chords) SANCHEZ: The tragic thing about this poem is that it's not just situated in one little period.

For many of the African-Americans living in Harlem, it was generation after generation after generation after generation after generation.

Boom!

NEW: And it will change.

SANCHEZ: And it will change, right.

NEW: It will change every time you read it, with every performance, and that it's meant to be warm in that way, and changed by the human voice.

Exactly, exactly.

NEW: And community that receives it.

CLINTON: It's a fabulous poem.

NEW: It is a fabulous poem.

CLINTON: In a few lines, it captures the landscape of a person's mind and spirit.

It captures the experience... - Of a people.

- Of millions of people.

And it poses a question about what happens next.

(playing intense low chords and rapid repeated notes) CLINTON: What happens to a society if it organizes itself around making sure people's dreams are deferred?

(intense music continues) (playing pounding chords) (notes rippling) HANCOCK: What happens to a dream deferred?

Does it dry up like a raisin in the sun?

Or fester like a sore-- and then run?

SANCHEZ: Does it stink like rotten meat?

Or crust and sugar over, like a syrupy sweet?

CLINTON: Maybe it just sags like a heavy load.

(playing sets of three notes) Or does it explode?

(low, soft notes playing) (volume gradually increases) (plays final chord) ♪ ♪