28 pages • 56 minutes read
One Friday Morning
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Themes
The Reality of Discrimination
Published 80 years after the Emancipation Proclamation legally ended slavery, “One Friday Morning” emphasizes the ongoing reality of racial discrimination in Hughes’s America. Hughes sets the stages by establishing the coming-of-age arc of his protagonist from innocence to experience. Raised in a loving and stable family, Nancy Lee has never questioned her racial identity. Her parents, to her, are Americans, “simple ordinary people who had worked hard and steadily,” proud of their racial identity, and proud of their country as well. Nancy Lee’s life exists far from the American South where her parents grew up. She attends one of the city’s largest high schools where she is one of the few Black students. She admits it seldom occurs to her that she is in fact a student of color. She excels on the basketball court; she adds her “soft, velvety” voice to the school’s choir; she earns high grades in her classes. Under the encouragement of her art teacher, she aspires to be a painter and explore the world through her own perspective..
Through Nancy Lee’s creative ambition, Hughes establishes the central tension of the story: As a talented and ambitious Black woman coming of age in an America still very much governed by institutionalized racism, how will Nancy Lee come to terms with that element of her reality? The loss of the scholarship brings Nancy face-to-face with the reality of discrimination. Nancy Lee struggles to understand the convoluted logic of the letter that outlines why the committee has decided to rescind her scholarship. The committee notes that it’s in Nancy Lee’s best interest not to attend the city’s art academy as there are no other students of color there. Nancy Lee begins to see that generations after the Civil War and geographically removed from the Jim Crow South, discrimination is a reality that she must actively confront to begin to break down its toxic impact.
The Resilience of the Human Spirit
The conclusion of Hughes’s story simultaneously reinforces the reality of racism in America and the resilience necessary to combat it—resilience, he suggests, that’s rooted in hope. After Nancy Lee receives the news that she’ll be denied the scholarship to the city’s prestigious art academy because of her race, she “[lifts] her head and smile[s]” (9). Nancy Lee doesn’t allow the overt racism of the committee to crush her spirit or ambition. Instead, she draws strength from the support of her family, her teachers, and her community. Hughes notes that she remains determined to fight the systemic racial oppression she faces through resilience. As Nancy Lee notes: “There’re schools in other cities. This won’t keep [her] down” (9).
Hughes’s story marries a grim indictment of American racism with a soaring affirmation of the indominable human spirit that will not be defeated. Using the vibrant, sunny April morning as backdrop, the closing scene affirms that nothing is ending for Nancy Lee. She remains determined to find her niche as an artist and realize her dream. It is springtime, a time of promise and hope, of renewal and affirmation. Nancy Lee’s life-journey is just beginning.
Hughes sets up Nancy Lee’s two influential authority figures, her assistant-principal and her art teacher, as opposing but complementary facets of the artistic process. From her art teacher, Nancy Lee learns how art can create a space apart from reality where everything is ordered, clean, and balanced—a private world of her own devising, her own creation. Thrive there, her art teacher recommends, find that space and make it yours, make it live. The assistant-principal, Miss O’Shay, teaches Nancy Lee that America is an ongoing experiment. She helps Nancy Lee distinguish between the reality of America and the promise of the American Dream, framing the latter as something both can dedicate their lives to making a reality. As Miss O’Shay asserts: “Those who deny you this scholarship do not know the meaning of the stars [on the flag]” (9).
The Importance of Activism
Crushed by the committee’s racist decision, Nancy Lee is forced to reckon with her disappointment, asking the question posed by “Harlem,” one of Hughes’s most anthologized and quoted works: What happens then to a dream deferred? The answer, the story’s resolution suggests, is activism.
Rather than centering the story’s conclusion on Nancy Lee’s personal resilience, Hughes’s ending highlights the ripple effect of the fight against racism. If Hughes had closed with Nancy Lee’s consoling herself that there would be other chances, other awards in other cities, and that this setback would not keep her down, her courage and determination would make the story a case study in bouncing back from disappointment—a testimony to the unsinkable human spirit even in the face of an outrageous inequity. Instead, as Nancy Lee commits herself to finding ways to end the kind of racism that has so suddenly altered her life-plan, she says: “I’ll fight to see that these things don’t happen to other girls as this has happened to me” (9). With Nancy Lee’s words, Hughes frames the project of American democracy and racial equality as a collective effort—an ongoing fight for justice both for one and for all.
Nancy Lee’s words turns the story’s focus to the larger question of America itself. The loss of her scholarship represents both a personal setback and broader social, political, and economic inequities that necessitate a widespread, ongoing, collective response to dismantle. The story closes with Nancy Lee moved to tears reciting the Pledge of Allegiance and committing herself to the great task of pushing America to embody its own ideals. She will not merely take care of herself. For Hughes, completing the story even as his country was preparing for a military showdown against the international threat of tyranny and fascism (Pearl Harbor was a scant six months away), the story represents a patriotism that refuses to pander to excessive jingoism or xenophobia. Nancy Lee’s disappointment is not only about her. It’s about America, a country that struggles with its own racist history, its cultural diversity and its economic inequities. It’s a country she loves for all its problems, a country she will dedicate her life to improving, pushing it to fulfill its potential. In the end, Nancy Lee is not only a promising artist but a committed activist—it’s that activism that makes her “worthy of the pledge” she recites every day in school (10).
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