History has proved that nothing in the whole world remains the same forever. However, with racial discrimination, history, especially of the United States, seems to have failed to prove the validity of this theory. For, despite all the trials exerted for centuries to abolish it, racial discrimination has continued its way, safe and sound, well into the twentieth century. The black-white conflict in America is a striking manifestation of the cunning and persistence of this pejorative term—racism. African Americans have had to wage a long-lasting struggle for their social, economic, political, and civil rights—a battle not yet fully won. Yet, since literature reflects the spirit of the times, hopes, worries, criticisms, and predictions that have been made, it is quite natural that racial discrimination—this issue which has for so long a time doomed the lives of Negroes and lingered in their consciousness, has inspired and in no smaller degree dominated much of the literary activity of many writers, black and white, to explore it. One of those writers who has truly dedicated his literary career to the struggle against discrimination and against the malpractice of whites towards blacks is, without contention, Langston Hughes. The study, therefore, investigates Hughes's novel Not Without Laughter (1930), his short story“The Blues I’m playing”in his collection of short stories, The Ways of the White Folks, and his play Emperor of Haiti (1936).
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