In high school, the only negative reinforcement you get is a trip to the principal's office, which just makes your act seem edgier. And that's the thing -- this act only plays in that setting, because the school has to put up with it, and everybody knows it.n high school, the only negative reinforcement you get is a trip to the principal's office, which just makes your act seem edgier. And that's the thing -- this act only plays in that setting, because the school has to put up with it, and everybody knows it.
âThe Negro Speaks of Riversâ is Langston Hughesâs first mature poem. He wrote it in 1920 at the age of seventeen, while traveling by train to visit his father in Mexico. The young Hughes was inspired to pen this verse when his train crossed over the Mississippi River.
_____________. Hughes first came to notice, barely out of high school, with the publication in 1921 of âThe Negro Speaks of Rivers,â a poem composed in a ten-minute flash of inspiration on a trip to visit his estranged father in Mexico.