In Langston Hughes's "The Negro Mother," the speaker is an enslaved Black woman who represents the suffering of hundreds of years of plantation slavery in the US South. She carries within her soul the hope of a free Black child and of a free Black people. For years, her children are born and stolen from her to be sold away as slaves. Her husband as well is ripped away from her to suffer under the unbearable cruelty of US plantation slavery. She speaks both as one person and as a representation of hundreds of years of enslaved Black ancestors.

She speaks as the enslaved ancestor to her descendants who are free of chattel slavery. She shows them the road she suffered on before the abolition of chattel slavery. She reminds them to never forget her, and those centuries of horrific enslavement and desperate hope for a free future that she represents. Her suffering and story is a call for her descendants to fiercely protect their freedom.