The speaker of the poem is an African American who is figuratively forced to "eat in the kitchen"—treated like a second-class citizen, someone who really does not have a chance to achieve the American Dream—but he claims that he continues to "eat well" so that he can grow stronger and stronger. In the future, he says, he will "be at the table" and no one will dare to tell him to go back to the kitchen or to treat him as less than anyone else. He believes that, someday, everyone—all of the white people who looked down on him—will be forced to see how "beautiful" he is and will feel "ashamed" of themselves for having treated him like this.

While he may not be able to achieve the American Dream just at present, he has all the faith that he will gain access to it in the future. The Harlem Renaissance was a cultural and artistic movement in which a number of black artists and writers gained national recognition for their talent. Those individuals often took the black experience as their inspiration and wrote about it, championing the strength and beauty of black people. The speaker of this poem seems to have been affected by these ideas, and they may fuel his faith that someday, all people will recognize this.