like the rivers.

Different rivers referenced in the poem have different, specific symbolic meanings. The Euphrates, for example, was a river running near to Mesopotamia, an area often considered to be the birthplace of civilization. In the poem, therefore, the Euphrates symbolizes the idea that African American history has deep, ancient roots.

The Nile river was vital to Ancient Egypt because Egyptians were able to use the moist land close to the Nile to grow crops. The Nile River is thus symbolically important as a source of life. The pyramids which the poet refers to in the same line are also important as symbols of slavery. Indeed, the pyramids were built by slaves. The Mississippi river also has symbolic links to slavery. There were approximately 437,000 slaves in the state of Mississippi by 1860. The history of slavery, in Africa and latterly America, is of course of huge significance to African American history.

When the speaker refers to "the Euphrates," he also, in the same line, refers to a time "when dawns were young." Toward the end of the poem, the speaker refers to the "bosom" of the Mississippi river turning "golden in the sunset." The "dawns" and the "sunset" are also used symbolically in the poem, with the former being used to symbolize the beginning of African American history and the latter perhaps being used to symbolize the ending of a period of that same history.

Langston Hughes’ poem “The Negro Speaks of Rivers” names four rivers: The Euphrates, The Congo, The Nile, and The Mississippi. In the poem, rivers are used to convey racial memory across millennia of history. Let’s explicate the relevant portion of the poem with attention to the significance of each river. The first river named is The Euphrates, in the Middle East.

I bathed in the Euphrates when dawns were young.

The Euphrates River is in Mesopotamia and is often referred to as the cradle of civilization. The world’s earliest writing was recorded by the early Mesopotamians, and Hughes’s use of this ancient river roots his poem in the earliest beginnings of human experience and communication. Hughes’s next line shifts the generational memories explicitly to Africans.

I built my hut near the Congo and it lulled me to sleep.

The Congo River is in the heart of Africa. Hughes alludes to the peaceful and pastoral existence of Africans before they were taken into slavery in these two lines. It is important to note that the first two rivers, the Euphrates and Congo, have the everyday actions of bathing, sleeping, and building homes associated with them. This shows the status quo before the industrial-scale slavery of the 1500s. The next river, The Nile, shifts the tone of the memories from positive to negative.

I looked upon the Nile and raised pyramids above it.

This is the first explicit allusion to slavery in the poem, as the Pyramids of Giza were famously built by a small army of slaves. Hughes uses the ancient Egyptian landmarks to introduce his own experience as an African American.

I heard the singing of the Mississippi when Abe Lincoln
went down to New Orleans, and I've seen its muddy
bosom turn all golden in the sunset.

The Mississippi River is in the heart of the American South, where most African Americans were enslaved. Hughes ends his list of rivers with the singing heard when “Abe Lincoln went down to New Orleans,” a reference to the abolishment of slavery in 1863.

Langston Hughes’s poem “The Negro Speaks of Rivers” uses generational memories from four specific rivers to connect the African American experience in America to thousands of years of history. I hope this helps!

As a preface to his poem, "The Negro Speaks of Rivers," Langston Hughes wrote,

I had been in to dinner early that afternoon on the train.  Now it was just sunset, and we crossed the Mississippi slowly, over a long bridge.  I looked out the window of the Pullman at the great muddy river flowing down toward the heart of the South, and I began to think what that river, the old Mississippi, had meant to Negroes in the past--how to be sold down the river was the worst fate that could overtake a slave in times of bondage.  Then I remembered how Abraham Lincoln had made a trip down the Mississippi on a raft to New Orleans, and how he had seen slavery at its worst, and had decided within himself that it should be removed from American life.  Then I began to think about other rivers in our past.....

"My soul has grown deep like the rivers," Hughes writes in the last line of his poem. And, this seems to be the controlling metaphor for this poem.  The Negro is from the ancient source of life, symbolized by the Euphrates; he has lived by the Congo and the great, long Nile as well as the mighty Mississippi River.  There is a richness to the black experience expressed in lines 4-7 in which these rivers are mentioned. Hughes use of repetition serves to give this experience continuity, as well.

The black people will survive because their souls have grown deep over the centuries and they will continue to last, just as the rivers have.  Langston Hughes poignantly reminds many of the disenfranchised in the United States of their rich and lasting heritage so that they will remain strong.

I would say that one of the primary emotions that Hughes is trying to express is the idea of longevity over time.  There is an emotion of reflection and rumination that Hughes is trying to bring out in the poem.  As the previous thoughts suggest, this reflects a sense of pride in what it means to be Black.  I would also think that part of this is to reach back and define Black History as something connected to the history of the world.  In the opening line of "I've seen rivers," Hughes is trying to bring out the emotion that allows one to see the world in its expansive vision and form, with a Black voice present all the way through.  I think that in doing so, Hughes seeks to evoke the emotions of pain, melancholy, joy, and elation as part of the Black experience or in what it means to be Black.  In this light, Hughes speaks to something that is different than other thinkers, in defining Black History as something not only contingent in slavery.  Rather, it is a realm where individuals can understand that the history of all nations is the history of Black individuals and their contributions.  There is a sense of expansive connection, an emotion of understanding that fully emerges upon reading the poem.

It is said that the idea for this poem came to Hughes when he crossed the Mississippi River on his way to visit his father.

As an African American, the Mississippi would have been more than just a river to Hughes. It was a symbol of his ancestors' slave past. It was the river that carried the barges loaded with cotton that the slaves had planted and picked, and it was the river that carried the people to be sold to plantation owners. But he does not let the Mississippi be the defining symbol for African Americans. He reminds us that they have an ancient heritage. The Euphrates is one of the rivers that the book of Genesis says flowed through Eden; the Congo is a river in Africa; and the Nile is lifeblood of Egypt and its glorious past. Those rivers and those civilizations are in his blood; they are his heritage. They are the heritage of all African Americans.

One critic has written that this poem "poignantly and dramatically expresses what it means to be a black American that it helps to assure Hughes’s continuing fame."

I think more than any other emotion, Hughes wanted African American people to feel pride in themselves and white people to feel respect for their fellow human beings.

In his poem "The Negro Speaks of Rivers," Langston Hughes juxtaposes diction related to ancient times with images of youth and vitality. His purpose is to show that though the African race is ancient and should be valued for its ancient roots which have endured the tests of time, it is also still a race full of youthfulness and vitality. Capturing the race's youthfulness and vitality serves to show that the ancient African race will continue to endure the tests of time and continue to be valuable, just as young and strong men, generally speaking, tend to continue to endure through life.
Two images of youth and vitality appear in his third paragraph stanza. The first image describes the speaker as bathing in the Euphrates in times so ancient that the "dawns were young," meaning that the earth was so young that the sunrises could also be considered young. The second image of youth and vitality describes the speaker as having "built [his] hut near the Congo." Since only a young man has the strength and vitality to build a hut, we know this image is meant to capture the strength and vitality of the speaker and thus of the African race.

These images of rivers form a kind of collective memory for African Americans. In dreaming of the rivers of their ancestral homeland, they are transported back in time to the very dawn of civilization, when humankind first emerged in what is now the continent of Africa. The various rivers mentioned in the poem are not just features of the natural landscape—they are the depths from which the soul of humankind first emerged, depths in which the "negro" seeks to immerse himself as he contemplates his distant ancestry.

But even rivers from the more recent past still resonate in the African American imagination. It was the mighty Mississippi that brought the young Abraham Lincoln, the future Great Emancipator, down to New Orleans, where he first became directly acquainted with the horrors of slavery. The speaker's soul is as deeply immersed in the Mississippi, despite its integral role in the slave trade, as it is in the ancient rivers of Africa and the Middle East. Collectively, these rivers represent two crucial aspects of the African American experience, and both contribute in their own ways to the formation of the speaker's soul.

A great question.

The rivers work in several ways. Each of these reinforce the other, which is something you would want in a superior literary work.

First, look at the specific rivers named. Hughes names great rivers in Africa and in North America, linking the two continents.

Second, among the rivers named was the Nile, which was the site of a great empire. This links African Americans, who were at that time enduring discrimination in American society, with the founders of an empire. It says, essentially, we weren't always slaves.

Third, rivers symbolize change. Unless they are frozen, rivers are continually flowing and changing, carrying things along. Naming these rivers essentially promises change to those reading.

Fourth, water is often associated with the unconscious, and with the depths of the soul Hughes mentions early in the soul.

So, see rivers, think change, continuity with a great past, and depth of soul.