The difficulties expressed in Hughes On the Road and Mother to SonAfrican American citizens who live in the United States have lived a difficult life through personal experiences . They fought for basic civil rights – a struggle that lasted several centuries (Mabunda 311). Langston Hughes, author of the short story “On the Road” and the poem “Mother to Son,” often illustrated in his writings the difficulties experienced by the characters, products of African-American life in the United States. While Hughes and other young African American authors wanted to define and celebrate black art and culture, they also helped change the preconceived notions of most Americans' erroneous ideas about black life (Mabunda 696). The cultural aspects of Hughes's poems reflect the life of an African American from the late 1910s to the early 1960s. His views, like those of many writers of his era, came directly from personal experience, which provided the reader with a sense of communication illustrating – through art rather than through essays – the evils of the racist world. L. Mpho Mabunda proclaims that the problems and dark realities of African Americans "could be experienced through the lives of the characters and in the verse, and the message delivered in a more subtle and effective way" (696). The overall theme and purpose of "On the Road" and "Mother to Son" centers on an illustration of the hardships experienced by most African American citizens at the turn of the century. Both genres graphically detail the lifestyle and he environment in which African Americans lived In the 20th century, many black communities in America existed in a state of perpetual crisis ("Black American"). ......Robinson. The Condition, Rise, Emigration and Fate of the Colored People of the United States. New York: Arno P, 1968. “Henry McNeal Turner Online.” April 1998. Hughes, Langston. “Bridges: Literature Across Cultures.” On the Road." Bridges: Literature Across Cultures. Ed. Gilbert H. Muller and John A. Williams. New York: McGRaw-Hill, 1994. 845-8. Mabunda, L. Mpho, ed. The African American Almanac. 7th ed. Detroit, Michigan: Gale Research Inc., 1997. Miller, R. Baxter, and Evelyn Nettles. “Langston Hughes.” Concise Dictionary of American Literary Biography: The Age of Maturity, 1929-1941. Detroit, MI: Gale Research Inc., 1989. 150-71. Quarles, Benjamin. The Negro in the Making of America. London: Collier-Macmillan Ltd., 1969.