Children’s Rhymes

Although "Children's Rhymes" was first published years after the Harlem Renaissance, the poem reflects the major tenants of the literary movement and shows how it helped Black writers maintain a forceful, distinct expression after the 1920s and 30s. While the poem's rhythm relates to the rhymes kids often recite, the diction is also an example of Black English or African American Vernacular English (AAVE). This is the name commonly attached to the dialect spoken by some Black people. Words like "ain't" and "a-tall" link to Black English and the drive for Black writers to express their condition and feelings in a voice that represents them and not what white people want Black people to be or sound like. As Hughes wrote in “The Negro Artist and the Racial Mountain,” "If white people are pleased we are glad. If they are not, it doesn’t matter.

At the same time, the poem is a part of a literary moment when many books became concerned with the injustices and situations facing Black people in the mid-20th century. In his essay, "Autobiographical Notes" (1955), James Baldwin complains that the shelves "groan" due to the amount of literature about Black people.