How do Hughes' poems, specifically “I, Too” and “Theme for English B” reflect Whitman's influence?

Almost immediately, Hughes was graduated to the parent journal. The June, 1921, issue of The Crisis published “The Negro Speaks of Rivers,” Hughes's first great poem. Written a year earlier, on a train crossing the Mississippi, this short lyric (dedicated to NAACP founder W. E. B. Du Bois) proudly affirms the mystical unity of all persons of African descent, regardless of when or where they happen to live (Miller, 25).

A poem of praise, rendered in plainspoken free verse, “The Negro Speaks of Rivers” shows the clear ...