Question

I need help really bad! im terrible at poems! I give medals!
The word deferred in line 1 of “Harlem” means “delayed,” “postponed.” What is the dream that is being postponed here?

Answer 1

well what is to first line?

Answer 2

Harlem
BY LANGSTON HUGHES

What happens to a dream deferred?

Does it dry up
like a raisin in the sun?
Or fester like a sore—
And then run?
Does it stink like rotten meat?
Or crust and sugar over—
like a syrupy sweet?

Maybe it just sags
like a heavy load.

Or does it explode?

Answer 3

The dream of full empowerment for the black community? Equal access to social, educational, and economic opportunity? Civil rights? In the south, freedom from lynching and sharecropping? Jim Crow laws? When Hughes was writing this (1920s, I think?), the gains made by the civil rights movement were still decades away.