Though “Dreams” doesn’t explicitly mention race, Hughes’s link to the Harlem Renaissance and his avowed commitment to expressing Black experiences connect his body of work, including this poem, to race. Through the historical lens of the Harlem Renaissance, the reader sees how the hopes and dreams of Black people face particular peril. Hughes published “Dreams” in 1923 when the Black Codes and Jim Crow legislation dominated the South. The purpose of such unjust laws was to maintain the racist power dynamic that reigned before the Civil War and the prohibition of slavery through the 13th Amendment to the US Constitution. The prejudiced policies exposed Black people to violent harassment and lynchings.

Yet Black people countered the adversity and did not let bigoted norms deprive them of their hopes and dreams. Displaying mobility, millions of Black people left the South hoping to experience less racism in Northern cities; this movement, between 1914 and 1919 became known as the Great Migration. However, as professors Brian Purnell and Jeanne Theohairs note in “How New York City Became the Capital of the Jim Crow North,” Northern cities also contained racism that threatened the aspirations of Black people.