Warning

Warning - meaning Summary

Subtle Warning of Resistance

Hughes presents a brief, forceful warning against underestimating Black people by listing imposed stereotypes of passivity and then threatening upheaval when patience ends. The poem juxtaposes human meekness and natural imagery—wind in cotton fields—to suggest that quiet endurance can become powerful, uprooting force. It reflects Hughes’s ongoing engagement with racial injustice and a call for recognition of potential collective resistance when tolerance is exhausted.