Critiques

Leaves of Grass Was Successful, but...

• Some felt he was contradictory in his beliefs.

• Spoke up for the banning of slavery, while at the same time supporting political leaders who were pro-slavery.

• Whitman struggled to maintain a steady income, although his work was very successful.

• Langston Hughes published a column on Walt Whitman in a popular African American newspaper in which he stated Whitman was "Negroes First Great Poetic Friend"  as well as saying he was the "greatest of American poets", and that: "Negroes should read and remember."

• Two weeks later, Hughes prints an article from a professor at Roosevelt College in Chicago  which  the professor states that Whitman was "not the Negroes friend, had very few contact with them, and considered the Negro to be inferior.