Read this excerpt from Langston Hughes’s poem "Freedom's Plow.”

The plow plowed a new furrow

Across the field of history.

Into that furrow the freedom seed was dropped.

From that seed a tree grew, is growing, will ever grow.

That tree is for everybody,

For all America, for all the world.

What does the seed represent in this metaphor?

the beginning of time
the hope for America’s farms
the idea of people living freely
the cruelty of slavery