Although “I, Too” uses a lot of short, enjambed lines, the speaker also often employs end-stops. Though the two devices do different things, they work together to build the poem's critique of American racism. While the poem’s enjambments create suspense and surprise—raising questions about racism—its end-stops also may convey the speaker's confidence that racism will end.
Take a look at the first line of the poem, for instance:
I, too, sing America.
The line is an allusion to Walt Whitman’s poem “I Hear America Singing.” In that poem, Whitman describes a wide range of people “singing”—and argues that their voices join together to create a unified American song. But he doesn’t include black people in his vision of America. The speaker objects to Whitman’s poem: the speaker believes that black people are a key part of the American song. The end-stop at the end of line 1 conveys the force of the speaker’s conviction, the power of his belief that he, too, is an important part of American history and culture. It suggests that he has no doubts on the issue, and that he will not accept any disagreement.
Something similar happens in the end-stop that appears in line 10, after two short lines:
Tomorrow,
I’ll be at the table
When company comes.
The “table” is a symbol for participating in American life. In other words, the speaker is insisting that a day will come when he is not excluded from American politics, treated as a second class citizen. The end-stop underscores the speaker’s confidence that racism will eventually lose its power. Thus, the poem’s end-stops underscore the speaker’s powerful sense of certainty, his firm belief that racism will not last forever.