https://www.poetryfoundation.org/articles/69395/the-negro-artist-and-the-racial-mountain

Hughes’s essay is one of the cornerstone pieces to an exploration of identity and race in American Literature.  It was written as a refutal to an editor’s essay on assimilation (see the link’s notes).  It brings up those live issues of place, time, and identity which we have been analyzing throughout the course:

• To what extent is an artist supposed to be representative?
• How great a separation is there between an author and her works?
• How directly do artists confront and subvert (undercut) stereotypes?
• How ought African-American artists to participate in America’s creation of the artist as Other stereotype?

Additionally, we might look to Library of Congress collections to do some follow-up work with the concepts Hughes presents.  For more, see:

https://www.loc.gov/collections/?fa=subject:african+american+history