The Negro Artist and the Racial Mountain

Reading Check and Short Answer questions on key points are designed for guided reading assignments, in-class review, formative assessment, quizzes, and more.

Reading Check

1. What is the anecdote that Hughes uses to begin his essay about?

2. According to Hughes, what is the “mountain standing in the way” of Black art in America?

3. Hughes distinguishes between upper-, middle-, and lower-class Black families. Which socio-economic class does he believe best fosters the development of the Black artist?

4. Name one Black artist Hughes mentions as embodying the role of a true racial artist.

Short Answer

Answer each question in at least 1 complete sentence. Incorporate details from the text to support your response.

1. How does Hughes interpret the young Black poet’s statement “I want to be a poet—not a Negro poet”?

2. Describe Hughes’s belief in the role that class plays in the development (or hindrance) of the Black artist.

3. What is “the duty of the younger Negro artist, if he accepts any duties at all from outsiders”?

4. How do both fellow Black folks and white patrons hinder the development of Black art?

Paired Resource

“The New Negro” (1925) by Alain Locke

This short essay is included in Locke’s anthology of the same name and dives more deeply into his philosophy on the “New Negro” as a movement and an identity.