The Negro Artist and the Racial Mountain

In Langston Hughes’s “The Negro Artist and the Racial Mountain,” the writer presents his argument regarding the creative limitations Black Americans face. Initially published in 1926, the essay traces a short, powerful argument that relies both on Hughes’s own identity as an artist as well as his critical observations of US society. As a Black author writing in the early 20th century, Hughes uses the terms “Negro” and “black” interchangeably; this study guide exclusively uses the more current term “Black” to adhere as closely as possible to Hughes’s original linguistic intentions. This study guide refers to an electronically published version of the essay via the Poetry Foundation’s website, which can be accessed here: www.poetryfoundation.org/articles/69395/the-negro-artist-and-the-racial-mountain. This essay is published in many versions; for ease of access, quotations in this guide are cited in reference to the number of the paragraph in which they appear.

Hughes opens his essay with an anecdote regarding a “promising” young Black poet’s statement that he doesn’t want to be “a Negro poet” (Paragraph 1). Hughes interprets the young poet’s reluctance as an expression of both self-hatred and a desire to be White. Using this statement as a framework for his argument, Hughes describes ways that Black people are taught to hate their Blackness while they simultaneously desire Whiteness.