Wright assigned Black writers the task of forging cultural values for their race’s struggle

Evidence

For Wright, it was at precisely this point, in the culture’s ideational, conceptual, and ideological extension, that the writer and other intellectuals are required. In the construction of myths and symbols emergent from the experience of Black people, the responsibility of the intellectuals was “to create values by which [their] race is to struggle, live and die.” — Cedric J. Robinson, Black Marxism_ The Making of the Black…, 1395

Categorization

• SEED: Wright’s definition of the Black intellectual’s role as value-creator could anchor an essay comparing it to organic-intellectual theories (Gramsci) and to the novelist-as-prophet tradition.