ABSTRACT
African Americans' cultural heritage is both diverse and complex, drawing from a deep well of influences including West Africa, the Caribbean, the American South, and the urban environment. Perhaps this is why, as scholars like Henry Louis Gates Jr. have argued, blacks have had such a dramatic effect on the wider culture of the United States as a whole. Many significant black authors have come from Southern states, including Zora Neale Hurston and James Weldon Johnson, Richard Wright, and Alice Walker. Ralph Ellison, Gwendolyn Brooks, and Lorraine Hansberry, all of whom deal honestly and dramatically with the topic of race in their fiction, hail from the Midwest. African American contributions to American music, from gospel to jazz to rock 'n' roll, cannot be overstated. The Mississippi Delta region produced Bluesmen B. B. King, Muddy Waters, Mississippi John Hurt, and Robert Johnson. African Americans have also made substantial contributions to American culture in the visual arts, dance, and film.
