Hughes published “One Friday Morning” later in his literary career—in July, 1941, when the energy and enthusiasm of the Harlem Renaissance had been significantly tempered by the decade-long global economic collapse that defined the 1930s. Published in a special Fourth of July edition of Crisis magazine just five months before Pearl Harbor, Hughes’s story is a war story—a cautionary tale directed not just to Black America but to white America as well. The epiphany Nancy Lee experiences as she pledges allegiance to the flag is a wake-up call to those citizens, white and Black, discontented and even angered by America’s failure to live up to its own ideal of equal opportunity.

Through this lens, the story is both an indictment of the failures of white America and a cautiously optimistic endorsement of the aspirations and ideals (if not the reality) of America. In a story that utilizes the American flag as a frequent motif, the definition of America and the responsibilities of patriotic Americans to improve their country becomes the focus. As Nancy Lee points out, the Johnsons are “like most Americans, simple, ordinary people who [work] hard.” And Nancy Lee herself “sometimes [forgets] she [is] colored” (2).