Changing headline colours over featured images AND hiding More Articles

I have been tinkering with CSS for a while now on my WP.org website but I have finally run into two separate roadblocks for which I have conceded I need help.

1) On the main mage, over top each of the sliding, featured images, there is a bar displaying the title of the related article and then a smaller bar displaying the date of posting. Currently, for the former, both the static background and static text colours are black, and the hover background colour is black and the hover text colour is white; for the smaller bar, currently both the static and hover text colours are grey, while the static background colour is white and the hover background colour is black. I want to edit all of these colours (so that they look and function the same way as the sidebar menu on the main page), but I can not for the life of me figure out the correct CSS code. I thought I found it when I Googled my problem and found this help thread on a WP.com support forum: <https://en.forums.wordpress.com/topic/oxygen-theme-home-page-showcase-link-colour>, but the solution provided in that thread did nothing for me when I put the code into my CSS Manager (and I do not know why). Help?

2. Near the bottom of the main page, there is a section for “More Articles” – but I have no plans on using that section, so as a result it perpetually says underneath, “Apologies, but no articles were found.” I want to get rid of that section entirely (i.e., both the header that says “More Articles” and the text underneath). I suppose, if somebody helps me by telling me how, I could delete it in my HTML, but I figure a less complicated solution would be to just hide it via CSS. I found code recently that almost did the trick, but unfortunately it also hid the “Recent Articles” section which I did not want it to do, and that is the closest I have come to finding a solution before giving up out of frustration. Any help for this one?

I am using the Oxygen theme and my website’s (temporary) URL is <https://www.agoraonline.ca>.

Thanks a million!