New Negro, The

A term originally used by whites for newly freed Africans, which first became widely used at the end of the nineteenth century. Popularized in the first three decades of the twentieth century by African American leaders, journalists, artists, and some whites, the term New Negro was used to suggest the distance that African Americans had come from the institution of slavery. In 1900, use of the term marked the emergence of an educated and politically and culturally aware generation of African Americans. One of the earliest books noting such progress was A New Negro for a New Century (1900), a volume of essays with chapters by the renowned African American educator Booker T. Washington.

During the 1920s, New Negro represented a new racial consciousness. The impact of African American military service during World War I, the migration of blacks to the North, and the fight against racial violence in the so-called Red Summer of 1919 had sparked competition among different political groups, who felt they were a proper example of this new racial identity. The National Association for the Advancement of Colored People (NAACP), the National Urban League, and the Universal Negro Improvement Association, led by Black Nationalist Marcus Garvey, each felt that they represented the ideals of the New Negro.

In 1925, Alain L. Locke, a philosophy professor and staunch supporter of black writers and artists, published an anthology titled The New Negro: An Interpretation. In the book, Locke argued that African American writers and artists, whose work transformed the stereotypical image of African Americans from a culturally inferior race to a group of raceconscious intellectuals, were the most appropriate group for the term New Negro.

With essays contributed by political leaders and writers such as W. E. B. Du Bois, Jessie Fauset, James [Page 598]Weldon Johnson, Walter White, and Charles S. Johnson, Locke's book focused on the works of young African American writers and artists. The volume also included drawings, poetry, and prose by Countee Cullen, Aaron Douglas, Langston Hughes, Zora Neale Hurston, Claude McKay, and Jean Toomer. Their contributions forever linked the image of the New Negro to the Harlem Renaissance those artists represented.

In the 1930s, the term New Negro fell out of favor, largely because Harlem was no longer the mecca of black artists and writers. Many scholars, however, still debate which political and artistic philosophies were best suited for the ideal of the New Negro.