THE NEW NEGRO MOVEMENT

“During the Interwar period African-Americans seized the opportunity to promote political, economic and social agendas that would benefit the black community nationally. Organizations like the National Association for the Advancement of Colored People (NAACP) and the National Urban League were instrumental in promoting the New Negro movement, also called the Negro or Harlem Renaissance, in their respective journals, “Crisis” (1910), and “Opportunity” (1922). The Negro Renaissance denoted a cultural revitalization in the cities. Its capital was Harlem (uptown Manhattan in New York), which had the largest African-American urban population. The Harlem Renaissance consequently represented most visibly what was also happening in other major American cities. The cultural historian Nathan Huggins noted that: The Negro Renaissance was a struggle to show an African-American cultural “coming of age” that paralleled the same phenomena [sic] in American culture as it moved from under European cultural hegemony, and sought to reinvigorate itself. Literature, theatre, visual arts and, later, music were seen as a means to define and establish “membership in the African or black race,” and simultaneously to enhance the reputation and self-esteem of African-Americans in America.

As was noted by the novelist James Weldon Johnson (1871-1938) in The Book of Negro Poetry (1927), “No people that has ever produced great literature and art has ever been looked on by the world as distinctly inferior.” Achievement was not to be defined by that cultural production which only imitated European or white America, but by an art which expressed a distinctive African-American cultural identity, most strongly grounded in folk culture. This expressive and mature African-American was the New Negro. The ideology of the concept replaced that of the “race” of the men (and women) of the previous century. It was incumbent upon the black middle class, whom W.E.B. Du Bois called the “Talented Tenth” (approximately ten per cent were educated in the middle class), to lead the way, and consequently to prove their worthiness as American citizens, and provide role models for the less fortunate African-Americans.”

(Pawłowska, 2014, pp. 5-6)

References

Pawłowska, A (2014), The Ambivalence of the African-American culture: the new negro art in the interwar period, Art Inquiry. Recherches sur les arts, vol. XVI, ISSN 1641-9278, Department of Art History, University of Łódź.  https://cejsh.icm.edu.pl/cejsh/element/bwmeta1.element.desklight-809b3e46-4cbc-4bc6-8b6a-a93d68215ccd

VCAA. (2020). VCE Study Design: History 2022-2026. Victorian Curriculum And Assessment Authority. https://www.vcaa.vic.edu.au/curriculum/vce/vce-study-designs/history/Pages/index.aspx

Wiscount, L. A., Halovanic, E., & Mariner, V (2023) Analyzing Images, OER Commons. https://oercommons.org/courseware/lesson/69428/overview

References

Department of Education and Training. (2023). Reading, interpreting and analysing History sources, Literacy Teaching Toolkit. https://www.education.vic.gov.au/school/teachers/teachingresources/discipline/english/literacy/Pages/reading-analysing-historical-concepts.aspx

Facing History and Ourselves. (2021) Head, Heart, Conscience.  https://www.facinghistory.org/resource-library/head-heart-conscience

Kendall, CM (2016), ‘International Activism of African Americans in the Interwar Period’, Graduate College Dissertations and Theses, no. 564, University of Vermont, accessed 2 August 2023.

VCAA. (2020). VCE Study Design: History 2022-2026. Victorian Curriculum and Assessment Authority. https://www.vcaa.vic.edu.au/curriculum/vce/vce-study-designs/history/Pages/index.aspx