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Alexis Cooper

Fall 2017

HIST 006

The New Negro Movement and the African Diaspora

The New Negro Movement, also known as the Harlem Renaissance, spanned in the

1920s in which African American culture attained unparalleled political and social recognition

despite the ongoing horrors of being black in America. "New Negro" was coined during the

Harlem Renaissance indicating a more open advocacy of dignity and a refusal to submit to Jim

Crow laws and racial segregation. The movement weakened the notion of the African diaspora as

an event of forced migration isolated in the past and changed it into an ongoing practice in black

internationalism. The New Negro Movement caused African Americans to claim their

citizenship which stroked new boundaries within the communities and lead them to see the rise

of jazz, powerful literature, and a new sense of black identity and pride.

Black artists and intellects displayed terms of the African diaspora through cultural

exchanges which gave source and importance to the role of black literature, art, and music to

mend experiences of displacement, dislocation, and isolation. The African diaspora can be

defined as the migration of Africans to other countries such as North America and Europe, and

different islands of the Pacific Ocean in addition to the mass movement that has occurred within

those places. The mass movement of African Americans from the South to the North during the

time of the Harlem Renaissance, also known as the Great Migration1, will be recognized to

connect the New Negro Movement to the African diaspora.

1. Baker, Houston A., Jr. Modernism and the Harlem Renaissance. Chicago: University of Chicago Press, 1987.
2. Ucl.ac.uk. (2017). The Harlem Renaissance, art, politics and ancient Egypt. [online] Available at:
https://www.ucl.ac.uk/equianocentre/education/a-fusion-of-worlds/context/harlem [Accessed 4 Dec. 2017].
3. Powell, Richard J., and Paul Finkleman, eds. Rhapsodies in Black: Art of the Harlem Renaissance.
Berkeley: University of California Press, 1997.
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During the Jim Crow Era, fed up with violence, racism, and lack of jobs African

Americans began moving up north in masses. African Americans were attracted to the stories of

successful black business owners and the prospering art community. Notable figures such as

Booker T. Washington, W.E.B. Du Bois, Langston Hughes, Alain Locke, Aaron Douglas, and

Archibald Motley created works of art and literature that resisted the overwhelming amount of

stereotypical, negative images of African-Americans and black culture. People recognized the

importance of their own human experience and celebrated their life, heritage, and culture through

their work. Surrounded by revolt, blacks became a collective union whose culture was quickly

recognized for the difference. African Americans studied or traveled to European cities and met

and shared ideas with artists of various cultural backgrounds, including those from the Caribbean

and Africa. Some artists often included in their artwork reflections on modern African-American

experiences alongside other African diasporic cultures to re-create and re-frame modern black

identities.2

According to Richard J. Powell, the Harlem Renaissance was a transnational

"reawakening" and "rediscovery of an African identity that had been submerged under decades

of peonage, servitude, and stultifying tradition, but was now freed from a chrysalis-like state in

order to explore and interact with an industrialized world and to see the self and other peoples of

African ancestry in a new light."3 The New Negro Movement figures’ works would cause a

transformation throughout the African diaspora.

1. Baker, Houston A., Jr. Modernism and the Harlem Renaissance. Chicago: University of Chicago Press, 1987.
2. Ucl.ac.uk. (2017). The Harlem Renaissance, art, politics and ancient Egypt. [online] Available at:
https://www.ucl.ac.uk/equianocentre/education/a-fusion-of-worlds/context/harlem [Accessed 4 Dec. 2017].
3. Powell, Richard J., and Paul Finkleman, eds. Rhapsodies in Black: Art of the Harlem Renaissance. Berkeley:
University of California Press, 1997.
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Bibliography

Baker, Houston A., Jr. Modernism and the Harlem Renaissance. Chicago: University of Chicago

Press, 1987.

Powell, Richard J., and Paul Finkleman, eds. Rhapsodies in Black: Art of the Harlem

Renaissance. Berkeley: University of California Press, 1997.

Ucl.ac.uk. (2017). The Harlem Renaissance, art, politics and ancient Egypt. [online] Available

at: https://www.ucl.ac.uk/equianocentre/education/a-fusion-of-worlds/context/harlem

[Accessed 4 Dec. 2017].