About the Book
This book explores the transformative energy and excitement that African Americans expressed in aesthetic and civic currents that percolated during the opening of the 20th century and proved to be a force in the modernization of America.
This engaging reference text represents the voices of the era in poetry and prose, in full or excerpted from anecdotes, editorials, essays, manifestoes, orations, and reminiscences, with appearances by major figures and often overlooked contributors to the Harlem Renaissance.
Organized topically and, within topics, chronologically, the volume reaches beyond the typical representation of the spirit and substance of the movement, examinations of which are typically confined to the New York City community and from U.S. entry into World War I in 1917 to the depths of the Great Depression in 1935. It carries readers from the opening of the Harlem Renaissance, which began at the top of the 20th century, to its heights in the 1920s and '30s and through to its artistic and literary echoes in the shadows of World War II (1939–1945).
Table of Contents:
Preface
Evaluating and Interpreting Primary Documents
Introduction
Chronology
Chapter 1 The New Negro Mecca: Harlem
1. "Harlem," Alain Locke (1925)
2. "The Black City," Eric Walrond (1924)
3. "The Making of Harlem," James Weldon Johnson (1925)
4. "The City of Refuge," Rudolph Fisher (1925)
5. "Harlem's Nightlife," Wallace Thurman (1927)
6. "Amateur Night in Harlem: 'That's Why Darkies Were Born,'?" Dorothy West (1938)
7. "When Harlem Was in Vogue," Langston Hughes (1940)
Chapter 2 The New Negro: A New Time, A New People
8. "Lift Every Voice and Sing," James Weldon Johnson (1900)
9. "A New Negro for a New Century," Booker T. Washington et al. (1900)
10. "The Souls of Black Folk," W. E. B. Du Bois (1903)
11. "Possibilities of the Negro: The Advance Guard of the Race," W. E. B. Du Bois (1903)
12. "Public Opinion and the Negro," Charles S. Johnson (1923)
13. "The New Negro Faces America," Eric Walrond (1923)
14. "Enter the New Negro," Alain Locke (1925)
15. "Who Is the New Negro, and Why?" J. A. Rogers (1927)
Chapter 3 The New Negro at War
16. "Plea of the Negro Soldier," Charles F. White (1907)
17. "Her Thirteen Black Soldiers," Archibald H. Grimké (1917)
18. "Close Ranks," W. E. B. Du Bois (1918)
19. "Du Bois, One-Time Radical Leader Deserts and Betrays Cause of His Race," William Monroe Trotter (1918)
20. "A Negro Woman to Her Adopted Soldier Boy," Florence Lewis Bentley (1918)
21. "The American Negro in the World War," Emmett J. Scott (1919)
22. "Returning Soldiers," W. E. B. Du Bois (1919)
23. "The Colored Soldier," Langston Hughes (1919)
24. "Two Americans," Florence Lewis Bentley (1921)
25. "The Black Draftee from Dixie," Carrie Williams Clifford (1922)
Chapter 4 The New Negro on the Move
26. "Bound for the Promised Land," Chicago Defender (1916)
27. "Is Migration a Panacea?" Cleveland Advocate (1920)
28. "How Much Is the Migration a Flight from Persecution?" Charles S. Johnson (1923)
29. "Cotton Song," Jean Toomer (1923)
30. "Northboun'," Ariel Williams (1927)
31. "A Summer Tragedy," Arna Bontemps (1933)
Chapter 5 The New Negro under Attack
32. "The Lynching of Jube Benson," Paul Laurence Dunbar (1904)
33. "The South's Ungolden Rule," Charles F. White (1907)
34. "Lynching: Our National Crime," Ida B. Wells-Barnett (1909)
35. "The Massacre in East St. Louis," NAACP (1917)
36. "Chicago and Its Eight Reasons," Walter F. White (1919)
37. "The Eruption of Tulsa," Walter F. White (1921)
38. "The Lynching," Claude McKay (1922)
39. "The Harvest of Race Prejudice," Kelly Miller (1925)
40. "Scottsboro," Langston Hughes (1931)
Chapter 6 The New Negro Self Vision
41. "If We Must Die," W. A. Domingo (1919)
42. "If We Must Die," Claude McKay (1919)
43. "The Negro Speaks of Rivers," Langston Hughes (1921)
44. "I Am a Negro," Marcus Garvey (1923)
45. "Vignettes of the Dusk," Eric Walrond (1924)
46. "Heritage: What Is Africa to Me?" Countee Cullen (1925)
47. "The New Negro College and the Negro Renaissance," Kelly Miller (1926)
48. "College," Loren R. Miller (1927)
49. "Africa—Our Challenge," Susie Wiseman Yergan (1930)
Chapter 7 The New Negro Woman
50. "The Colored Woman and Her Part in Race Regeneration," Fannie Barrier Williams (1900)
51. "The Heart of a Woman," Georgia Douglas Johnson (1918)
52. "This Must Not Be," Carita Owens Collins (1919)
53. "A Letter to the Editor," A Southern Colored Woman (1919)
54. "On Being Young—A Woman—and Colored," Marita Bonner (1925)
55. "Passing," Nella Larsen (1929)
Chapter 8 The New Negro Children
56. "The True Brownies," W. E. B. Du Bois (1919)
57. "Emmy," Jessie Redmon Fauset (1912)
58. "The Fairy Good Willa," Minnibelle Jones (1914)
59. "A Fairy Story," Carry S. Bond (1919)
60. "GYP: A Fairy Story," A. T. Kilpatrick (1921)
61. "The Judge," Jessie Redmon Fauset (1921)
62. "Drenched in Light," Zora Neale Hurston (1924)
63. "To a Dark Girl," Gwendolyn B. Bennett (1927)
Chapter 9 The New Negro Aesthetics
64. "The Hope of the Negro Drama," Willis Richardson (1919)
65. "Negro Art," Mary White Ovington (1921)
66. "The Negro Digs Up His Past," Arthur A. Schomburg (1925)
67. "Criteria of Negro Art," W. E. B. Du Bois (1926)
68. "Art or Propaganda?" Alain Locke (1928)
69. "A Brown Aesthete Speaks," Unsigned (1928)
70. "The Negro Artist and Modern Art," Romare Bearden (1934)
The New Negro Afterward: Conclusion
Bibliography
Index
About the Author :
Thomas J. Davis, PhD, JD, is professor emeritus of history at Arizona State University, Tempe.
Brenda M. Brock, MA, ABD, is an independent scholar of American and African American literature.
Review :
Providing primary sources alongside ample thoughtful information to help with interpretation, this volume will be useful to a wide range of researchers, from high school students to undergraduates to general readers.
An essential starting place for public, high school, and college library reference shelves to undergird coursework in American history, the Black diaspora, and Black feminism, this source deserves every consideration.
Essential. General readers through advanced undergraduates.
