The New Negro

Expanded from a March issue of Survey Graphic magazine, The New Negro compiles writing from such figures as Countee Cullen, Langston Hughes, Zora Neale Hurston, Jean Toomer, and Locke himself. Recognized as a foundational text of the Harlem Renaissance, the collection is organized around Locke’s writing on the function of art in reorganizing the conception of African American life and culture. Through self-understanding, creation, and independence, Locke’s New Negro came to represent a break from an inhumane past, a means toward meaningful change for a people held down for far too long. “[F]or generations in the mind of America, the Negro has been more of a formula than a human being—a something to be argued about, condemned or defended, to be ‘kept down,’ or ‘in his place,’ or ‘helped up,’ to be worried with or worried over, harassed or patronized, a social bogey or a social burden.” Identifying the