The Emergence of the New Negro
Terrance Baker
Nicole Maurice
Junior Moise
Abstract:
Langston Hughes wrote, "Harlem was like a great magnet for the Negro intellectual, pulling him from everywhere. Or perhaps the magnet was New York, but once in New York, he had to live in Harlem…Harlem was not so much a place as a state of mind, the cultural metaphor for Black America itself (Hughes, 1940)."
With the words from the man that many called the Poet Laureate of Harlem welcome to the Harlem Renaissance. The Harlem Renaissance, a period from the early 1920’s to the mid1930’s in which black music, literature, performance art and politics converged to motivate and stimulate the minds of not only black America, …show more content…
Phillip Randolph was organizing the labor movement Marcus Garvey was “articulating a coherent program of black pride, Pan-Africanism and economic self-sufficiency movement (Wintz, 2007). Marcus Garvey (1887-1940), was the founder of the Universal Negro Improvement Association (UNIA) in Harlem, which encouraged the followers to direct their attention toward the creation of an autonomous nation state in Africa. “Garvey also organized the Black Star Steamship Corporation, the cornerstone of the UNIA’s efforts to create an integrated community of workers, producers, and consumers with the collective power to improve African American’s economic position globally (Harold, in Harlem Speaks, 2007).” Marcus Garvey’s appealed to the working class Negro in Harlem and eventually around the country as he and his organization established offices in ten cities across the country and at its height had over 1 million members. Garvey’s flame burned brightly for a short period of time during 1916 and 1925, but he transformed the lives of countless blacks by demonstrating what could be accomplished economically with the collective buying power of the black community (Harold, in Harlem Speaks,