How Alain Locke's Anthology contributes to Harlem Renaissance Art

 

Through his work “The New Negro”, Alain Locke analyzes and defines this representation of the ‘New Negro’ as he connects together the transformation that African Americans underwent throughout the Harlem Renaissance. Locke dives into the specifics, analyzing social, political, and artistic changes. Ultimately Locke claims that the ‘New Negro’ is an African American that now has a new understanding of oneself and of it’s worth, racially and humanly. No longer do African Americans lack self respect or belittle themselves in comparison to other races. A vision of the ‘New Negro’ can be seen in works of art across Harlem during the Harlem Renaissance. Black poetry and texts elaborate on this new mindset that black people in America should hold.

The Harlem Renaissance was a cultural revival of African American culture based in Harlem, New York City. It was also known as ‘The New Negro Movement’, relating back to, and exactly quoting Alain Locke’s “The New Negro”. The movement includes former and new African American forms of expression through literature, music, and art. This revival follows a long period of African American cultural suppression, coming right after the Great Migration, along with the struggle for civil rights. Alaine Locke’s published anthology came out while this era was in its growth stage, but it had a direct impact on readers across the nation. It explains how African Americans deserve political and social change, and how civil rights movements could achieve these changes. The poems and writings in this anthology reflect real experiences and are voiced by real African American thoughts that request changes in the current social system. 

All the aspects that are used to describe the Harlem Renaissance are also very boldly present in “The New Negro”. Locke writes that “Harlem, I grant you, isn’t typical–but it is significant, it is prophetic. No sane observer, however sympathetic to the new trend, would contend that the great masses are articulate as yet, but they stir, they move, they are more than physically restless. The challenge of the new intellectuals among them is clear enough–the “race radicals” and realists who have broken with the old epoch of philanthropic guidance, sentimental appeal and protest.” In this excerpt he describes the renaissance and its works as restless and internally powerful. You can see this within all of the different art that has emerged from the Harlem Renaissance.

Sterling Brown’s “Cabaret” exemplifies clearly this aspect of restlessness and protest. His poem describes an environment in which black people work under white people, performing and dancing for them as they watch the entertainment. It also uptakes a new form of jazz poetry that expresses its ideas with new poetic methods. 3 different voices can be heard in this poem: a song being sung, a narrator describing the environment, and another voice talking about experiences from when they were in the delta. Brown uses lots of symbolism when describing the environment in the text to represent racial roles and discrimination in the country as a whole. Compared with the ‘New Negro’ ideology, Brown then protests that this is not how African Americans should be treated or how they should live their lives, and instead suggests a change in his country’s racial hierarchy.