Welcome to Encyclopædia Britannica's Guide to Black History
Print Article

African American literature

The Harlem Renaissance
Photograph:Dust jacket by the African American artist Aaron Douglas for Claude McKay's autobiography, A …
Dust jacket by the African American artist Aaron Douglas for Claude McKay's autobiography, A …
Between the Covers Rare Books, Merchantville, NJ

The phenomenon known as the Harlem Renaissance represented the flowering in literature and art of the New Negro movement of the 1920s, epitomized in The New Negro (1925), an anthology edited by Alain Locke that featured the early work of some of the most gifted Harlem Renaissance writers, including the poets Countee Cullen, Langston Hughes, and Claude McKay and the novelists Rudolph Fisher, Zora Neale Hurston, and Jean Toomer. The “New Negro,” Locke announced, differed from the “Old Negro” in assertiveness and self-confidence, which led New Negro writers to question traditional “white” aesthetic standards, to eschew parochialism and propaganda, and to cultivate personal self-expression, racial pride, and literary experimentation. Spurred by an unprecedented receptivity to black writing on the part of major American magazines, book publishers, and white patrons, the literary vanguard of the Harlem Renaissance enjoyed critical favour and financial rewards that lasted, at least for a few, until well into the Great Depression of the 1930s.

Back to top |
Contents of this article:
Photos
© 2008 Encyclopædia Britannica, Inc.