Alain Locke: “Enter the New Negro”

Questions for Further Study

• 1.: Describe the demographic trends in the United States that contributed to the Harlem Renaissance.
• 2.: According to Locke, what is “the New Negro”? What does he mean by this term? What characteristics describe the African American community during this era?
• 3.: Describe some of the racial stereotypes and racial attitudes that Locke believes have to be overcome.
• 4.: Locke and W. E. B. Du Bois were arguably the two foremost African American intellectuals in the early decades of the twentieth century. Compare this document with Du Bois’s The Souls of Black Folk (1903). Do they make any arguments that are similar? Do the two documents have different emphases? Explain.
• 5.: Similarly, compare this document with James Weldon Johnson’s “Harlem: The Culture Capital.” Do the two writers express attitudes toward the Harlem Renaissance that are fundamentally the same or different? Explain.
• 6.: Just three years earlier, Marcus Garvey published “The Principles of the Universal Negro Improvement Association.” What do you think Locke’s reaction to those principles was?