The New Negro: an Interpretation

This landmark anthology of fiction, poetry, essays, drama, and illustration is widely regarded as the key text of the Harlem Renaissance, collecting the works of creative leaders into one of the most powerful and thought-provoking books of this historic movement. Among its many social and political observations, The New Negro champions self-expression through art and culture, as well as the demand for civil rights, as drivers of changing African American identity in the 1920s. Edited by the "dean" of the Harlem Renaissance and the first African American Rhodes Scholar, Alain Locke, the book begins with his titular essay, "The New Negro." Contributors include Langston Hughes, Zora Neale Hurston, Claude McKay, Jean Toomer, James Weldon Johnson, W. E. B. Du Bois, and many other luminaries.