![]() ![]() Stewart’s majestic biography, also titled “The New Negro,” gives Locke the attention his life deserves, but the book is more than a catalog of this now largely overlooked philosopher and critic’s achievements. ![]() As Locke wrote in a draft of “The New Negro,” his seminal 1925 essay, “The question is no longer what whites think of the Negro but of what the Negro wants to do and what price he is willing to pay to do it.” ![]() Psychological devotion to self-determination would transcend white racism and render stereotypes of black people obsolete. Black Americans would only forge a new and authentic sense of themselves, he argued, by pursuing artistic excellence and insisting on physical mobility. “When a man has something to be conceited over,” he wrote, “I call it self-respect.” Unlike many of his colleagues and rivals in the black freedom struggle of the early 20th century, Locke, a trailblazer of the Harlem Renaissance, believed that art and the Great Migration, not political protest, were the keys to black progress. $39.95.Īlain LeRoy Locke’s drive to revolutionize black culture was fueled in no small part by his sense of self-importance. THE NEW NEGRO The Life of Alain Locke By Jeffrey C. ![]()
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