The Harlem Renaissance

In 1925, sociologist and critic Alain LEROY Locke coined the term "The New Negro" in reference to the huge amounts of literature and art coming from New York City's Harlem neighborhood. The New Negros were those African-Americans that participated in this unprecedented outburst of creative activity from 1920 until around 1930.

Many celebrated and quasi-famous artistic and literary free thinkers were functioning in their prime at that time. Urban philosopher Langston Hughes, poet Arna Bontemps and painter Palmer Hayden are just a few of the hundreds of artists and poets that came from and contributed through a small neighborhood in Manhattan. It was at this time and through these people that the "Back to Africa Movement" began. This movement, due to in no small part to the efforts of Marcus Garvey, embraced as it's own and reflected many of the prominent themes of the Harlem Renaissance.

Born in Jamaica in 1877, Marcus Garvey traveled to New York friendless and without employment. He rose to prominence as a streetside speaker and began to gain a considerable amount of influence in the African-American community by preaching a new kind of self-awareness. The black community in Harlem was coming into it's own and Garvey was on the leading edge of the "New Negro" or the change in the black identity. The idea that African-Americans were alienated from the outset by the rest of the country and that they were indeed a race unto themselves. The complacency and subjugation of slavery were beginning to change into a sense of purpose and expression unlike anything that the African-American community had experienced to date was showing itself. Led by Garvey and other prominent leaders such as W.E.B. DuBois, the community began to rise up and express themselves in literature, poetry and art.