Additional Information
There can be no doubt that the
emergence of the
Negro writer in the post-war period
stemmed, in
part, from the fact that he was
inclined to exploit
the opportunity to write about
himself. It was more
5
than that, however. The movement that
has variously
been called the "Harlem
Renaissance," the
"Black Renaissance," and
the "New Negro Movement"
was essentially a part of the growing
interest
of American literary circles in the
immediate and
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pressing social and economic
problems. This growing
interest coincided with two
developments in
Negro life that fostered the growth
of the New
Negro Movement. These two factors,
the keener
realization of injustice and the
improvement of the
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capacity for expression, produced a
crop of Negro
writers who constituted the
"Harlem Renaissance."
The
literature of the Harlem Renaissance was,
for the most part, the work of a
race-conscious
group. Through poetry, prose, and
song, the writers
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cried out against social and economic
wrongs.
They protested against segregation
and lynching.
They demanded higher wages, shorter
hours, and
better conditions of work. They stood
for full
social equality and first-class
citizenship. The new
25
vision of social and economic freedom
which they
had did not force them to embrace the
several foreign
ideologies that sought to sink their
roots in
some American groups during the
period.
The writers of the Harlem
Renaissance, bitter
30
and cynical as some of them were,
gave little attention
to the propaganda of the socialists
and communists.
The editor of the Messenger ventured
the
opinion that the New Negro was the
"product of the
same world-wide forces that have
brought into
35
being the great liberal and radical
movements that
are now seizing the reins of power in
all the civilized
countries of the world." Such
forces may
have produced the New Negro, but the
more articulate
of the group did not resort to
advocating the
40
type of political action that would
have subverted
American constitutional government.
Indeed, the
writers of the Harlem Renaissance
were not so
much revolting against the system as
they were
protesting its inefficient operation.
In this approach
45
they proved as characteristically
American as any
writers of the period. Like his
contemporaries, the
Negro writer was merely becoming more
aware of
America's pressing problems; and like
the others,
he was willing to use his art, not
only to contribute
50
to the great body of American culture
but to
improve the culture of which he was a
part.
It seems possible, moreover, for the
historian to
assign to the Negro writer a role
that he did not
assume. There were doubtless many who
were not
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immediately concerned with the
injustices heaped
on the Negro. Some contrived their
poems, novels,
and songs merely for the sake of art,
while others
took up their pens to escape the
sordid aspects of
their existence. If there is an
element of race in
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their writings, it is because the
writings flow out of
their individual and group
experiences. This is not ,
to say that such writings were not
effective as pro-
test literature, but rather that not
all the authors
were conscious crusaders for a better
world. As a
65
matter of fact, it was this
detachment, this objectivity,
that made it possible for many of the
writers of
the Harlem Renaissance to achieve a
nobility of
expression and a poignancy of feeling
in their writings
that placed them among the masters of
recent
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American literature.