I am almost finished writing the introduction to my latest work that I will call “The New Negro”. The excitement I feel about this anthology is almost overwhelming. I’m so grateful to all of those that contributed to the work, Langston Hughes, Aaron Douglas and many others. I wonder if they fully realize the importance of what is going on here in Harlem through their work. Do they understand as I do the power of the Arts to change how a race is perceived by others and most important how a race sees itself? I don’t mean through the use of propaganda for, unlike my colleague W.E.B. Dubois, I don’t believe propaganda can or will affect any change because it is one-sided and leaves no room for debate or discussion. No, it is the aesthetic that leads us to Beauty. To see this aesthetic released in all forms of the Arts here in this place at this time is something that cannot not be surpassed. I’ve studied at Harvard and Oxford and been named the first African American Rhodes Scholar but none of that surpasses this experience as I witness the reshaping of our race based on common consciousness rather than common condition.
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The Brown Madonna Frontispiece illustration in a first-edition copy of The New Negro: An Interpretation, Alain Locke, editor, New York: Albert and Boni, 1925 |
I’m choosing The Brown Madonna as my front piece illustration and even though I realize just how controversial this piece is, jarring the sensibilities of whites and even some of my Negro Christian friends, it’s a message must be heard. The message is quite different than the one portrayed by “Mammy” and other such detrimental images of Negros throughout the South. The years I spent touring the South opened my eyes even more to the near destruction of the soul of my race that was done by slavery. There’s a new birth of the soul occurring here in Harlem and I feel I must use this image that represents so well what’s happening.
As a free born Negro growing up in the North, I experienced the racism seeped so deeply in America, (why with all my credentials, I couldn’t even get a teaching position in a White school) but still what I experienced was nothing like that of the Negro in the rural South. That is why I feel this urbanization of the Negro is so crucial. This migration to the city, Harlem, has exploded. A new place has been created for the New Negro and by New Negro I mean the diverse sectors among people of color, African, West Indian, Negro American of the North and South, the middle class and the poor, the educated and uneducated.
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Dust Jacket for The New Negro: An Interpretation, 1925 Printed paper mounted on board 9 x 13 in. Winold Reiss Partnership |
The success and growth of Harlem will test my ideas of Cultural Pluralism. Who knows what the future holds but I hope that our work here in Harlem today will set the pace for a future generation that will maintain its culture while participating and contributing in all areas of the larger society and that Beauty will never be removed from the aesthetic of their art, no matter the form.
-Alain Leroy Locke
Article written by:
Dale Sharpe Jenkins
University of Texas at Arlington
US History 1312
Feb 20 2011
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Works Cited:
2. The Great Debate: W.E.B. Du Bois vs. Alain Locke on the Aesthetic; Philosphia Africana [1539-8250] yr: 2004 vol:7 iss: 1pg:15
3. Alain Locke, “The New Negro,” introduction to The New Negro, edited by Alain Locke (New York: Athenium, 1968), 3-16
