4 - Du Bois and the “New Negro”

Summary

During what was an exceptionally long and productive career as a man of letters, Du Bois was closely associated with only one literary and cultural movement: the “New Negro” movement, which is also more narrowly and more commonly referred to as the Harlem Renaissance. It is never easy to date the beginning and end of such a period of creative activity exactly, though there is a clear scholarly consensus that these particular labels refer to an unprecedented literary and cultural productivity by African American artists and intellectuals located largely in the 1920s and 1930s. David Levering Lewis proposes a more precise demarcation between 1917 and 1935, and divides this period into three distinct phases: the “bohemian renaissance” (1917-23), characterized by a growing body of writing on black American culture, society, and history produced mainly by white rather than African American authors; the “era of the Talented Tenth” (1924-6) which Lewis sees as a period in which black and white authors worked in collaboration under the strong leadership of organizations such as the National Association for the Advancement of Colored People (NAACP) and the National Urban League (NUL); and the “Negro Renaissance” (1926-35) in which a new generation of black writers came to the fore to develop new aesthetic and cultural agendas, and to challenge established political programs and attitudes.

If within this time frame we take the New Negro movement to refer to works of art and cultural reflection produced by black Americans, then Du Bois was, by measure of both quantity and quality, among the foremost contributors. Between 1917 and 1935 he published six books (see Further Reading), among them Dark Princess (1928), his second novel, and Black Reconstruction (1935), his groundbreaking reconsideration of the role of African Americans in the Civil War and post-Civil War period.