In the midst of vast cultural and political shifts in the early twentieth century, politicians and cultural observers variously hailed and decried the rise of the "New Negro." This phenomenon was most clearly manifest in the United States through the outpouring of Black arts and letters and social commentary known as the Harlem Renaissance.
Davarian L. Baldwin is the Paul E. Raether Distinguished Professor of American Studies at Trinity College. He is the author of Chicago’s New Negroes: Modernity, the Great Migration, and Black Urban Life.