Locke, Baldwin, and the "New Negro"

Alain Locke defines the concept of the “New Negro” as a cultural and social transformation of African Americans during the Great Migration from the rural south to the industrial north.  The Harlem Renaissance, as it is most commonly referred to, was the time period specifically premised on the transformations of the “inner and outer life of the Negro in America;” the “internal world of the Negro mind and spirit” (xxv).  The “New Negro,” according to Locke, was a new mindset, a new way of celebration and racial pride.  Most importantly, it was characterized by self-expression for self-determination.  It was a revolution of the mind and soul, and for the first time it was produced by African Americans, about African Americans.  The “New Negro” was a shift from production about the Black body and mind by White society and White elite, to one produced solely by the subject.

 Locke exposed the mindset of the “New Negro” through his volume of artistic expression, consisting of poems, literature, artwork, and song.  Through these methods, oppressed African Americans were able to release themselves for the shackles that had bound them to the bottom of the socially constructed racialized hierarchy.  They were able to share their stories, their hopes, and their dreams of escaping the injustices of the south, and creating a new and prosperous life in the north.  The work exemplified the creative abilities of the Black population, illustrated and gave life to the struggles of the Black experience in a racist nation, and highlighted the newly uncovered idea of racial pride and dignity. 

Baldwin’s interpretation of the New Negro is one that broadens the narrow scope of the ever-popular understanding of artistic production and expression through poetry, literature, and song. Although Baldwin acknowledges the impact of Locke’s work, and the importance of artistic expression in the discovery of this new ideology and mind shift, he argues that the “New Negro” encompassed much more than the artistic expression of a select few.  Baldwin’s interpretation of the “New Negro” focuses on the “mass consumer marketplace as a crucial site of intellectual life” (5).  Baldwin argues that by solely referring to the “New Negro” as the producers of artistic expression and literary intellectuals, we are ignoring the history of “the folk,” who were responsible for crafting “ideas that would forever alter the course and shape of the modern world” (5).  Baldwin focuses on the black marketplace in Chicago, “the Black metropolis,” as a means for black ideas and products to reach mainstream society (although there were still severe limitations) thus fostering a new Black identity that was demanding of respect.   

Contrary to Locke’s interpretation, Baldwin argues that, “the overt desire for autonomous Black cultural production through economic control, and specifically through consumer strategies” was the most “salient aspect of Chicago’s “New Negro” consciousness (7).  This meant that the ultimate goal was to have Black men and women working for Black employers and Black owned businesses, thus establishing the race as competitive cultural producers.  He uses the example of newspaper and printing production as a means for black thought and ideologies to reach the masses, which allowed for African Americans to take part in a new awakening and a new self-consciousness that fostered desires and hopes for the future.  He also discussed the role of women and beauty culture as a means to create a new and respectable identity for the Black woman.  By taking part in beauty culture, they defied hegemonic standards of domestic work as the main role of Black women as well as the notion of black women being intellectually inferior, incapable, and sexually promiscuous, deeming them not worthy of respect.  It allowed for the creation of a specific space for Black women to become entrepreneurial businesswomen, most noted Madam C.J. Walker, thus creating a sense of self-respect and establishment, while simultaneously creating a newly confident and self-respected/able black woman.                   

            Although the specificities of whom personified the concept of the “New Negro” differs between Alain Locke and Davarian Baldwin, there are central elements that remain consistent within their respective perspectives.  Regardless of methodology, both scholars’ concepts of the “New Negro” are based on the idea of racial empowerment, self-determination, and the adaptation of a Black voice.  I believe that the two perspectives go hand in hand, and compliment each other rather well.  Baldwin mentions in the beginning of his book that Locke’s perspective focuses narrowly on those who were capable of producing artistic expression, something not everyone had a particular niche for.  Thus he argues, when we focus on only this aspect, many of the entrepreneurial Black men and woman are disregarded.  The entrepreneurs and business savvy African Americans, in my mind, gave life to the poems, stories, and songs that many of the artists during the Harlem Renaissance were alluding to.  The poems and stories produced during this time period, and compiled into the “New Negro” text by Locke, are testaments to the several different, but at the root, essentially the same struggles of all African Americans struggling against racial oppression, injustice, and inequality in the United States. 

Although there may be disagreements with regards to who the “New Negro” was, it is clear what it was.  It was an idea of self-respect and racial pride.  The “New Negro” was a new identity, a new way of looking at the potential of the Black race to produce, enlighten, and compete equitably amongst American society.  It challenged the pre-conceived notions of race and the Black body and mind.  It allowed for Black individuals to recognize the potential in themselves and their community, thus fostering a powerful sense of racial pride.  It was reclamation of the dignity that had been unrightfully snatched from them hundreds of years before.   

Lady, Lady Ida Mae

While reading the sections on Ida Mae Brandon Gladney in The Warmth of Other Suns, I found myself mentally referring back to the poem entitled "Lady, Lady" by Anne Spencer.  Ida Mae embodied the words echoed by Spencer, and her story filled in the lines between each stanza.  This was especially clear when reading the excerpt on Ida Mae when she worked as a sharecropper with her husband in Chicksaw County, Mississippi in 1929.  The title of the chapter, A Burdensome Labor, indicates the tone of the story that is to follow.  Wilkerson illustrates the painful labor in which Mae and her husband must endure while sharecropping for Mr. Edd.  Resonating with the title of the book, she states that the sun often cooked the backs of Ida and her husband while they picked cotton, from sun up to sun down.  The sun naturally darkens the skin, which alludes to the line in which Spencer observes the dark color of the Lady's face, which is as "dark as night withholding a star."  The woman in Spencer's poem could perhaps be one who has worked the fields for years as a cotton picker, much like Ida, and whose skin has been exposed to the radiating and scorching Mississippi heat.

The line that caught my eye the most, and which I felt so strongly referenced Spencer's poem was, "The hands got cramped from the repetitive motion of picking, the fingers fairly locked in place and callused from the pricks of the barbed, five-pointed cockleburs that cupped each precious boll."  Ida's life experiences working as a sharecropper explains the "twisted, awry" hands that resemble so closely "crumpled roots."  When we were doing a close reading of this specific poem in class, we spoke of the many different causes of her hands being "bleached poor white."  Originally I had spoken about how I believed this could mean that her hands were white because her labor literally belonged to the white man.  The fruits bore from her rigorous work belonged to her plantation owner.  I still believe this to be true, and I find it rather ironic that Ida's job is a cotton picker.  In this specific instance, her hands are not bleached poor white because of washing, but could perhaps be white of cotton.  The cotton that caused her hands to cramp had "bleached" her hands white; again her labor did not belong to her, her hands did not belong to her.

The labor was so rigorous, that often times Ida would faint in the middle of the fields.  Ida and her husband were required to do exactly the same amount of work in the fields, speaking to the line in Spencer's poem when she states, "you had borne so long the yoke of men." I found it interesting however, that Wilkerson questions if Ida really was incapable of picking cotton at a quick pace, or if in fact she was silently resisting the oppression of the sharecropping system, and the larger system of inequality that has plagued the Black race in the United States.  In fact, early in the book Wilkerson states that Ida was good at doing things men did, and she very much enjoyed it.  This isolated form of resistance was something that was not uncommon; as Wilkerson shares, "For now the people resisted in silent, everyday rebellions...each one fought in isolation and unbeknownst to the others."  This statement truly attests to the courage that many Black sharecroppers had in the face of such brutal repression.

The final stanza of the poem, which speaks about the Lady's heart, also spoke of Ida's story.  Spencer states that the Lady's heart, regardless of her external stoic image, were altared by "the tongues of flame the ancients knew."  This to me, means that inside of her was a passion and a fire for justice, and that the work she has done thus far, will not be in vain.  The silent resistance of Ida as well as countless slaves and sharecroppers throughout history, will soon be noticed and heard.  This became clear when Wilkerson states that the silent rebellions so many participated in would "build up to a storm at midcentury," clearly alluding to the Civil Rights Movement that was to follow.

Ida Mae is a testament to The New Negro, and the spirit and ideology that embodies the term.  She and her husband realized that the brutality endured by sharecropping was not just, and therefore decided that they were going to defy the system.  They began to see themselves as deserving of a better life, and decided to flee Mississippi, and go North.  This new understanding of self and pride was something that Wilkerson said, was evident in Ida from a very early age.  She states that when Ida Mae detested her birth name, and demanded others to refer to her as "Ida Mae," "it was an early indication that she could think for herself when she chose to."  Fleeing Mississippi for a better life was the acting out that Spencer's poem refers to in the final stanza.  The passionate flames engulfed Ida's soul, and she made the decision to act on her feelings.