Langston Hughes Democracy: The New Negro Movement

From the 1920’s to the 1930’s were a time of great social change in America, especially when related to race and racial identity. This time period is known as the New Negro Movement, led by Hubert Harrison, Matthew Kotleski, Alaine Locke, and Wallace Thurman. Artist such as Langston Hughes and Archibald Motley promoted the goals of Black Americans through their artwork. The Great Migration, the movement of about five million Black people from southern America to Northern and Western America from 1915 to 1920, kick-started the modernization of the African-American identity. The motives for this migration were economic, many African-Americans in the South wanted to escape the oppressive economic conditions they faced continuously, and they followed the promise of economic opportunities in the factories of the North and West, opened by World War I (Hist201, 2015). During World War the gap between Black and White America widened, the treatment of …show more content…
The speakers represents the shift in mentality Africans Americans had during the Harlem Renaissance and the New Negro Movement, by questioning the fundamentals of American democracy because everyone is not free essentially. They believe that they must fight for their freedom like W.E.B. DuBois advocated for, instead of wait for change to come like Booker T. Washington. The speaker believes that freedom from Jim Crow Laws and segregation will not come through “compromise and fear,” that is the way of the old negro, ex-slave.” The new “negro” symbolizes a person that is outspoken advocate against a white supremacist society. Hughes embodies the ideologies of the New Negro Movement’s need for social justice through the speaker having the courage to challenge the norms of society because they can be victims of violence from white