New Negro Renaissance

Formerly known as the “Harlem Renaissance,” the New Negro Renaissance was an era of cultural and political foment, exhilaration, and self-­generated “opportunity” among people of African descent as they gathered, through immigration and migration, in the world’s metropoles—­New York City, Chicago, Los Angeles, Washington, DC, London, Paris, even Tokyo—­in the decades leading up to and following World War I and continuing through World War II. The generation of African Americans and Afro-­Caribbean immigrants who came of age in this period proudly branded themselves “New Negroes,” signaling their modern, self-­determined distinction from the docility and dependence on white benefactors they saw in their parents’ and grandparents’ generations.