Essay Sample on Modernity and the New Negro Movement

Introduction

New Negro is a popularized term that unfolded during the Harlem Renaissance, and it entailed the advocacy of dignity and refusal to yield to the exercises of Jim Crow ethnic segregation. The new negro movement refers to a time of artistic design and modelling whose primary purpose is to reconstruct the image of the black people in their minds and those of whites too (Gellman, 2018). During the 19th century, race pride was vastly used in political self-expression among the black people but later found a new meaning in the definition of poetry, journalism, paintings, and music among other forms of art. Some of the common themes within the movement included the black identity, the influence of slavery, and the consequences of institutional racism. The primary goal of this essay is to discuss modernity and the New Negro movement.

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During the time of the movement's establishment, American art was vastly composed of racially charged images of the black color. All the pictures with individuals of African descent had negative representations, for instance, the portraits with exaggerated features and depicted the blacks exercising their primitive activities such as wild dancing. The New Negro movement was established approximately three decades after the Emancipation Proclamation was signed (Gellman, 2018). The campaign had the goal of reframing the image of Africans in the American view and imagination as well as retrieving their identities out of slavery. The author of the Cleveland Gazette described the New Negroes as a class of African Americans who had elevated themselves since the war and equipped themselves with education and money.

The upper-class black society sharply contrasted the conditions they were under while enslaved. The contrast was visualized by famous artists like W.E. Dubois who created several portraits to represent the birth and rise of the identity. The pictures of the blacks depicted confidence, and the shoulders of the subjects were broad and strong to signify their sense of belonging (Locke, 1997). Direct eye contact of the subjects symbolized self-awareness of being looked at by the viewers. With the attributes depicted through the portraits, the blacks presented themselves in authenticity without minding other people's expectations.

One of the most significant features of the movement was the dressing style of both women and men. Dressing sophistically was a sign of wealth and having great self-care. With the new development explained above, the pictures on African portraits transformed and included ornaments such as feathers and ruffles (Locke, 1997). Clothing was also segregated to signify the gender roles as maintained by the American materialistic societies. The new kind of clothing allowed the people of African descent to assimilate into the middle and upper classes of the Americans.

During the Harlem Renaissance, the new modernism presented by the Negros presented both optimism and despair at the same time. The culmination of World War I and collapse of the Ottoman empire signified the birth of African American modernism in which new ideas were born, and artistic communities of the Negroes fully participated (Powell & Powell, 2002).

Conclusion

In conclusion, the New Negro movement was a period of transformation of the social upheaval of the black culture which was incorporated in the fields of painting and art in the nineteenth century. The movement's primary goal was to put more emphasis on black cultural themes rather than their racial identity. Many works of art were also created to demonstrate the transformation explained above.

References

Gellman, E. S. (2018). New Negro Politics in the Jim Crow South, by Claudrena N. Harold.

Locke, A. (Ed.). (1997). The new negro. Simon and Schuster.

Powell, R. J., & Powell, R. J. (2002). Black art: A cultural history (p. 41). London: Thames & Hudson.