Educating the New Negro: Teaching and Learning in African American Literature and Life

• In Event: Educating Black Youth: Libraries, Literature, and Clubs

Abstract

During the Harlem Renaissance/New Negro era, especially in the urban north, African Americans claimed new possibilities for cultural and political assertiveness and for far greater and more varied participation in the broad currents of modern society. Education played a crucial role in New Negro thought, and writers who were also educators played a key role in articulating New Negro educational visions. By examining the portrayal of schooling in Cane, Quicksand and other New Negro texts, the roots of that portrayal in the authors’ experience as students and teachers, its reception among black commentators, and its intersection with wider New Negro educational debates, this paper seeks to illuminate the evolution of educational ideas and ideals in education in African American thought.

Author

• Daniel Perlstein, University of California - Berkeley