Reproduction of the original.

Reproduction of the original.

Between 1877 and 1930 African American activists promoted an array of strategies for progress and power built around "racial destiny", the idea that black Americans formed a collective whose future existence would be determined by the actions of its members. Michele Mitchell examines the reproductive implications of "racial destiny".

Examines how generations of African Americans perceive, proclaim, and name the combined performance of race and class across genres.

Sheds new light on the racial etiquette of the South after the Civil War, examining what factors contributed to the unwritten rules of individual behavior for both white and black children. Simultaneous.

The Harlem Renaissance was the most influential single movement in African American literary history. The movement laid the groundwork for subsequent African American literature, and had an enormous impact on later black literature world-wide. In its attention to a wide range of genres and forms – from the roman à clef and the bildungsroman, to dance and book illustrations – this book seeks to encapsulate and analyze the eclecticism of Harlem Renaissance cultural expression. It aims to re-frame conventional ideas of the New Negro movement by presenting new readings of well-studied authors, such as Zora Neale Hurston and Langston Hughes, alongside analysis of topics, authors, and artists that deserve fuller treatment. An authoritative collection on the major writers and issues of the period, A History of the Harlem Renaissance takes stock of nearly a hundred years of scholarship and considers what the future augurs for the study of 'the New Negro'.