Our third student work feature for Black Histories and Futures Month is "The First World War and the New Negro," written by Andrea Douglas in HIST 275: The African American Experience, taught by Dr. Laila Haidarali.
Douglas explains:
The New Negro Movement defines a period in early 20th century African American history in which there was a spirit of regeneration among Black Americans, as expressed through visual art, literature, poetry, theatre, music, Black organizations, political protests, demonstrations, and more.1 As a movement and political identity, the New Negro characterized itself through being modern, progress-oriented, and vocal in race pride, particularly through the very use of the term negro, which had for so long been weaponized against African Americans to be derogatory and which was now being reclaimed as a proud assertion of race, just one generation removed from slavery. The New Negro Movement was outspoken in its agitation for dignity and refusal to acquiesce to the racial discrimination of Jim Crow, which was even more glaringly bigoted in the wake of the First World War, which had espoused values of democracy.
This paper will argue that the most significant factor accounting for the rise of the New Negro was the First World War. Not only did the ‘war to end all wars’ promise “dramatic social transformation and political change,” it also championed values like democracy, liberty, and equality, all of which sounded increasingly hollow to the ears of Black war veterans who returned to the United States to find their social and political conditions unchanged. In the words of Harry Haywood, an African American war veteran “The war and the riots of the ‘Red Summer’ of 1919 left me bitter and frustrated. I felt that I could never again adjust to the situation of Black inequality."
Read Douglas' full paper here.
In honour of Black Histories and Futures Month, the Department of History is featuring undergraduate student research that addresses Black histories, Black cultures, and Black experiences. Throughout the month of February, we will post the projects deemed to be the strongest by our faculty. The selected papers were produced for courses in the Department of History.
We hope you enjoy reading our students’ work! Learn more about events on campus and in Kingston celebrating Black Histories and Futures Month here.
