The Birth of the New Negro

Chapter 4 explores how the idea of the New Negro challenged anti-Black images circulating in American society. New Negroes were young, educated, culturally sophisticated, and middle-class. Gates traces the roots of the concept to the late 19th century, arguing that it developed in response to the collapse of Reconstruction and the rise of racist Redemption policies. Segregation became law during Jim Crow. Social customs reinforced these laws, as did vigilantism. By 1900, the gains represented by the 13th, 14th, and 15th Amendments had almost entirely disappeared. Campaigns of violence and intimidation drastically reduced the number of Black voters. The period also saw the rise of sharecropping and convict leasing, new forms of enslavement that indebted Black tenants to white landowners and forced Black people to work as punishment for their crimes. Black people responded by forming their own social and cultural institutions. A class of Black intellectuals, artists, and activists emerged, deepening existing class divisions in the Black community.

“The Politics of Respectability”

Drawing on Evelyn Brooks Higginbotham’s idea of “the politics of respectability,” Gates argues that New Negros tried to differentiate themselves from Old Negroes by adopting white Victorian social and moral values.