The New Negro: Baldwin, Locke and Similarities

       Baldwins interpretation of the New Negro differs from Alain Locke's in that he expands the narrow definition or expectation set by Alain Locke.  To Baldwin, the New Negro was as ordinary as the common man but could be as extraordinary as any artist, author, or "talent tenth" negro described by W.E.B. DuBois. Baldwin describes the migration of black from the South to Chicago as a fresh and ready to explore new opportunities and ventures. Unlike Locke, Baldwin gave voice to the common people, while Locke who focused on blacks that studied the arts and other prestigious things and carried the view that movers and shakers of the race would not be common people.

  

       Although they had their different outlooks on negroes and who would be the movers and shakers of the race, they did agree that negroes who threatened and challenged the racial hierarchy of the time, were what they determined to be "new negroes". Baldwin’s approach expanded the views of Locke to include any negro that could alter and threaten the racial hierarchy of the time. Jack Johnson represented that negro Baldwin described in that he counter the idea that black men were physically inferior to white men. Also, his inclusion of Madame C.J. Walker as someone who embodied the new negro, even though beauty culture was seen as contradictory to what the new negro was supposed to represent