The Harlem Renaissance :: The Black Intelligencia

During the Harlem Renaissance a new feeling of racial pride emerged in the Black Intelligencia. The Black Intelligencia consisted of African-American writers, poets, philosophers, historians, and artists whose expertise conveyed five central themes according to Sterling Brown, a writer of that time: â€Å"1) Africa as a source of race pride, 2) Black American heroes 3) racial political propaganda, 4) the â€Å"Black folk† tradition, and 5) candid self-revelation.† Two of the main people responsible for this new consciousness were W.E.B. Du Bois and Alain Locke. Du Bois laid a foundation for this dawn of racial pride in his essays. Locke took Du Bois’ initial idea one step further with his writings and aiding younger writers and artists that appeared during the Harlem Renaissance. Langston Hughes was one of the writers that Locke mentored. Hughes was a devote believer of exhibiting pride in the Black race; this theme was often exhibited in his writing. These three men have each contributed and advanced the sentiment of racial pride in their own unique way during the Harlem Renaissance. In order to fully understand the contributions of W.E.B. Du Bois, Alain Locke, and Langston Hughes it is imperative to know their backgrounds. William Edward Burghardt Du Bois was born on February 23rd, 1868, in Great Barrington, Massachusetts. He enrolled at Fisk University in Nashville, Tennessee where he was an editor for the school newspaper. Du Bois was admitted to Harvard in 1888, and in 1891 he received his M.A. in History. After Harvard, Du Bois traveled to Europe and studied in Berlin for a year. In 1894, he went to Wilberforce University and worked as a Professor of Classics. In 1895, Du Bois acquired his Ph.D. from Harvard thus becoming the first African-American to earn a doctorate. The following year Du Bois married Nina Gomer. In 1897, unable to find an academic position anywhere in the North, Du Bois and his new wife moved to Georgia where Du Bois taught at Atlanta University for over a decade. They had two children together: a son named Burghardt Gomer, who died when he was two years old, and a daughter, NinaYolande. Between the years of 1897 and 1914 while Du Bois was a professor at Atlanta University he published sixteen research monographs analyzing the sociological conditions of African-Americans in America. He also published The Philadelphia Negro, a Sociological Study in 1899, the first case study done in the United States about an African-American community.