New Negro Politics in the Jim Crow South

Claudrena N. Harold's New Negro Politics in the Jim Crow South is a study of the dynamic cultural and political developments among black southerners during the 1920s. Marcus Garvey and the Harlem Renaissance dominate the common narrative of this period, but Harold's work is a reminder that people other than Garvey carried the torch of radicalism and places other than Harlem were also centers of vibrant cultural life. “Southern New Negroes,” Harold argues, possessed “the same sense of confidence and urgency that drove many of their New York and Chicago counterparts” (p. 136). Harold identifies four key areas in which African American southerners were especially active in this period: the Garvey movement, electoral politics, trade unionism, and print media. Across seven broad-ranging chapters, this study explores how black southerners acted similarly to their better-known counterparts in Harlem. Chapter 4 presents a fascinating account of Universal Negro Improvement Association (Unia) activities in Louisiana and Virginia, but its shortcomings are emblematic of recurrent flaws within the book. Since the chapter relies mostly on the readily available Marcus Garvey Papers and Garvey's own periodical, Negro World, it mines no significant new primary sources and generally seems underresearched. Additionally, following up on important but unheralded rank-and-file Unia organizers such as Rev. James Walker Eason and Jacob Sloppy leads to a misplaced citation of the U.S. Census (p. 149n18)—a technical issue that prevents researchers from uncovering more about these locally significant activists

Aesthetics · Art · Art history · Harlem Renaissance · Literature · Narrative · Performance art · Period (music · Political radicalism · Political science · Politics · Sociology · American History and Culture · Colonialism, slavery, and trade · Gender Studies · History · Law · Race, History, and American Society