1925 Alain Locke publishes The New Negro: An Interpretation, an anthology of fiction, poetry, and essays on the art and literature of what will come to be called the Harlem Renaissance. Locke, a philosopher and professor at Howard University, spent much of the decade debating the purpose of art with W.E.B. Du Bois. Du Bois contended that all art was propaganda; Locke believed that it was “a tap root of vigorous, flourishing living,” and that the creative explosion of the 1920s represented a new phase of Black life in America.
