over that of the colonial rulers. Specifically, they
sought to affirm a more positive use of the term
nègre and objected to the assimilation of blacks
into French culture. Collectively, they were in-
terested in identifying, defining, celebrating, and
instituting a black African aesthetic that spoke to
the needs of blacks and reflected a unique and dis-
tinctive black African culture, rather than blindly
embracing the culture of their colonial rulers.
The three men founded several journals, includ-
ing La Revue du monde noir (The journal of the
black world), L’Étudiant noir (The black student),
and Presénce African, to provide an arena for open
intellectual debate about the significance of this
movement. In 1947 Damas published an anthol-
ogy of poetry from the French colonies, and in
the following year Senghor published a similar
collection, Anthologie de la nouvelle poesie Negre
et malgache.
During the First International Conference on
Negro Artists and Writers, held in Paris in 1956,
the Senegalese intellectual Alioune Diop confirmed
the continued emphasis on the central mission of
this movement:
to liberate or de-Westernize the African music
and artThrough this conference and other literary venues,
the leading architects of the Negritude movement
often engaged in open debate with African-Amer-
ican writers, including RICHARD WRIGHT, JAMES
BALDWIN, and RALPH ELLISON. By the late 1960s it
was possible to identify the BLACK ARTS MOVEMENT
led by AMIRI BARAKA and HAKI MADHUBUTI as the
spiritual sister not only of the BLACK POWER move-
ment but also of the Negritude movement.
BIBLIOGRAPHY
Chapman, Abraham. “Concepts of the Black Aesthet-
ics in Contemporary Black Literature.” In The
Black Writer in Africa and the Americas, edited by
Lloyd Brown, 11–44. Los Angeles: Hennessey &
Ingalls, 1973.
Ikonné, Chidi. From DuBois to VanVechten, The
Early New Negro Literature, 1903–1926. Westport,
Conn.: Greenwood, 1981.
Nesbitt, Nick. “Negritude.” African Writers Index.
Available online. URL: http://www.geocities.com/afri-
canwriters/Negritude.html. Accessed October 18,
2006.
Jeffrey RatcliffeNegro Caravan: Writings by Negro Writ-
ers, The Sterling A. Brown, Arthur P.
Davis, and Ulysses Lee, eds. (1941)
Along with The NEW NEGRO: AN INTERPRETATION
(1925), edited by ALAIN LOCKE, The Negro Caravan
and its editors stand in the vanguard of pioneering
works and scholars that sought not merely to call
attention to the existence of respectable and valu-
able works by African-American writers but also
to validate, in the process, the voices of African-
American writers who had successfully established
a credible African-American literary tradition that
is a fundamental part of American literature.
Noting the continued popularity of African-
American subjects and characters in the works
of white writers, from Harriet Beecher Stowe and
Thomas Page to Margaret Mitchell, Edward Shel-
ton, and Vernon Duke, the editors wrote, “White
authors, basing their interpretations [of African
Americans] on necessarily limited knowledge
derived from an outside view, run the risk of ste-
reotyping [them].” Respectfully disagreeing with
publishers who maintained that white authors
“know the Negro best,” the editors expressed their
belief that the “inside view” of black writers and
critics “is more likely to make possible the essen-
tial truth [about black life] than the ‘outside view.’ ”
The editors argued, “When the Negro artist has
expressed his own people, he has almost always re-
futed, or differed from, or at least complicated the
simpler patterns of white interpretation.”
Claiming that “The record of the Negro author
extends well over a century and a half,” the editors
objected to having these works placed under the
simple rubric of “Negro literature.” Black writers,
they wrote, ask that their works be judged “with-
out sentimental allowances”; they concluded, “Lit-
erature by Negro authors about Negro experience
is a literature in process and like all such literature392 Negro Caravan: Writings by Negro Writers, The