There can be no doubt that the emergence of the Negro writer in the post-war period stemmed, in part, from the fact that he was inclined to exploit the opportunity to write about himself. It was more than that, however. The movement that has variously been called the 'Harlem Renaissance,' the 'Black Renaissance,' and the 'New Negro Movement' was essentially a part of the growing interest of American literary circles in the immediate and pressing social and economic problems. This growing interest coincided with two developments in Negro life that fostered the growth of the New Negro Movement. These two factors, the keener realization of injustice and the improvement of the capacity for expression, produced a crop of Negro writers who constituted the 'Harlem Renaissance.' The literature of the Harlem Renaissance was, for the most part, the work of a race-conscious group. Through poetry, prose, and song, the writers cried out against social and economic wrongs. They protested against segregation and lynching. They demanded higher wages, shorter hours, and better conditions of work. They stood for full social equality and first-class citizenship. The new vision of social and economic freedom which they had did not force them to embrace the several foreign ideologies that sought to sink their roots in some American groups during the period. The writers of the Harlem Renaissance, bitter and cynical as some of them were, gave little attention to the propaganda of the socialists and communists. The editor of the Messenger ventured the opinion that the New Negro was the 'product of the same world-wide forces that have brought into being the great liberal and radical movements that are now seizing the reins of power in all the civilized countries of the world.' Such forces may have produced the New Negro, but the more articulate of the group did not resort to advocating the type of political action that would have subverted American constitutional government. Indeed, the writers of the Harlem Renaissance were protesting its inefficient operation. In this approach they proved as characteristically American as any writers of the period. Like his contemporaries, the Negro writer was merely becoming more aware of America's pressing problems and like the others, he was willing to use his art, not only to contribute to the great body of American culture but to improve the culture of which he was a part. It seems possible, moreover, for the historian to assign to the Negro writer a role that he did not assume. There were doubtless many who were not immediately concerned with the injustices heaped on the Negro. Some contrived their poems, novels, and songs merely for the sake of art, while others took up their pens to escape the sordid aspects of their writings, it is because the writings flow out of their individual and group experiences. This is not to say that such writings were not effective as protest literature, but rather that not all the authors were conscious crusaders for a better world. As a matter of fact, it was this detachment, this objectivity, that made it possible for many of the writers of the Harlem Renaissance to achieve a mobility of expression and a poignancy of feeling in their writings that placed them among the masters of recent American literature. The author is primarily concerned with