Bitter Sweet Home

This was the culture
from which I sprang.
This was the terror
from which I fled.
-Richard Wright,
        Black Boy
    To introduce Part Two: Beginnings, in The Warmth of Other Suns Isabel Wilkerson develops a framework for the section by using a passage from Richard Wright’s book, Black Boy. In essence, this passage illuminates the spirit and mindset of the New Negro. It shows the ways the culture from the South was embedded within the African American experience but also the hardships of being an African American in the South. It complicates the narrative of the New Negro by illustrating the conflict of having the strong desire to leave the South but also coming to an understanding of parting ties with a place that has shaped their identity. To African Americans the South symbolized a bitter sweet home, in which they were not welcomed but had built an identity and culture in. Richard Wright dwells into this concept in depth, in the following poem.
    I was leaving the South
    To fling myself into the unknown....
    I was taking a part of the South
    To transplant in alien soil,
    To see if it could drink of new and cool rains,
    Bend in strange winds,
    Respond to the warmth of other suns
    And, perhaps, to bloom.
This poem, exemplifies the mindset and spirit of the New Negro. It explains how the New Negro attempted to take the culture from the South and plant it into a new environment (the North). Thus, the New Negro hoped by taking the culture from the South and planting it into the North, the conditions of their life may become better. While this demonstrates the Great Migration as fleeing oppression and economic disparity, it also adds in the element of a New Negro attitude. To best describe the New Negro and it’s relation to The Warmth of Other Suns, it is imperative to evaluate the essay of Alain Locke “The New Negro”.
    Alain Locke establishes the formation of the New Negro and challenging the notion of the Old Negro. He discusses how the Old Negro has been reduced to an object, a subject, and an issue for debate. Moreover, Locke states, “the mind of the Negro seems suddenly to have slipped from under the tyranny of social intimidation and to be shaking off the psychology of imitation and implied inferiority” which explains the ways in which African Americans had become psychologically oppressed. He expresses the shift from the Old Negro to the new Negro. The New Negro rejected stereotypical figures such as the Uncle Tom, Sambo, and Mammie. The New Negro possessed a new attitude and new spirit, that embraced the possibility for change. Locke concurs that, “the northern city centers is to be explained primarily in terms of a new vision of opportunity, of social and economic freedom”, exemplifying the nature of the Great Migration. The New Negro symbolized frustration, resistance, courage, and a vision for new possibilities. Although an inner conflict resonated in African Americans and their decision to leave the South and their origins, an understanding that they would keep their culture shaped by the South and place it in a better environment (the North) seemed to have been a common theme.