New Negro Voices in Virginia: Black Intellectual Leaders' and Hampton Institute's the Southern Workman during the Harlem Renaissance

With a particular focus on the 1920s, this paper examines six Southern Workman articles by influential African-American scholars who contributed to New Negro intellectual life: James Weldon Johnson, Carter G. Woodson, Alice Dunbar-Nelson, E. Franklin Frazier, Thomas L. Dabney and Howard Thurman. Though their careers diverged— they became academics, novelists, journalists, activists and a minister— during the 1920s the Workman featured prominently in their intellectual development, and is thus essential to any discussion of their lives and work. Further, this paper concludes that the Workman must be read in conversation with northern journals to gain a full understanding of New Negro intellectual thought.