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Why did Harlem Renaissance writers disagree about the idea of a distinct Negro art?

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Phillis Wheatley's first book of poetry — African American literature Frontispiece and title page of *Poems on Various Subjects, Religious and Moral* (1773) by Phillis Wheatley, the first Black woman to become a poet of note in the United States. The portrait on which the frontispiece's engraving is based is often attributed to Scipio Moorhead, an Black artist and writer who, like Wheatley, was enslaved and living in Boston.

During the Harlem Renaissance, writers and intellectuals held conflicting views regarding the development of a distinct "Negro art," a debate that was central to the movement's significance.1

Proponents, such as Alain Locke, advocated for a movement modeled after the Irish literary renaissance, believing Black artists should cultivate unique aesthetic tendencies rooted in African American folk sources and African traditions. Langston Hughes similarly championed a confident, uniquely Black literature that expressed the "individual dark-skinned" self without regard for white approval.12

Conversely, others were deeply skeptical. The satirist George Schuyler famously dismissed the concept of "Negro art" as "hokum" artificially manufactured by white decadents. Furthermore, figures like W.E.B. Du Bois expressed concern that the focus on a distinct "Negro" aesthetic—particularly when encouraged by white patronage—could lead Black authors into empty aestheticism or harmful, salacious modes of primitivism that reinforced damaging stereotypes. This tension between artistic self-expression and the potential for exploitation remained a defining characteristic of the era.13