The essays and articles collected in this volume, by Locke’s Pulitzer Prize-winning biographer, are the result of that new attitude and the struggle to instill the New Negro aesthetics. In committing to that path, Locke asserted, one would uncover a “being-in-the-world” that was rich and bountiful in its creative possibilities, if Black people could turn off the noise of racism and see themselves for who they really are: a world of creative people who have transformed, powerfully and perpetually, the culture of wherever history or social forces landed them.