Sanderson holds a master of fine arts degree in fiction writing and is an independent writer. In this essay, Sanderson looks at how the Harlem Renaissance writers succeeded in creating a literature of pioneering.

The literature of the Harlem Renaissance was produced by a generation of writers steeped in ideas illuminated most clearly by Howard University philosophy professor and intellectual Alain Locke. Locke first referred to the concept of the New Negro in an article in the March 1925 issue of Survey Graphic, a special issue of the journal entitled Harlem: Mecca of the New Negro.

In one of the issue's articles, which he expanded later that year into the introduction for his anthology of the best African-American writing, The New Negro: An Interpretation, Locke defines the New Negro as one who has thrown off the ageworn stereotypes of the subservient and docile black. For generations of white...