In Harlem: Mecca of the New Negro, non-fiction essays about Harlem and the black experience are placed side-by-side with imaginative and fictive work like the journal’s many poems and illustrations. Both kinds of work are given equal importance on the page, serving the common goal of enlightening the reader on “modern” black life in Harlem. Though creative works and non-fiction works are often placed into separate categories, with non-fiction seen as more “true” and superior, Harlem: Mecca of the New Negro shows how they can work in tandem. But why was imagination and fiction so important to a community that had so many urgent real-life struggles to face? Why should made-up works like poems and illustrations be necessary for readers to learn more about Harlem and come to a better understanding of who the New Negro is?In his essay “Harlem” in the magazine, Alain Locke reveals answers to these questions.

“American Negroes have been a race more in name than in fact, or to be exact, more in sentiment than in experience. The chief bond between them has been that of a common condition rather than a common consciousness; a problem in common rather than a life in common. In Harlem, Negro life is seizing upon its first chances for group expression and self-determination.” (p. 630) writes Locke. Here, Locke not only touches on what is happening culturally in Harlem during the Harlem renaissance, but also helps explain why this issue of Survey Graphic and many other works from the Harlem renaissance, focus intently on fiction and imagination. The best way for black people to see a brighter future for themselves at this time was to imagine it through creativity.

Locke sees Harlem as an opportunity for black people to create their own unique identity out of the struggles of the past. The large number of free blacks that came to Harlem from across the country were finding community in each other and building a new identity for themselves. Because so many rights were still denied to black people, art was one of the only ways in which they were able to exert control of their lives. So, the Harlem issue of Survey Graphic could not simply be a sociological report filled with data and essays on the state of black life. It was necessary to include imaginative work like the poems of Countee Cullen, Claude McKay and Langston Hughes. Though these works may not go into great detail about Harlem’s history like the essays “Harlem” by Alain Locke and ” The Making of Harlem” by James Weldon Johnson, they provide just as much insight into the world of Harlem by showcasing the breadth of talent that comes from the neighborhood. This too is sociological work. For the full story of black life in 1920s Harlem to be told, works that showcased both the intellectual and artistic brilliance of black people must be placed side by side.

Harlem, Mecca of the New Negro. Survey Associates, 1925. https://collections.library.yale.edu/catalog/17368696.