In both cases and evidence provided by Locke and Baldwin regarding their interpretation of The New Negro, one common denominator of the two that indicated sameness and similarities was the fact that a transformation was transpiring in the lives of Black people. African American families were no longer settling for less allowing themselves to be dehumanized and degraded at the expense of a white hegemonic society, but rather they were taking a stand against racism by developing their own culture, which ultimately served as a form of resistance. This resistance through change can be seen in both Locke and Baldwin's New Negro, the only difference being the forms of resistance taken and how it was done. Though the avenues were different, the ultimate goals were the same.
Locke's interpretation of The New Negro primarily arose through the Harlem Renaissance in the 1920s. Black men, women, and children, after fleeing from the South to the "mecca" Harlem in order to attain a better life, developed a strong culture by means of literature, art, dance, and music. Through these artistic means Blacks were able to redefine their "blackness" so to speak and recreate themselves apart from and outside of the racist standards and molds that whites felt they should fill. They were no longer sharecroppers working on farms after coming to Harlem, they were no longer meaningless bodies wandering around with no past worth acknowledging or purpose to fulfill in the future. They were painters, musicians, dancers, thinkers. Thinkers that were aware of the system that was created to subjugate them, and sought to go against these notions by means of their craft. Thus, The New Negro, according to Locke, arose from artistic expression.
Baldwin, on the other hand, describes The New Negro by another means; political and self awareness/consciousness, economic autonomy, black pride by means of pop culture (entertainment), resignification of Black beauty apart from that of the "normative" white beauty, and intelligence. Baldwin describes the new Chicago negro as partaking in all of these things. Seizing economic opportunities, becoming entrepreneurs, openly and overtly retaliating against racism and whites, Chicago's New Negro was an individual that used their intellect to gain autonomy from whites. They had pop culture icons like Jack Johnson, heavyweight champion of the world, beating white men at a physical sport that they had not only been excluded from, but deemed inadequate to even participate in. By Jack Johnson beating these white men in the boxing ring, he was eliminating the notion of white male masculinity and black male emasculation, which consequently encouraged the Black community to believe that they indeed were equal to their white counterparts and had the right to be prideful of who they were. All of these instances, which Baldwin claims to have begun even before the New Negro of the Harlem Renaissance, serve to show the Chicago New Negro, and how they began to retaliate against a system against them.
This is not to say that African Americans in Chicago did not express themselves artistically, nor is it to say that the New Negro in Harlem was not intellectual. It rather implies the overall idea that the newly migrated Black people of the South were slowly transforming their community to look the way the desired it to. They now had the freedom to be political through art, and made opportunities for themselves to gain upward mobility by becoming entrepreneurs, because they were creating a space for themselves. That is the commonality. The methodology for each new negro may have been different, but the ultimate goal was the same; equality.
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