McKendree English Professor Holds Book Talk, Signing at Harvard University for Newest Book
Cambridge, Mass. (09/08/2025) — Dr. Martha Patterson, professor of English at McKendree University, recently held a book talk and signing at the Harvard University bookstore with co-editor Professor Henry Louis Gates, Jr., the Alphonse Fletcher University professor and director of the Hutchins Center for African and American Research at Harvard University. The talk centered around their new book, The New Negro: A History in Documents, 1887-1937. Dr. Patterson is the author of The Harlem Renaissance Weekly: Reading the New Negro in Jazz Age African American Newspapers.
Gates, Jr. spoke about his own long fascination with the figure of the New Negro, a figure, in defiance of pervasive racist stereotypes, that signified Black education attainment and empowerment. The duo also talked about why the book was especially relevant now when Black history is being challenged and targeted nationally. After the talk, they signed copies of their book for attendees.
The book, which was recently published by Princeton University Press, has recently received acclaim from Eddie S. Glaude, Jr., academic, author, and frequent essayist for The New York Times, calling the collection "a marvel" and "a book you must have." It is an authoritative anthology tracing the history of one of the most important concepts Black people drew on to challenge the brutal, totalizing system of Jim Crow racism. It brings together a wealth of readings on the metaphor of the New Negro, charting how generations of thinkers debated its meaning and seized on its potency to stake out an astonishingly broad and sometimes contradictory range of ideological positions.
Opening a fascinating window into a largely unexplored chapter in African American, Afro-Latin American, and African intellectual history, this groundbreaking anthology includes newly unearthed pieces by major figures such as W.E.B. Du Bois, Charles S. Johnson, and Drusilla Dunjee Houston, and others, as well as writings from Cuba, the U.S. Virgin Islands, Dominica, France, Sierra Leone, South Africa, colonial Zimbabwe, and the United States.
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From left to right: Professor Henry Louis Gates, Jr., Aurora Vergara (the first Afro-Columbian Minister of Education in Columbia), and Dr. Martha Patterson pose for a photo at the book signing at the Harvard University bookstore.
