"Outspoken"

Alain LeRoy Locke popularized the term New Negro during the Harlem Renaissance, which gave way to a more formal African American. It was used to define African Americans who were more outspoken and radical. African Americans began to refuse to obey the rules and regulations of Black Codes and Jim Crow Laws in the South. Following Reconstruction black women and men began to make social and economic progress with court cases such as Plessy v. Fergusion. African Americans gained public and private interest and spoke their minds openly. African Americans insisted on gaining self-determination, self-pride, self-definition, and self expression in America. Locke also rejected cultural separatism and endorsed a hybridist derived from the marriage of black experience and Euro-American aesthetic forms.