: While it was the preferred term for much of the 20th century, it was largely replaced by " Black " during the 1960s Black Power Movement as a way to reclaim identity and counter historical labels [26].
: The word is derived from the Spanish and Portuguese word for the color black , which stems from the Latin niger [25].
: Figures like James Weldon Johnson argued that the "final measure" of a people's greatness was the art and literature they produced, urging Black creators to demonstrate "intellectual parity" through their work [3].
: A concept that emerged during the late 19th and early 20th centuries, representing a shift toward education, refinement, and racial consciousness [15]. This was later solidified by Alain Locke’s 1925 anthology, The New Negro , which served as a foundational text for the Harlem Renaissance [2].
: In his essay The Negro Artist and the Racial Mountain , Langston Hughes advocated for Black artists to express their "individual dark-skinned selves" without fear or shame, rejecting both white expectations and Black middle-class pressures to be "respectable" [14, 17]. Origins & Linguistic Shift