The black press used “New Negro” as early as 1895, applauding a generation who refused to be kept in the “Negro's place.” The term implied opposition to the conciliatory philosophy of Booker T. Washington. During the Great Migration and World War I, when more than 200,000 blacks served in the Armed Forces to save democracy abroad, African American newspapers popularized the image of an “assertive, race-proud New Negro” at home. “We return from the slavery of the uniform which the world's madness demanded us to don to the freedom of civilian garb,” W. E. B. Du Bois declared in The Crisis. “... We return from fighting. We return fighting” (“Returning Soldiers,” 1919, p. 13).

Such appeals to race pride, resistance, and uplift inspired major initiatives, among them the National Urban League migrant aid program, NAACP campaign against lynching, women's suffrage, Garvey movement, and Harlem Renaissance. Blacks determined to fight for dignity and equal citizenship.