"One is the consciousness of acting as the advance guard of the African peoples in their contact with Twentieth Century civilization; the other, the sense of a mission of rehabilitating the race in world esteem from that loss of prestige for which the fate and conditions of slavery have so largely been responsible. Harlem, as we shall see, is the center of both these movements; she is the home of the Negro's "Zionism." The pulse of the Negro world has begun to beat in Harlem. A Negro newspaper carrying news material in English, French and Spanish, gathered from all quarters of America, the West Indies and Africa has maintained itself in Harlem for over five years. Two important magazines, both edited from New York, maintain their news and circulation consistently on a cosmopolitan scale."

Want to know where the center of the "New Negro" is? Look no further than Harlem, NYC. But what does that mean, exactly?

Well, Harlem was home base for this whole movement to change the world's idea of the black American—to revolutionize it from the image of a slave into something liberated, savvy, and totally awesome. How to do that?

Magazines, newspapers, and leaflets, oh my. All of these publications, no matter how large or small, were enlisted by Renaissance leaders to help transform the popular (racist) image of the black American.

What's the key to "rehabilitating the [Negro] race in world esteem"? Urbanity, of course. New York City, of course. (Isn't "New York City" pretty much the answer to every important question? Just kidding. Sort of.)

Anyway, big cities like New York always have been and always will be media centers. So back then, New York was a place where you'd find "[a] Negro newspaper carrying news material in English, French and Spanish, gathered from all quarters of America, the West Indies and Africa." Translation: urban centers are places that can shift public opinion.

And that's a lot of power, indeed.

Locke has big dreams for the "New Negro" and for Harlem. The fates of the two, as you might imagine, are completely intertwined. In case the part where Locke writes that Harlem "is the home of the Negro's 'Zionism'" doesn't totally convince you, take a look at his punctuation.

Especially his use of the semicolon. Yes, we're serious. The semicolon. That little thing that connects two sentences together more than a period would (although not as much as a comma can). For example, Locke uses it here to link two ways African Americans, post-slavery, can feel constructive:

One is the consciousness of acting as the advance guard of the African peoples in their contact with Twentieth Century civilization; the other, the sense of a mission of rehabilitating the race in world esteem from that loss of prestige for which the fate and conditions of slavery have so largely been responsible. 

And all the English teachers you've ever had are smiling right now. Why? In this passage, Locke is pulling a fast one on us with an advanced writerly tool called parallelism. By making the sentences on both sides of that semicolon match in structure, Locke gives us a deeper understanding of the sentence.

The New Negro, in Locke's mind, can basically play defense ("acting as the advance guard of the African peoples") and play offense ("the sense of a mission of rehabilitating the race in world esteem"). Both are equally in important in that larger goal of developing the identity of the New Negro.

But what about urbanity, you say? Well, Locke invokes parallelism again in the following sentence. And that one's all about Harlem. He writes, "Harlem, as we shall see, is the center of both these movements; she is the home of the Negro's 'Zionism'."

The same balance occurs on either side of that semicolon here, so we understand both that Harlem is a "she," and that she's home base for the New Negro's political activism.

Notice that gender isn't brought up at all until Harlem is mentioned, and then Harlem is suddenly a female. The parallel structure Locke provides therefore allows us to deduce that Locke assumes the New Negro is a man.

That active, thinking ("consciousness") force that balances itself like a prizefighter, playing both offense and defense, is definitively male. Which is pretty controversial, you know? But not uncommon at that time, for sure.

Meanwhile, Harlem is positioned as a woman who provides a different kind of balance to the New Negro man by giving him a home. The result? Some pretty old school ways of thinking about women's significance in a world full of "urbane," modern-thinking "New Negro" men.