Introduction

Abstract

As noted by other scholars, in the early 20th century, W.E.B. Dubois and Sterling Brown, and their contemporaries, such as Paul Lawrence Dunbar, Langston Hughes, Zora Neale Hurston, and James Weldon Johnson, made fundamental assertions that were grounded in a humanistic vision rooted in the democratic principles found in the U.S. Constitution. Using the context of the principles in the Constitution, these literary giants established race as the primary theoretical framework for how they perceived and how they believed they were being perceived by the world.