“Harlem: The Culture Capital” by James Weldon Johnson places the New Negro in an interesting position within society, as an outsider to creative production centered in a place like Paris, but as an insider within the new cultural capital of Harlem. The pieces in this collection aim to prove the cultural centrality of Harlem and of the artists living and working there. James Weldon Johnson describes Harlem as “the great Mecca for the sight-seer, the pleasure-seeker, the curious, the adventurous, the enterprising, the ambitious and the talented of the whole Negro world; for the lure of it has reached down to every island of the Carib Sea and has penetrated even into Africa,” and he highlights the centrality of Harlem within New York City, stating that Harlem “is not a slum or a fringe” (301). With these passages, the author establishes Harlem as a new cultural center for a new worldwide Negro community. This centrality is somewhat contradictory, therefore, because although Harlem is a center of creative production, the author also asserts that Harlem serves as this cultural center for a distinct Negro community.

Furthermore, James Weldon Johnson describes the complex relationship between Harlem and the rest of New York City: Harlem is a separate, “well-defined and stable” community, but he also states, “Harlem grows more metropolitan and more a part of New York all the while” (309). As the community in Harlem evolves, the neighborhood experiences “a constant growth of group consciousness and community feeling” that the author states is “typically Negro” (309). It is this quality that makes Harlem unique and enables this area to retain a separate identity from the rest of New York City. While Harlem is a cultural center, it is a different kind of cultural center and is central to a different kind of community. This distinction places the New Negro in a complex position, then, as a member of a distinct community that shares in worldwide events and artistic movements, but that operates around its own cultural center. This work presents the New Negro in Harlem as an artist holding a unique position between insider and outsider.