There can be no doubt that the emergence of the Negro writer in the post-war period stemmed, in part, from the fact that he was inclined to exploit the opportunity to write about himself. It was more than that, however. The movement that has variously been called the "Harlem Renaissance," the "Blank Renaissance," and the "New Negro Movement" was essentially a part of the growing interest of American literary circles in the immediate and pressing social and economic problems. This growing interest coincided with two developments in Negro life that fostered the growth of the New Negro Movement. These two factors, the keener realization of injustice and the improvement of the capacity for expression, produced a crop of Negro writers who constituted the "Harlem Renaissance." The literature of the Harlem Renaissance was, for the most pan, the work of a race-conscious group. Through poetry, prose, and song. the writers cried out against social and economic wrongs. They protested against segregation and lynching. They demanded higher wages, shorter hours, and better conditions of work. They stood for full social equality and first-class citizenship. The new vision of social and economic freedom that they had did not force them to embrace the several foreign ideologies that sought to sink their roots in some American groups during the period. The writers of the Harlem Renaissance, bitter and cynical as some of them were, gave little attention to the propaganda of the socialists and communists. The editors of the Messenger ventured the opinion that the New Negro was the "product of the same world-wide forces that have brought into being the great liberal and radical movements that are now seizing the reins of power in all the civilized countries of the world." Such forces may have produced the New Negro, but the more articulate of the group did not resort to advocating the type of political action that would have subverted American constitutional government. Indeed, the writers of the Harlem Renaissance were not so much revolting against the system as they were protesting its inefficient operation. In this approach they proved as characteristically American as any writers of the period.