ABSTRACT
The principal question taken up in Zora Neale Hurston's 1934 essay "Characteristics of Negro Expression" revolved around whether there existed an original black art that did not merely copy or react to white American culture. Hurston wrote the essay at the tail end of a period known as "the Harlem Renaissance", a movement that arguably represented the most concentrated period of African American artistic output in US history. W. E. B. Du Bois agreed that African American artists were expected to conform to negative stereotypes: "Uncle Toms, Topsies, good 'darkies' and clowns". When "Characteristics" was published in 1934, Hurston was unknown outside of her circle of Harlem acquaintances and yet to publish the fiction that would make her famous. She was, however, an active member of Harlem's intellectual scene, had won many literary awards alongside Langston Hughes and the poet Countee Cullen, and was friends with Du Bois and Alain Locke.
