From a do-it-yourself Mount Rushmore to an automated tribute to the devastating annual toll of traffic deaths in the United States, this book describes commemoration as a fundamental experience, joining individual and collective identity, and adapting both to the emerging apparatus of "electracy", or digital literacy.

In this volume, the Harlem Renaissance "escapes from New York" into its proper global context, recovering the broader New Negro experience as social movements, popular cultures, and public behavior spanned the globe. Highlighting how New Negroes and their allies already lived, the book stresses the need for scholarship to catch up with the historical reality of the New Negro experience.