Locke, Alain 1886-1954
Alain Locke 1886-1954
Educator, editor, author
Stressed Blacks’ Contribution to Egypt
In Demand as a Visiting Scholar
The preeminent black intellectual of his generation, Alain Locke was the leading promoter and interpreter of the artistic and cultural contributions of blacks to American life. More than anyone else, he familiarized white Americans with the Harlem Renaissance of the 1920s, while encouraging black authors to set high artistic standards in their depiction of black life. As a professor of philosophy, he expounded his theory of “cultural pluralism” that valued the uniqueness of different styles and values available within a democratic society.
Locke was born into a prominent Philadelphia black family in 1886. His grandfather, Ishmael Locke, was a free black and teacher. The Society of Friends (Quakers) sponsored his attending Cambridge University in England for further education, after which Ishmael spent four years in Liberia establishing schools. While in Africa, he married an African American educator engaged in similar work. Returning to the United States, he became headmaster of a school in Providence, Rhode Island, and then principal of the Institute for Colored Youth in Philadelphia.
Alain’s father, Pliny Locke, graduated from this institute in 1867, then taught mathematics there for two years before leaving to teach newly freed blacks in North Carolina. In 1872, he enrolled in Howard University’s law school while working as an accountant in the Freedmen’s Bureau and the Freedmen’s Bank and serving for a time as the private secretary for General O. O. Howard, the head of the Freedmen’s Bureau. Completing law school in 1874, he returned to Philadelphia to become a clerk in the U.S. Post Office. Mary Hawkins, Alain’s mother, was a descendant of Charles Shorter. A free black, Shorter had been a soldier in the War of 1812 and helped to establish an educational tradition in his family. Mary continued this tradition by becoming a teacher.
Pliny Locke and Mary Hawkins were engaged for 16 years, not marrying until they were middle-aged. Alain, their only child, was born in 1886 and nurtured in an urbane, cultivated home environment. Six years later his father died, and his mother supported her son through teaching. Young Alain contracted rheumatic fever early in his childhood. The disease permanently damaged his heart and restricted his physical activities. In their place, he spent his time reading books and learning to play the piano and violin.
Locke attended Central High School, graduating second in the class of 1902, and then studied at the Philadelphia School of Pedagogy, where he moved up to first in his class. Entering Harvard University, he studied under William James and some of the other leading American philosophers on the faculty. Locke completed Harvard’s four-year program in three, graduating magna cum laude in 1907, being elected to Phi Beta Kappa, and winning the school’s most prestigious award, the Bowdoin Prize, for an essay in English.
At a Glance…
Born Alain LeRoy Locke, September 13, 1886, in Philadelphia, PA; died June 9, 1954, in New York City; son of Pliny Ishmael (a teacher and postal clerk) and Mary Hawkins Locke (a schoolteacher). Education: Harvard University, Cambridge, MA, B.A. 1907; Rhodes Scholar at Oxford University, England, 1907–10, B.Litt 1910; graduate study, University of Berlin, Germany, 1910–11; Harvard University, Ph.D. in philosophy 1918. Politics: Republican. Religion: Episcopalian.
Howard University, Washington, DC, assistant professor of education, 1912–17, professor of philosophy, 1917–54; Student Army Training Camp instructor, 1918; Harvard University, Austin teaching fellow, 1916–17; French Oriental Archaeological Society, Cairo, Egypt, research sabbatical, 1924–25; Fisk University, Nashville, TN, exchange professor, 1927–28; Inter-American exchange professor in Haiti, 1943; visiting professor: University of Wisconsin, Madison, 1945–46; New School of Social Research, New York City, 1947; College of the City of New York, 1948.
Member: American Negro Academy; American Philosophical Association; Associates in Negro Folk Education; International Institute of African Languages and Culture; League of American Writers; National Order of Honor and Merit (Haiti); Society for Historical Research; corresponding member Academie des Sciences Colonailes; honorary fellow Sociedad de Estudios Afro-Cubanos.
Awards: Rhodes Scholar, 1907–10; Honor Roll of Race Relations, 1942.
It was a remarkable achievement for anyone, not to mention an African American during this highly segregated era. While many white American scholars were seeking to prove the intellectual inferiority of blacks to justify racial segregation, Locke became a symbol of black achievement and a powerful argument for offering blacks equal opportunity at white educational institutions.
Continuing his intellectual accomplishments, Locke was named a Rhodes Scholar, the first black chosen for this distinguished award, and sailed to England in 1907 to attend Oxford University. He studied philosophy, Greek, and Literae Humaniores, receiving a bachelor of literature degree in 1910. From Oxford he moved to Germany for advanced work in philosophy at the University of Berlin from 1910 to 1911.
Europe at that time was the acknowledged center of Western civilization, and Locke’s years there proved vital to his intellectual development. His exposure to modern literature, music, art, and dance, along with his meeting many Africans and other nonwhites from around the world, created new perspectives for viewing American society and culture. Racial discrimination, he realized, was a global problem.
Became an Educator
Returning to the United States in early 1912, Locke was faced with an unusual dilemma. Given his academic training and intellectual experiences, he was more qualified than many white college professors. But being black, he was unable to teach at a white college. Yet this same level of achievement set him vastly apart from his fellow black Americans.
Being unusually introspective and perceptive, Locke recognized these limitations. To better familiarize himself with the everyday segregated world of black America, he took a six-month tour of the southern states. Witnessing widespread prejudice and discrimination, he decided that only by setting high standards and demonstrating similar accomplishments as whites could blacks gain respect and equality. By teaching young blacks at the college level and promoting African and African American culture, he would further this goal.
That September, Locke was appointed an assistant professor of English at Howard University, a black college, in Washington, DC. He set about to establish Howard as the country’s preeminent black university, a training ground for black intellectuals, and a center for African American culture and research on racial problems. But the school’s board of trustees twice refused to approve his teaching courses on comparative race relations or black studies, maintaining that the Howard was a nonracial institution.
Frustrated, Locke turned his attention back to philosophy. In 1916, he received a one-year appointment as an Austin Teaching Fellow at Harvard and began his dissertation under the idealist philosopher, Josiah Royce. Two years later he received his doctorate degree and returned to Howard as a full professor of philosophy. He would chair this department until his retirement in 1953.
Stressed Blacks’ Contribution to Egypt
Locke became one of the leading members of the Howard faculty as well as a major inspiration to the student body and the growing national black self-awareness movement of the 1920s. In 1924, he took a sabbatical leave to work with the French Oriental Archaeological Society in Egypt and the Sudan. His experiences there, including his presence at the reopening of Tutankhamen’s tomb, reinforced his belief in the strong historic and cultural roots of Africa and black civilization. Lecturing widely upon his return to the United States, Locke stressed the contribution of blacks to Egypt’s multiracial society, the world’s first advanced civilization, a contribution not widely acknowledged by white scholars.
Locke’s return to Howard coincided with a power struggle between the predominantly black student body and faculty, who desired a more black-oriented institution, against the university’s white president and board of trustees who sought to maintain its traditional nonracial status. Along with several other professors, Locke was dismissed in 1925, ostensibly as a cost-cutting measure. That September, he expressed his views in a Survey Graphic magazine article, “Negro Education Bids for Par,” stating that black education, “to the extent that it is separate, ought to be free to develop its own racial interests and special aims for both positive and compensatory reasons.”
A storm of protest by the student body, alumni, national black press, and fellow academics compelled the board to eventually reinstate him with full pay. But Locke did not return to teach on campus until 1928 with the installation of Howard’s first black president, Mordecai W. Johnson, who shared his goals of creating a predominantly black university.
These years of temporary release from his academic duties proved to be among Locke’s most productive periods. A major contributor to Opportunity: Journal of Negro Life and Survey Graphic, he edited a special issue of the latter publication devoted to the Harlem Renaissance, the flourishing of black art, literature, and music in New York City during the 1920s. Expanding it into a book and shifting the focus from Harlem to overall black cultural life, Locke authored The New Negro: An Interpretation in 1925. It was an outstanding anthology of the leading black fiction, poetry, drama, and essays by himself and others describing the changing state of race relations in the United States.
The New Negro became the symbol of a new era, documenting the social and cultural innovations of the younger black generation. It contributed to a growing race consciousness, self confidence, and sophistication of an increasingly urbanized black population. In his foreword, Locke asserted that black life was “not only establishing new contacts and founding new centers, it is finding a new soul.” He compared this movement with similar efforts taking place around the globe in Russia, India, China, Palestine, and many other countries.
Because of his efforts, white critics began to take black writing seriously and black writers saw themselves for the first time as part of a broad but unified literary movement. Most Harlem Renaissance artists sought not only to develop their work into high art, but also to use it as a means to better race relations and American society.
With the success of The New Negro, Locke became the leading authority on contemporary black culture and used his position to promote the careers of young artists and authors like Countee Cullen, Zora Neale Hurston, and Langston Hughes. He encouraged them to seek out subjects in black life and to set high artistic standards for themselves. Writing in a Black World essay entitled “Alain Locke: Cultural and Social Mentor,” Richard A. Long stated, it is “no exaggeration to say that the Harlem Renaissance as we know it is marked strongly by the presence of Alain Locke, and would have been something rather different without him and the role of mentor which he filled with modesty and elegance.”
Resumed Academic Career
Locke’s growing reputation put him into close contact with many influential white patrons of the arts. One in particular, Charlotte Mason, financially supported much of his work during the 1920s. With her help, Locke was able to regularly visit Paris, at that time the center of the art world, and begin to create one of the leading collections of African art in America.
As a pioneer collector, Locke was one of the first Americans to write about the significance of African art, demonstrating its importance far beyond an influence on the cubists and other members of the European artistic avant-garde. He wanted all blacks, in particular contemporary black artists, to seek inspiration and take pride in their rich artistic heritage. To this end he lectured, organized numerous exhibitions, and wrote the introductions for several landmark catalogs of African art.
After spending the 1927–1928 academic year as an exchange professor at Fisk University, Locke returned to Howard. He became a close adviser of university president Johnson, urging him to implement a detailed African studies program to examine African anthropology, art, culture, ethnology, and history. His hope was that such a course of studies would reeducate American blacks about their African past and recreate their lost sense of cultural identity.
Once again Howard failed to act, not establishing an African studies program until 1954, one year after his retirement. Undeterred, Locke continued his efforts to create a forum at Howard to critically examine the black experience. In 1935 he helped organize the university’s social sciences division, incorporating his department of philosophy within it. This new division then began to sponsor annual conferences on racial issues.
That same year, Locke took a leading role in reforming Howard’s liberal arts curriculum, integrating all the university’s major academic disciplines into a general education program, similar to changes recently incorporated at Columbia and the University of Chicago. This new curriculum reflected his lifelong belief in the importance of critical analysis for determining values to guide human conduct and interrelationships.
During this time, he was becoming more involved in the adult education movement, serving as secretary and editor of the newly established Associates in Negro Folk Education. Between 1936 and 1942 this organization published nine “Bronze Booklets” written by leading black scholars. Locke wrote two of these, Negro Art: Past and Present and The Negro and His Music, and edited a third, The Negro in Art: A Pictorial Record of the Negro Artist and of the Negro Theme in Art. The latter was the most significant and comprehensive work in its field, re-emphasizing his longstanding belief that black artists should look to the works of their African ancestors for subject matter and styles to apply to modern painting and sculpture.
Despite his many other interests, Locke continued his work in philosophy, actively promoting his theory of cultural pluralism. Simply put, it sought to determine specific values to produce a new and humane world order, chief among these a respect for the uniqueness of each distinct ethnic, cultural, or religious group within one nation. This interest led to his pioneering 1942 social science anthology, co-edited with Bernhard Stern, When Peoples Meet: A Study in Race and Culture Contacts, an examination of dominant and minority populations in various countries around the world.
In the same vein, Locke edited a special issue of Survey Graphic in November of 1942 entitled Color: Unfinished Business of Democracy. By putting racial discrimination in the United States within the larger context of the Allies’ avowed democratic war aims in the fight against fascism, he stressed the need for eliminating segregation at home and European colonialism in Africa and Asia. He continued along this theme the following year when, as an inter-American exchange professor in Haiti, he wrote Le Role du Negre dans la Culture Americaine about blacks in American society.
In Demand as a Visiting Scholar
When World War II ended, Locke was one of the best known black scholars in the country. A regular contributor to many magazines, journals, and reference works, he was a member of the editorial board of the American Scholar and, in 1945, the first black elected president of the American Association for Adult Education, a predominantly white national organization.
As American universities slowly began to desegregate in the North and West, Locke was suddenly in great demand as a visiting scholar. During the 1945–1946 academic year he served as visiting professor of philosophy at the University of Wisconsin. The following year he was a visiting professor at the New School for Social Research in what had become his second home for many years, New York City, and held a similar appointment the next year at the City College of New York (CCNY).
After 1948 he began teaching concurrently at CCNY and Howard. As he neared retirement, Locke reviewed his long career at Howard, proud of his success in using philosophy to stimulate critical thinking among his students, helping to create a black intellectual elite, and his hard work in transforming a small segregated college into the nation’s leading black educational center. His final achievement was to secure a Phi Beta Kappa chapter at the school in 1953, a major milestone in the history of black education.
Locke retired later that year and was awarded an honorary doctorate by Howard, a rare expression of esteem for a faculty member. He moved permanently to New York City and continued working on his magnum opus, The Negro in American Culture, a definitive study of the contribution of blacks to American society. Unfortunately his recurrent heart problems returned in the spring of 1954, causing his death that June. He bequeathed his extensive collection of African art and all his papers to Howard University. His unfinished manuscript was completed by Margaret Just Butcher.
Selected writings
Editor, The New Negro: An Interpretation, A. & C. Boni, 1925.
Editor with Montgomery Gregory, Plays of Negro Life: A Source-Book of Native American Drama, Harper, 1927.
Editor, Four Negro Poets, Simon & Schuster, 1927.
A Decade of Negro Self-Expression, 1928.
The Negro in America, American Library Association, 1933.
Frederick Douglass: A Biography of Anti-Slavery, 1935.
The Negro and His Music, Associates in Negro Folk Education, 1936.
Negro Art: Past and Present, Associates in Negro Folk Education, 1936.
Editor, The Negro in Art: A Pictorial Record of the Negro Artist and of the Negro Theme in Art, Associates in Negro Folk Education, 1940.
Editor with Bernhard J. Stern, When Peoples Meet: A Study in Race and Culture Contacts, Committee on Workshops, Progressive Education Association, 1942.
Le Role du Nègre dans la Culture des Amériques, Impr. de l’Etat, 1943.
Sources
Books
Butcher, Margaret J., The Negro in American Culture: Based on Materials Left by Alain Locke, Knopf, 1956.
The Critical Temper of Alain Locke, edited by Jeffrey C. Stewart, Garland, 1983.
Linnemann, Russell J., Alain Locke: Reflections on a Modern Renaissance Man, Louisiana State University Press, 1982.
Washington, Johnny, Alain Locke and Philosophy: A Quest for Cultural Pluralism, Greenwood Press, 1986.
Periodicals
Black World, November 1970, p. 87–90.
—James J. Podesta
Alain Locke
Alain Locke
Philosophy professor Alain Locke put forth the theory of "cultural pluralism, " which values the uniqueness of different styles and values available within a democratic society.
The preeminent African American intellectual of his generation, Alain Locke was the leading promoter and interpreter of the artistic and cultural contributions of African Americans to American life. More than anyone else, he familiarized white Americans with the Harlem Renaissance of the 1920s, while encouraging African American authors to set high artistic standards in their depiction of life. As a professor of philosophy, he expounded his theory of "cultural pluralism" that valued the uniqueness of different styles and values available within a democratic society.
Locke was born into a prominent Philadelphia family in 1886. His grandfather, Ishmael Locke, was a free African American and teacher. The Society of Friends (Quakers) sponsored his attending Cambridge University in England for further education, after which Ishmael spent four years in Liberia establishing schools. While in Africa, he married an African American educator engaged in similar work. Returning to the United States, he became headmaster of a school in Providence, Rhode Island, and then principal of the Institute for Colored Youth in Philadelphia.
Alain's father, Pliny Locke, graduated from this institute in 1867, then taught mathematics there for two years before leaving to teach newly freed African Americans in North Carolina. In 1872, he enrolled in Howard University's law school while working as an accountant in the Freedmen's Bureau and the Freedmen's Bank and serving for a time as the private secretary for General O. O. Howard, the head of the Freedmen's Bureau. Completing law school in 1874, he returned to Philadelphia to become a clerk in the U.S. Post Office. Mary Hawkins, Alain's mother, was a descendant of Charles Shorter. A free African American, Shorter had been a soldier in the War of 1812 and helped to establish an educational tradition in his family. Mary continued this tradition by becoming a teacher.
Pliny Locke and Mary Hawkins were engaged for 16 years, not marrying until they were middle-aged. Alain, their only child, was born in 1886 and nurtured in an urbane, cultivated home environment. Six years later his father died, and his mother supported her son through teaching. Young Alain contracted rheumatic fever early in his childhood. The disease permanently damaged his heart and restricted his physical activities. In their place, he spent his time reading books and learning to play the piano and violin.
Locke attended Central High School, graduating second in the class of 1902, and then studied at the Philadelphia School of Pedagogy, where he moved up to first in his class. Entering Harvard University, he studied under William James and some of the other leading American philosophers on the faculty. Locke completed Harvard's four-year program in three, graduating magna cum laude in 1907, being elected to Phi Beta Kappa, and winning the school's most prestigious award, the Bowdoin Prize, for an essay in English.
It was a remarkable achievement for anyone, not to mention an African American during this highly segregated era. While many white American scholars were seeking to prove the intellectual inferiority of African Americans to justify racial segregation, Locke became a symbol of achievement and a powerful argument for offering African Americans equal opportunity at white educational institutions.
Continuing his intellectual accomplishments, Locke was named a Rhodes Scholar, the first African American chosen for this distinguished award, and sailed to England in 1907 to attend Oxford University. He studied philosophy, Greek, and Literae Humaniores, receiving a bachelor of literature degree in 1910. From Oxford he moved to Germany for advanced work in philosophy at the University of Berlin from 1910 to 1911.
Europe at that time was the acknowledged center of Western civilization, and Locke's years there proved vital to his intellectual development. His exposure to modern literature, music, art, and dance, along with his meeting many Africans and other nonwhites from around the world, created new perspectives for viewing American society and culture. Racial discrimination, he realized, was a global problem.
Became an Educator
Returning to the United States in early 1912, Locke was faced with an unusual dilemma. Given his academic training and intellectual experiences, he was more qualified than many white college professors. But because of his race, he was unable to teach at a white college. Yet this same level of achievement set him vastly apart from his fellow African Americans.
Being unusually introspective and perceptive, Locke recognized these limitations. To better familiarize himself with the everyday segregated world of America, he took a six-month tour of the southern states. Witnessing widespread prejudice and discrimination, he decided that only by setting high standards and demonstrating similar accomplishments as whites could African Americans gain respect and equality. By teaching at the college level and promoting African and African American culture, he would further this goal.
That September, Locke was appointed an assistant professor of English at Howard University, an African American college, in Washington, DC. He set about to establish Howard as the country's preeminent African American university, a training ground for African American intellectuals, and a center for African American culture and research on racial problems. But the school's board of trustees twice refused to approve his teaching courses on comparative race relations or African American studies, maintaining that the Howard was a nonracial institution.
Frustrated, Locke turned his attention back to philosophy. In 1916, he received a one-year appointment as an Austin Teaching Fellow at Harvard and began his dissertation under the idealist philosopher, Josiah Royce. Two years later he received his doctorate degree and returned to Howard as a full professor of philosophy. He would chair this department until his retirement in 1953.
Stressed Blacks' Contribution to Egypt
Locke became one of the leading members of the Howard faculty as well as a major inspiration to the student body and the growing national African American self-awareness movement of the 1920s. In 1924, he took a sabbatical leave to work with the French Oriental Archaeological Society in Egypt and the Sudan. His experiences there, including his presence at the reopening of Tutankhamen's tomb, reinforced his belief in the strong historic and cultural roots of African civilization. Lecturing widely upon his return to the United States, Locke stressed the contribution of Africans to Egypt's multiracial society, the world's first advanced civilization, a contribution not widely acknowledged by white scholars.
Locke's return to Howard coincided with a power struggle between the predominantly black student body and faculty, who desired a more African American-oriented institution, against the university's white president and board of trustees who sought to maintain its traditional nonracial status. Along with several other professors, Locke was dismissed in 1925, ostensibly as a cost-cutting measure. That September, he expressed his views in a Survey Graphic magazine article, "Negro Education Bids for Par, " stating that African American education, "to the extent that it is separate, ought to be free to develop its own racial interests and special aims for both positive and compensatory reasons."
A storm of protest by the student body, alumni, national African American press, and fellow academics compelled the board to eventually reinstate him with full pay. But Locke did not return to teach on campus until 1928 with the installation of Howard's first African American president, Mordecai W. Johnson, who shared his goals of creating a predominantly African American university.
These years of temporary release from his academic duties proved to be among Locke's most productive periods. A major contributor to Opportunity: Journal of Negro Life and Survey Graphic, he edited a special issue of the latter publication devoted to the Harlem Renaissance, the flourishing of African American art, literature, and music in New York City during the 1920s. Expanding it into a book and shifting the focus from Harlem to overall African American cultural life, Locke authored The New Negro: An Interpretation in 1925. It was an outstanding anthology of the leading African American fiction, poetry, drama, and essays by himself and others describing the changing state of race relations in the United States.
The New Negro became the symbol of a new era, documenting the social and cultural innovations of the younger African American generation. It contributed to a growing race consciousness, self confidence, and sophistication of an increasingly urbanized African American population. In his foreword, Locke asserted that African American life was "not only establishing new contacts and founding new centers, it is finding a new soul." He compared this movement with similar efforts taking place around the globe in Russia, India, China, Palestine, and many other countries.
Because of his efforts, white critics began to take African American writing seriously, and African American writers saw themselves for the first time as part of a broad but unified literary movement. Most Harlem Renaissance artists sought not only to develop their work into high art, but also to use it as a means to better race relations and American society.
With the success of The New Negro, Locke became the leading authority on contemporary African American culture and used his position to promote the careers of young artists and authors like Countee Cullen, Zora Neale Hurston, and Langston Hughes. He encouraged them to seek out subjects in African American life and to set high artistic standards for themselves. Writing in a Black World essay entitled "Alain Locke: Cultural and Social Mentor, " Richard A. Long stated, it is "no exaggeration to say that the Harlem Renaissance as we know it is marked strongly by the presence of Alain Locke, and would have been something rather different without him and the role of mentor which he filled with modesty and elegance."
Resumed Academic Career
Locke's growing reputation put him into close contact with many influential white patrons of the arts. One in particular, Charlotte Mason, financially supported much of his work during the 1920s. With her help, Locke was able to regularly visit Paris, at that time the center of the art world, and begin to create one of the leading collections of African art in America.
As a pioneer collector, Locke was one of the first Americans to write about the significance of African art, demonstrating its importance far beyond an influence on the cubists and other members of the European artistic avant-garde. He wanted all African Americans, in particular contemporary African American artists, to seek inspiration and take pride in their rich artistic heritage. To this end he lectured, organized numerous exhibitions, and wrote the introductions for several landmark catalogs of African art.
After spending the 1927-1928 academic year as an exchange professor at Fisk University, Locke returned to Howard. He became a close adviser of university president Johnson, urging him to implement a detailed African studies program to examine African anthropology, art, culture, ethnology, and history. His hope was that such a course of studies would reeducate African Americans about their African past and recreate their lost sense of cultural identity.
Once again Howard failed to act, not establishing an African studies program until 1954, one year after his retirement. Undeterred, Locke continued his efforts to create a forum at Howard to critically examine the African American experience. In 1935 he helped organize the university's social sciences division, incorporating his department of philosophy within it. This new division then began to sponsor annual conferences on racial issues.
That same year, Locke took a leading role in reforming Howard's liberal arts curriculum, integrating all the university's major academic disciplines into a general education program, similar to changes recently incorporated at Columbia and the University of Chicago. This new curriculum reflected his lifelong belief in the importance of critical analysis for determining values to guide human conduct and interrelationships.
During this time, he was becoming more involved in the adult education movement, serving as secretary and editor of the newly established Associates in Negro Folk Education. Between 1936 and 1942 this organization published nine "Bronze Booklets" written by leading African American scholars. Locke wrote two of these, Negro Art: Past and Present and The Negro and His Music, and edited a third, The Negro in Art: A Pictorial Record of the Negro Artist and of the Negro Theme in Art. The latter was the most significant and comprehensive work in its field, re-emphasizing his longstanding belief that African American artists should look to the works of their African ancestors for subject matter and styles to apply to modern painting and sculpture.
Despite his many other interests, Locke continued his work in philosophy, actively promoting his theory of cultural pluralism. Simply put, it sought to determine specific values to produce a new and humane world order, chief among these a respect for the uniqueness of each distinct ethnic, cultural, or religious group within one nation. This interest led to his pioneering 1942 social science anthology, co-edited with Bernhard Stern, When Peoples Meet: A Study in Race and Culture Contacts, an examination of dominant and minority populations in various countries around the world.
In the same vein, Locke edited a special issue of Survey Graphic in November of 1942 entitled "Color: Unfinished Business of Democracy." By putting racial discrimination in the United States within the larger context of the Allies' avowed democratic war aims in the fight against fascism, he stressed the need for eliminating segregation at home and European colonialism in Africa and Asia. He continued along this theme the following year when, as an inter-American exchange professor in Haiti, he wrote Le Role du Negre dans la Culture Americaine about African Americans in American society.
In Demand as a Visiting Scholar
When World War II ended, Locke was one of the best known African American scholars in the country. A regular contributor to many magazines, journals, and reference works, he was a member of the editorial board of the American Scholar and, in 1945, the first African American elected president of the American Association for Adult Education, a predominantly white national organization.
As American universities slowly began to desegregate in the North and West, Locke was suddenly in great demand as a visiting scholar. During the 1945-1946 academic year he served as visiting professor of philosophy at the University of Wisconsin. The following year he was a visiting professor at the New School for Social Research in what had become his second home for many years, New York City, and held a similar appointment the next year at the City College of New York (CCNY).
After 1948 he began teaching concurrently at CCNY and Howard. As he neared retirement, Locke reviewed his long career at Howard, proud of his success in using philosophy to stimulate critical thinking among his students, helping to create an African American intellectual elite, and his hard work in transforming a small segregated college into the nation's leading African American educational center. His final achievement was to secure a Phi Beta Kappa chapter at the school in 1953, a major milestone in the history of African American education.
Locke retired later that year and was awarded an honorary doctorate by Howard, a rare expression of esteem for a faculty member. He moved permanently to New York City and continued working on his magnum opus, The Negro in American Culture, a definitive study of the contribution of African Americans to American society. Unfortunately his recurrent heart problems returned in the spring of 1954, causing his death that June. He bequeathed his extensive collection of African art and all his papers to Howard University. His unfinished manuscript was completed by Margaret Just Butcher.
Further Reading
Butcher, Margaret J. The Negro in American Culture: Based on Materials Left by Alain Locke, Knopf, 1956.
The Critical Temper of Alain Locke, edited by Jeffrey C. Stewart, Garland, 1983.
Linnemann, Russell J. Alain Locke: Reflections on a Modern Renaissance Man, Louisiana State University Press, 1982.
Washington, Johnny, Alain Locke and Philosophy: A Quest for Cultural Pluralism, Greenwood Press, 1986.
Black World, November 1970, p. 87-90. □
Locke, Alain
Alain Locke
Born September 13, 1886
Philadelphia, Pennsylvania
Died June 10, 1954
American philosopher, educator, editor, and writer
"All of us probably expected too much of the Negro Renaissance, but its new vitality of independence, pride, and self-respect, its scoff and defiance of prejudice and limitations were so welcome and heartening."
The most memorable achievements of the Harlem Renaissance did not just spring into life by magic. The movement's young writers and artists were nurtured and encouraged by a number of older figures, the most important of whom was writer-educator Alain Locke. A highly educated philosophy professor with a passionate dedication to both preserving African American culture and encouraging bold new art, Locke served as a kind of midwife (someone who aids in the birthing process) of the Harlem Renaissance. Through his work as a writer and editor—especially of the influential anthology The New Negro: An Interpretation—he also served as a proud voice explaining to a broad audience the background and aims of the Harlem Renaissance.
Parents instilled early values
Locke was the descendent of a family of educated, free African Americans (they had been freed from slavery even before the end of the Civil War [1861–65]) who had been living for several generations in Philadelphia, Pennsylvania. They were part of the black community referred to as the "O.P." ("Old Philadelpha" families). His grandfather, Ishmael Locke, had been an educator and school administrator, and his father, Pliny, had earned a law degree at Howard University (the nation's leading black college) and taught at the Philadelphia School of Pedagogy (pronounced PEDD-uh-GOE-jee; the profession of teaching).
Locke's mother, Mary, a teacher at the Philadelphia Institute for Colored Youth, encouraged her only child to appreciate literature, to study piano and violin, and to practice good manners. Although they were not wealthy, the Lockes were members of a comfortably middle-class black community, and they always stressed the values of education and good behavior. Later in life Locke would describe his family's properness through the image of his grandmother wearing a sunbonnet and gloves to hang laundry.
A slight-statured, book-loving, intelligent boy who often suffered from ill health, Locke excelled at his studies early on. He graduated second in his class from Philadelphia's Central High School and first in his class from the Philadelphia School of Pedagogy. Locke entered Harvard University in 1904, where he developed an interest in philosophy and studied under American philosopher William James (1842–1910), whose ideas about the benefits of living in a pluralistic society (one that recognizes the value of all the different groups of which it's made) influenced his own thinking.
An outstanding student of philosophy
In 1907 Locke graduated from Harvard with high honors and a bachelor's degree in English and philosophy. That same year he became the first African American—and the last for the next sixty years—to be chosen as a Rhodes scholar, a program that allows outstanding graduates the chance to attend England's elite Oxford University. From 1907 to 1910 Locke studied at Oxford, where he experienced racism and felt isolated until he became friendly with a group of African students. He was known as a very intellectual, studious person with a warm personality, a good sense of humor, and an elegant way of dressing.
After leaving Oxford, Locke went to Germany's University of Berlin for a year of study in philosophy, then to Paris for another year at the College de France. For the rest of his life Locke would make frequent visits to Europe. He maintained a deep love of European culture that existed alongside his appreciation for African American traditions.
Returning to the United States in 1912, Locke spent six months traveling around the southern states, looking for a job in a black university. A white person with Locke's impressive record and credentials would have been hired quickly by any leading white institution, but Locke's race limited his opportunities. During his travels throughout the South, he witnessed more hostility toward blacks than he ever had in Philadelphia or Europe, and he also grew even more interested in the dynamic cultural expressions of African Americans.
In 1912 Locke became an assistant professor of English and an instructor in philosophy and education at Washington, D.C.'s Howard University, where he would remain employed (except for a short period in the late 1920s) for the next forty years. He took a very active role in educating his students about their heritage, while simultaneously stressing the value of learning about Western European culture and languages.
Although Locke's obvious brilliance and great energy made him popular with students, he could sometimes be over-bearing and rather straitlaced. He did, however, encourage his students to express themselves freely, and in 1916 he founded a literary magazine called Stylus so that students would have a place to publish their work. Locke returned to Harvard that same year to work on his doctoral dissertation (which centered on the idea that values are not absolute but shaped by an individual's cultural background and surroundings), and he earned his Ph.D. in 1918. He was the first African American to receive a doctoral degree in philosophy from Harvard.
Recognizes black talent
As the 1920s began, Locke was among the first to sense a shift in how African Americans felt about themselves and about their role in American society. His work as an educator had brought him into contact with many talented young people, and he sensed that a cultural blossoming was under way. Locke made frequent visits to Harlem, where he would often be seen walking quickly along in an elegant suit, always carrying a tightly furled umbrella. He became a friend and supporter of many of the young writers and artists who were in New York in search of like-minded people and material success. Among those who would, over the years, benefit from Locke's influence and support were: poets Langston Hughes (1902–1967; see biographical entry) and Countee Cullen (1903–1946; see biographical entry); short story writers Zora Neale Hurston (1891–1960; see biographical entry) and Rudolph Fisher (1897–1934); novelist Jean Toomer (1894–1967; see biographical entry); and classical singer Roland Hayes (1887–1977).
Meanwhile, Locke was still teaching at Howard University, where he stirred up controversy by pushing administrators to offer courses on race relations and to establish a national black theater. This tension led to Locke's dismissal from Howard in 1924, soon after his return from a sabbatical (a period of study that is usually spent away from a professor's university) in North Africa. Locke would return to Howard in 1928, but for these few years he had the time and freedom to devote himself to the Harlem Renaissance.
As a shining example of the Talented Tenth (black leader W.E.B. Du Bois's term for the upper crust of African American society), Locke shared their conviction that African Americans could promote racial progress through their abilities and accomplishments. Unlike Du Bois, however, Locke felt that black writers and artists could help their race most by producing a broad spectrum of high-quality art, not just works that cast a positive light on African Americans. He also believed passionately that the richest sources for inspiration lay in the African American folk tradition—the treasure trove of stories and music that blacks had produced during their several centuries in the United States.
Through articles written for various publications, anthologies of black literature he edited, and his own complex network of personal connections—especially with wealthy or influential whites who were interested in African American culture—Locke served as a kind of talent or press agent for the younger generation of Harlem Renaissance writers, actors, musicians, and visual artists. Always on the lookout for new talent, he gave his young friends advice on how to further their careers, and he introduced them to people who could help them reach their goals. Most important, though, was Locke's role as the editor of The New Negro anthology.
The New Negro: The core of the Harlem Renaissance
Considered one of the most important books published during—and about—the Harlem Renaissance, The New Negro: An Interpretation had its start at a special dinner organized by Opportunity editor Charles S. Johnson (1893–1956; see Chapter 2). Supposedly planned as a celebration to mark the publication of Jessie Redmon Fauset's (1882–1961; see biographical entry) first novel, There Is Confusion, the dinner held at New York's downtown Civic Club on March 21, 1924, was really a way to introduce new talents like Jean Toomer and Countee Cullen to the white publishers and patrons who could help bring them recognition.
Among those in attendance was Paul Kellogg, editor of the Survey Graphic magazine, who wanted to put together a special issue showcasing the work of African American writers and artists. Kellogg asked Locke to edit the issue, which was to "express the progressive spirit of contemporary Negro life," and Locke accepted the assignment with enthusiasm. Published in March 1925, the result was a collection of poems, stories, essays, and art by thirty-four contributors (four of them white, the rest black) that blended African American folk influences with modern voices. The public's response was overwhelming. The issue was the most popular in the Survey Graphic's history, with an estimated readership of forty thousand; it had to be reprinted twice. By the end of the year the publishing company of Albert and Charles Boni had put out a bound, expanded version of the Survey Graphic issue under the name The New Negro: An Interpretation. This anthology still stands as the clearest expression of the ideas that lay at the core of the Harlem Renaissance, ideas that were described by Locke in his introduction to the volume and in the four essays he contributed.
Locke's introduction announced the arrival of a "New Negro" and a bold, confident new stage in African American history. Just as the circumstances of so many blacks had been changed by the migration from the South to the North and the shift from rural to urban life, ideas about what black people were like and what they could do also had to change. Old stereotypes were being destroyed, and African Americans were beginning to take their rightful place in American society. They would no longer accept the view of themselves as a "problem," but would instead take pride in themselves and be full participants in their nation's democracy.
This would be achieved, Locke asserted, through "the revaluation by white and black alike of the Negro in terms of his artistic endowments and cultural contributions, past and prospective." Locke grandly predicted that this exciting young generation of black writers and artists would serve as "the advance guard of the African peoples in their contact with twentieth century civilization," and he said that all of this was happening in Harlem, "the laboratory of a great race-welding," where blacks from all parts of the world came together to do great things.
Although the significance and value of The New Negro anthology was immediately recognized, its promises were not so easily or so quickly realized. As the 1920s drew to a close, the Harlem Renaissance was also winding down. Locke returned to Howard University in 1928 and began to devote more of his time to his teaching responsibilities than to his friends in Harlem. The next year saw the American stock market crash and resulting economic decline that marked the beginning of the Great Depression (the period of economic hardship and widespread unemployment that lasted from the stock market crash of 1929 until 1941, when the United States entered World War II [1939–45]). The hoped-for improvement in race relations and in the status of blacks through artistic achievement had not come about, and African Americans had many decades of struggle still ahead. In an article in Phylon in 1950, Locke noted, "All of us probably expected too much of the Negro Renaissance, but its new vitality of independence, pride, and self-respect, its scoff and defiance of prejudice and limitations were so welcome and heartening."
After the Harlem Renaissance
During the remaining decades of his life, Locke maintained his position as a leading black scholar and thinker. He continued to write critical essays and, until 1942, edited an annual review of black literature for Opportunity. He served as a visiting professor at the universities of Wisconsin and California and the City College of New York, lectured across the United States and throughout Latin American, traveled to Europe and Africa, and served on various editorial boards. In 1933 Locke was commissioned by the American Association of Adult Education (AAAE) to evaluate adult education centers in Harlem and Atlanta, and in response to the lack of attention to black issues he found there, he established the Association of Negro Folk Education (ANFE) in 1935. Locke was elected president of the AAAE in 1945.
In 1951 Locke received a grant from the Rockefeller Foundation to produce a work summarizing his studies of African American culture. His work on this project was interrupted when he was hospitalized for a heart ailment. He retired from Howard University in 1953 and moved to New York City. Locke's health then declined steadily, and he died in June of 1954. His colleague Mary Just Butcher finished his final book, The Negro in American Culture, which was published in 1956.
For More Information:
Books
Alain Locke: Scholar and Educator. New York: Chelsea House Publishers, 1995.
Harris, Leonard. The Philosophy of Alain Locke: Harlem Renaissance andBeyond. Philadelphia, PA: Temple University Press, 1991.
Huggins, Nathan Irvin. Harlem Renaissance. New York: Oxford University Press, 1971.
Lewis, David Levering. When Harlem Was in Vogue. New York: Knopf, 1981.
Linnemann, Russell J., ed. Alain Locke: Reflections on a Renaissance Man. Baton Rouge: Louisiana State University Press, 1982.
Locke, Alain, ed. The New Negro: An Interpretation. 1925. Reprint: Scribner, 1997.
Watson, Steven. The Harlem Renaissance: Hub of African American Culture,1920–1930. New York: Pantheon, 1995.
Periodicals
Long, Richard A. "Alain Locke: Cultural and Social Mentor." Black World (November 1970): 87–90.
Locke, Alain
Alain Locke
Born: September 13, 1886
Philadelphia, Pennsylvania
Died: June 9, 1954
New York, New York
African American educator and editor
Alain Locke, the distinguished African American intellectual of his generation, was the leading promoter and interpreter of the artistic and cultural contributions of African Americans to American life. As a professor of philosophy (the study of knowledge), his theory of "cultural pluralism" valued the uniqueness of different styles and values available within a democratic society.
Locke's childhood
Alain LeRoy Locke was born on September 13, 1886, in Philadelphia, Pennsylvania, into a well-known family. Alain's father, Pliny Locke, had obtained a degree in law from Howard University, and then became a mail clerk in Philadelphia. Mary Hawkins, Alain's mother, was a teacher.
Pliny Locke and Mary Hawkins were engaged for sixteen years, not marrying until they were middle aged. Alain, their only child, was brought up in a cultured home environment. When Alain was just six years old his father died, and his mother supported her son through teaching. Alain attended the Ethical Culture School, which was a school with modern ideas about education, teaching moral principles and human values. Young Alain became ill with rheumatic fever early in his childhood. The disease permanently damaged his heart and restricted his physical activities. He dealt with his weak physical condition by spending time reading books and learning to play the piano and violin.
Locke attended Central High School, graduating second in the class of 1902, and then studied at the Philadelphia School of Pedagogy, where he was first in his class. He attended Harvard University and completed Harvard's four-year program in three years, graduating magna cum laude (second in his class) in 1907, being elected to Phi Beta Kappa (an honor society made up of high-ranking American college and graduate students in the subject of liberal arts and sciences), and winning the school's most distinguished award, the Bowdoin Prize, for an essay in English. It was a remarkable achievement for anyone, especially an African American during this highly segregated (separated because of race) era.
Locke was named a Rhodes Scholar (a person who receives a scholarship to Oxford University for two to three years), the first African American chosen for this award, and sailed to England in 1907 to attend Oxford University. In 1910 he received a bachelor's degree in literature. From Oxford he moved to Germany for advanced work in philosophy at the University of Berlin from 1910 to 1911. This time in Europe helped to intensify his interest in modern art, music and literature.
Became an educator
In September 1912, Locke was appointed assistant professor of English at Howard University, an African American college, in Washington, D.C. Frustrated, because Howard's Board of Trustees would not approve courses on comparative race relations, Locke turned his attention back to philosophy. In 1916, he received a one-year appointment as an Austin Teaching Fellow at Harvard. Two years later he received his doctorate degree and returned to Howard as a full professor of philosophy. He would head this department until his retirement in 1953.
During these years Locke was a major contributor to Opportunity: Journal of Negro Life and Survey Graphic. He edited a special issue of the latter publication devoted to the Harlem Renaissance, the flourishing of African American art, literature, and music in New York City during the 1920s and 1930s. Expanding it into a book and shifting the focus from Harlem to overall African American cultural life, Locke authored The New Negro: An Interpretation in 1925. It was an outstanding collection of the leading African American fiction, poetry, drama, and essays written by himself and others describing the changing state of race relations in the United States.
Locke became the leading authority on modern African American culture and used his position to promote the careers of young artists. He encouraged them to seek out subjects in African American life and to set high artistic standards for themselves.
Locke's cultural influence
Locke served as secretary and editor of the newly established Associates in Negro Folk Education. Between 1936 and 1942 this organization published nine "Bronze Booklets" written by leading African American scholars. Locke wrote two of these, Negro Art: Past and Present and The Negro and His Music, and edited a third, The Negro in Art: A Pictorial Record of the Negro Artist and of the Negro Theme in Art. The latter reemphasized his belief that African American artists should look to the works of their African ancestors for subject matter and styles to apply to modern painting and sculpture.
Locke continued his work in philosophy, actively promoting his theory of cultural pluralism (a society made up of several different cultures and their beliefs). This interest led to his pioneering 1942 social science anthology, coedited with Bernhard Stern, When Peoples Meet: A Study in Race and Culture Contacts, an examination of dominant and minority populations in various countries around the world.
In demand as a visiting scholar
By the middle of the twentieth century, Locke was a member of the editorial board of the American Scholar and, in 1945, the first African American elected president of the American Association for Adult Education, a mainly white national organization.
During the 1945 and 1946 academic year he served as visiting professor of philosophy at the University of Wisconsin. The following year he was a visiting professor at the New School for Social Research in what had become his second home for many years, New York City, and held a similar appointment the next year at the City College of New York (CCNY).
After 1948 Locke began teaching at both CCNY and Howard. His final achievement was to secure a Phi Beta Kappa chapter at Howard in 1953, a major milestone in the history of African American education.
Locke retired later that year and was awarded an honorary doctorate (a degree given without the usual proceedings) by Howard. He moved permanently to New York City and continued working on his magnum opus (highest achievement), The Negro in American Culture, a definitive study of the contribution of African Americans to American society. Unfortunately his recurrent heart problems returned in the spring of 1954, causing his death on June 9, 1954, in New York City. His unfinished manuscript was completed by Margaret Just Butcher.
For More Information
"Alain Locke: Scholar and Educator." In Black Americans of Achievement Series 2. New York: Chelsea House, 2002.
Butcher, Margaret J. The Negro in American Culture: Based on Materials Left by Alain Locke. New York: Knopf, 1956.
Linnemann, Russell J. Alain Locke: Reflections on a Modern Renaissance Man. Baton Rouge: Louisiana State University Press, 1982.
Stewart, Jeffrey C, ed. The Critical Temper of Alain Locke. New York: Garland, 1983.
Washington, Johnny. Alain Locke and Philosophy: A Quest for Cultural Pluralism. Westport, CT: Greenwood Press, 1986.
Locke, Alain
LOCKE, Alain>
LOCKE, Alain (b. 13 September 1886; d. 10 June 1954), teacher, writer, philosopher.
A powerful editor, scholar, and teacher, Alain LeRoy Locke is best known for his crucial role in inaugurating the New Negro Movement, or Harlem Renaissance, of the 1920s and 1930s. In 1925, Paul Kellogg, editor of Survey Graphic magazine, asked Locke to serve as editor for a special issue on race and black New York. Locke subtitled the special March issue Harlem: Mecca of the New Negro, and in it he included essays, poems, drawings, plays, and short stories by young intellectuals who would become some of the century's best-known African American artists and writers, including James Weldon Johnson, W.E.B. DuBois, Countee Cullen, Langston Hughes, Claude McKay, Jean Toomer, and Angelina Grimké. The issue was an unprecedented success, and eight months later Locke published a revised and expanded version called The New Negro. With Locke's essay "Enter the New Negro," Survey Graphic and The New Negro announced an emerging cultural, political, and aesthetic vision for black Americans. The New Negro remains the central text of the Harlem Renaissance, and it launched the careers of its most famous participants.
Locke was born in Philadelphia, the only child of Pliny Ishmael Locke and Mary Hawkins Locke. His parents were a well-established part of Philadelphia's black elite. Locke attended Central High School and then the Philadelphia School of Pedagogy, where his father was a teacher. He entered Harvard University in 1904 and graduated magna cum laude and Phi Beta Kappa in 1907. As the first African American Rhodes Scholar, Locke studied at Oxford University in England. After graduating from Oxford, he spent a year studying philosophy at the University of Berlin. In 1912, he returned to the United States to teach English and philosophy at Howard University, a historically black institution in Washington, D.C. Locke took leave of Howard to return to Harvard, where he completed his doctorate in philosophy in 1918. He rejoined the faculty at Howard as a professor of philosophy and maintained his position until his retirement in 1952.
Although Locke's outstanding scholarship and his role in educating the black elite at Howard are noteworthy, he remains most celebrated for his role in the Harlem cultural world. Many of the major artists of the decades associated with the Harlem Renaissance were LGB; among the most notable were Cullen, "Moms" Mabel Hampton, Nella Larsen, McKay, Richard Bruce Nugent, Bessie Smith, Billy Strayhorn, and Wallace Thurman. At the time, Locke was the most prominent. Locke published Nugent's first short story,"Sadhji," in The New Negro,and Nugent, then known as Richard Bruce, became the first African American author to publish an openly gay story, "Smoke, Lilies, and Jade," in the 1926 issue of Fire!!,a journal he established with the painter Aaron Douglas, Hughes, Zora Neale Hurston, and Thurman. Locke also fostered the careers of many younger, gay poets including Cullen, Hughes, and Thurman, the latter of whom published the gay-themed novel Infants in the Spring in 1932. A devoted supporter of black artists, Locke also helped several authors, among them Hughes, Hurston, and McKay, secure patrons so that they could continue their literary careers. About Locke, Nugent once said, "Almost everybody listened to his dictates" (Garber, p. 216).
One of Locke's protégés, Cullen, taught high school English to another young gay author, James Baldwin. Some critics argue that Locke and Cullen sustained a love affair at one time. If so, their relationship may have been a short one; Cullen married Yolande DuBois (daughter of W.E.B. DuBois) in 1928, though it should be noted that on his honeymoon Cullen brought along his best man and lover, Harold Jackman. His marriage ended in 1929. The white, gay socialite and patron of the arts Carl Van Vechten was also among Locke's friends, and the two helped to bring Harlem and its cultural offerings to the world.
Besides promoting literature, Locke was also known as a staunch advocate of the visual arts and theater. In his essay "The American Negro Artist" (1931), he named the painter Aaron Douglas "the pioneer of the African style among the American Negro artists." In drama, he celebrated the future of black playwrights who drew their work from black culture. There is no other senior intellectual of the era who matched Locke's commitment to meeting and encouraging younger artists. Beyond his role in the Harlem Renaissance, his philosophy, which many associate with pragmatism, has illuminated American philosophical studies, especially as he introduced new ways of thinking through questions of race and culture.
Bibliography
Harris, Leonard. The Philosophy of Alain Locke: Harlem Renaissance and Beyond. Philadelphia: Temple University Press, 1989.
Locke, Alain LeRoy. The Cultural Temper of Alain Locke: A Selection of His Essays on Art and Culture. Edited by Jeffrey C. Stewart. New York: Garland, 1983.
——. The New Negro. New York: Macmillan, 1992.
Washington, Johnny. Evolution, History, and Destiny: Letters to Alain Locke (1886–1954). New York: Peter Lang, 2002.
Shelly Eversley
see alsocullen, countee; grimkÉ, angelina weld; harlem renaissance; hughes, langston; mckay, claude; nugent, richard bruce; thurman, wallace; van vechten, carl.