Locke arrived at Harvard shortly after his nineteenth birthday with letters of introduction from his Central High teachers, much as his grandfather Ishmael Locke had arrived in Philadelphia with his own letters sixty years earlier. For Locke too, the letters served to introduce him to the important educators of his new community and to ensure that he would not be regarded as just another Black man. Unfortunately, when Locke arrived the second week of September in 1904, the luminaries of Harvard’s faculty had not yet arrived. Only younger professors were around to monitor the freshmen entrance exams he was required to take. In his first letter to his mother, he noted: “strange to say they are not pleasant fellows—sour as crab apples. I had fun asking them where the ‘big boys I have letters to’ were and I wish you could have seen the expressions on their faces. I did it just for effect.”1
Locke had fashioned a pose of the young upstart genius to reassure himself that he could handle himself in the big leagues. The remark and the letters signaled to those who might think otherwise that he was somebody to be taken seriously. First impressions mattered most. His strategy was a protective armor, for beneath the attitude of total self-confidence, arrogance, and self-possession hid considerable doubts: Would he be accepted? Would this 4´11˝, ninety-five-pound man be taken seriously? Would he be segregated from and marginalized by a Boston elite that shunned close and intimate association with Blacks? Beneath Locke’s tough veneer was a tender-minded boy who would confide to his mother at the end of this first letter: “I’m awfully glad to have these letters of introduction—its such a cold formal place that it would seem forbidding if I did not have them.”2
But Locke already had fallen in love with Harvard. He continued to his mother:
I was called up early this morning from the office. … Got breakfast and went over to Harvard. It’s a beautiful place, quite different from the University [of Pennsylvania]. Everything is old and staid. None of the buildings look as if they had been built within 25 years. The largest finest trees I have ever seen and the campus full of pigeons and squirrels. Neither seem to mind passers by.3
Later, he would gush, “You can’t imagine the historical associations of this place. I have to cross the field where the men assembled for the battle of Bunker Hill every day. The Washington Elm is within a half square of the college yard and you pass Longfellow house every time you go to the Stadium.”4 The memory of the New England Renaissance of American literature was still alive at university teas, where according to Locke’s fellow student Rollo Brown, one could hear “unaffected talk of what ‘Mr. Longfellow’ was like as a teacher—he obtrusively caused students to shift their point of view—what ‘Mr. Emerson’ had one day said when he was in Cambridge.”5 It was important for him to set down roots in New England’s flowering ground. After visiting the Mt. Auburn Cemetery at Fresh Pond, Locke would write his mother, “Longfellow, Lowell, Phillips Brooks, everybody that was anything in New England are all buried there.”6 During the next three years, Locke would visit almost every fine arts institution in Boston and soak up its culture.
Locke was fortunate to attend Harvard before the end of its “Golden Age,” which began in 1869 when Charles William Eliot became its president and revitalized both undergraduate and graduate education at Harvard. Although in Locke’s time the legendary professor Charles Eliot Norton no longer taught his famous courses on English literature, others including Barrett Wendell, George Lyman Kittredge, and Charles “Copey” Copeland carried on the Harvard tradition of senior professors teaching English composition and literary history to undergraduates. Aging William James, the father of American pragmatism, still taught courses at Harvard, although Locke chose instead to study with such other stars of American philosophy as Josiah Royce, George Herbert Palmer, and George Santayana. Locke acknowledged his debt to Harvard’s surrogate fathers in a 1942 reminiscence: “There I was exposed to the Golden Age of liberalism and deeply influenced by Barrett Wendell, Copeland, Briggs, and Baker, shed the Tory restraints for urbanity and humanism, and under the spell of Royce, James, Palmer, and Santayana, gave up Puritan provincialism for critical-mindedness and cosmopolitanism.”7
Harvard not granting him the one-year of advanced standing he requested was only the first obstacle to his plan to graduate from Harvard College in three years. His entrance examinations had revealed deficiencies in algebra, history, and physics. Undaunted, Locke committed himself to taking the courses to make up the deficiencies. But his biggest obstacle was financial. Locke’s correspondence with his mother for these years is a record of their difficult efforts to stretch Mary’s now $560 per year salary as a teacher at Camden’s Mount Vernon school to cover the Harvard tuition. Constant borrowing, late payments on rent, cashing in insurance policies, and dodging creditors composed a floating system of debts and payments that frequently bewildered and upset his mother. Locke, on the other hand, looked at the situation as a financial game. To him, any inability to pay was not a personal dishonor, but a temporary glitch in an otherwise quite acceptable process of inconveniencing others to realize his goals. Throughout, Locke managed the family’s accounts, instructing his mother whom to pay and when, from whom to borrow and how much, and how to bargain for more money from her Camden job. In part, his decision-making role derived from his greater ability at juggling the accounts, but it also signified that by the time he left Camden, he had become her surrogate husband, the head of the household. In his letters he would chide her to eat well, to not “strict” herself by going without food or coal, and berate her about the tasks she had left undone.
Locke’s almost daily correspondence with his mother buoyed his confidence at Harvard. It also buoyed her. His leaving had devastated Mary. In her third letter to him in so many days, she wrote, “I don’t expect letters—just send a postal—I don’t expect answers, but I must just talk to you until I get used to the absence.”8 She was left behind to work at an unfulfilling teaching job and deal with insistent creditors, while he was off on an exhilarating adventure. He was still the center of her world and knew it. “I dream nearly every night of you,” she confided.9
Another cause of economic stress during these Harvard College years was Locke’s desire to live the life of the gentleman. His first letter to his mother had delivered his opinion of student housing: “The cheaper dormitories are like barns and are not heated except by open grates for wood in each room—I wouldn’t live in one rent free.”10 So Locke placed an ad in the newspaper and reassured his mother, who believed he might be denied accommodations because of race prejudice:
I have a large list to choose from—I have received 8 or ten answers to my ad. … There is one answer in particular I think will suit. … From its location it must be in a charming neighborhood and is within 5 minutes walk of Harvard grounds. Still I am looking out for something better not in the way of price. … I am determined to get in [with] some good and intellectual family.11
By the end of his first week in Cambridge, he could write his mother with even more encouraging news.
Well yesterday I visited about 14 boarding houses in the swellest parts of Cambridge and what do you think? Every single one but one was pleasant and offered me accomodations [sic]. I have so many I don’t know which to choose. Four of them when I spoke of references said I needed none but my appearance. Well I did look rather nice. I knew I would never break in if I didn’t. The grey suit with the hat and grey glove—the overcoat and bag—all make their impression. One downright refused me, every other was pleasant. This New England coldness is all bosh—the pleasantest chummiest people you would want to find. One place when I mentioned Prof. Royce said “His son is downstairs now.” So you can see what nice places they are. Every one offers the use of the reception room. About 5 or 6 that I have already [been] offered are on the streets where professors live. This seems to be the place for me—it’s just extra enough. … The reason I want a real nice place is on account of the tutoring. By the by there is a colored woman, a Miss Baldwin, principal of the largest and most aristocratic grammar school in Cambridge. I am going to see her—ostensibly to visit the school—really to get in with her. If I could get a nice bunk up here, Phila would never see me again.12
Locke took Black Victorianism and turned it into an art of performance on the streets of Cambridge. He was the Black dandy, whose gray coat “and gloves” updated Beau Brummel’s signature preference for the more severe black suit and cane. Gray, the preferred suiting color for medium-brown African American men of the early twentieth century, was a palette for Locke, meticulously coordinated down to the gloves and coat. Locke used his dress to trouble White expectations of what a Negro looked like and replace them with an image of the New Negro, who created a new surprising identity through the art of dress. As a Black dandy, Locke had even transcended his grandfather—he needed no references “but my appearance.”
Indeed, the letter shows how much Locke believed race was essentially a performance. His dress defined him as cosmopolitan, even worldly, and not “niggerish.” The success of this initial self-fashioning of his Harvard identity led him to believe that he could escape the boundaries of racial prejudice he had sensed in Philadelphia. “There is no prejudice here,” he wrote his mother, “and from the impression I have made so far I am sure I can get along all right.”13 Locke did not come to Harvard as Negro to a White university, but as a man who belonged there, continuing the integrated social life he had enjoyed at Central. By contrast, W. E. B. Du Bois, who had attended Fisk University before Harvard, wrote that he “went to Harvard as a Negro, not simply by birth, but recognizing myself as a member of a segregated caste whose situation I accepted.”14 Du Bois attributed his racial self-consciousness to living in the Black undergraduate atmosphere at Fisk; without such an experience, Locke saw no reason to limit the sphere of his contacts. Accordingly, when he finally settled on lodgings at 50 Irving Street, he was very pleased: William James lived a half a block away at 95 Irving Street, and Josiah Royce’s house stood two doors farther down. It was certainly a “nice-looking place to receive” White fellow students, whom Locke did not have trouble meeting.
I’ve picked up acquaintanceships with 2 or 3 of the Freshmen. It’s a funny-looking lot of dudes about 20–22 years of age, some eccentric with heels 2 in and more high, skin tight jackets and colored handkerchiefs tied around their rough rider hats, then some poor looking Jews—some with moustaches—and then the rabble. Of all [the] people half of them look as if they ought to be furtherest from Harvard College. … I fell in today with a young man from Springfield, Mass who is really chummy. Others have started conversation but I am going to be choice and pick my company. From the very first word I knew this one was an O.K. fellow. [By the way] I didn’t know there were so many coons here. Boston is thick with them.15
On one level, “coons” was simply one of many terms that Blacks habitually used in private to refer to other Blacks; but on another level, it was a racist reaction to other, less sophisticated Blacks. Locke strictly divided the Black community between “coons,” the uneducated “herd,” and gentlemen and ladies, the “representative” members of the race. He also gleaned at Harvard a truth of American race relations: when Whites confronted a large number of Blacks, they were more likely to think of Blacks en masse. Close ties with Blacks would make his assimilation into elite White culture at Harvard more difficult, especially since he wanted to appear to Whites as an exceptional individual. Locke feared the taint of inferiority would somehow rub off on him. That fear even extended to Philadelphia’s Black newspaper: “I am glad to receive the Tribune news,” he wrote his mother, “but not the Tribune—everything is seen here, and one must keep up appearances.”16
By the first week of October other Black Harvard students began inviting him to join in their group activities, but he wished to avoid them so as not to endanger his prospects for White acceptance. Locke had to face that an enlightened Black student was expected to maintain cordial relations with other Black students on campus. He wrote his mother:
The colored fellow whom Dr. Flounders, Rowland’s principal, asked me to meet called on me this afternoon. He took me to see the “boys.” Of course they were colored. All together about 9 in one house. He took me right up into the filthy bedroom and there were 5 niggers, all Harvard men. Well, their pluck and their conceit are wonderful. Some are ugly enough to frighten you but I guess they are bright. They received me cordially [“] come around to the dances[”] and that sort of thing. I staid [sic] the visit out for fun but I might as well have that one experience. Its my last. They are not fit for company even if they are energetic and plodding fellows. I’m not used to that class and I don’t intend to get used to them. … Most of them are waiters up here. … Mama, don’t fear I am going to associate with such fellows. Its well enough for them to get an education but they are not gentlemen.17
Locke’s judgment was harsh and cruel: a number of excellent Black students attended Harvard during his tenure as an undergraduate. Audrey Bowser graduated from Harvard with an AB in English in 1907 and went on to a career as a journalist; William Clarence Matthews was the very popular star of the varsity baseball team for his four years as a Harvard undergraduate. Edwin Tyson and Hugh R. Francis, both of Washington, D.C., came from respectable families whose economic resources were superior to Locke’s. While they did not make the kind of academic record at Harvard that Locke did, with the exception of Matthews, they graduated. Some Black students did earn money by serving tables at Memorial, where he took his meals, but White students served tables there too, without causing their fellow students any deep approbation. But those fellow White students were not as fearful as Locke that associating with working students would hurt their chances for acceptance among other Whites. His comments reveal a deeper truth—he was entering Harvard less as an individual and more as a member of an insecure Black middle class.
Indeed, Locke’s status was tenuous in the first months of the fall semester. Without his Central High School connection, he very well might not have “broken in” to the circle of elite White students at Harvard as he confided to his mother:
The graduates at the table did not have anything to say to me until one happened to ask where I came from. He happened to be a Central High School man—one whom Mr. Mearns told to look out for me. He said I was told to look for a Mr. Locke. I said I am he. Then there followed the most surprised expression you ever saw, general handshaking—I was introduced to the whole table and made to feel at home. I could not help but think of the contrast and was mighty glad they could not have seen me a half hour previous in the colored den.18
In his letter, Locke also hinted at his role model at Harvard: “You ought to hear them talk of [Roscoe Conkling] Bruce—I bet he didn’t notice them.” Bruce was the son of Black Reconstruction senator Blanche K. Bruce and an honor student of his Harvard class of 1902. Not only had he won a scholarship but he had also been class orator. As his class’s best debater, he had led Harvard to two victories over its rivals Princeton and Yale.19 Bruce had won the respect of prominent professors like the philosopher George Herbert Palmer and had been popular among his White classmates. Now assistant superintendent of Colored schools in Washington, D.C., after a stint as a teacher at Tuskegee Normal and Industrial Institute, Bruce was a success story and a “representative” Negro from Harvard. Locke consciously modeled himself after Bruce, who had also been something of a snob: he could be counted on not to “notice” the less gifted Black students during his time at Harvard.
Locke seemed to have more difficulty than Bruce balancing the conflicting demands of groups at Harvard. There were the professors, and along with them social functions sponsored by the university; then White students, or “friends,” with whom he sought to establish intimate relationships; and then the Black circle, from whom he remained icily distant. The first two groups might lead to advancement. “The fellows are very friendly and I’m scheming as usual to get in with the best.”20
Interestingly, the Black students understood his game. He wrote his mother, “The colored fellows don’t speak when I’m with the others. What do you think of that? To come up here in a broad-minded place like this and stick together like they were in the heart of Africa.”21 Mary supported his desire to remain exclusive, but by November, she began to sense that he might become a victim of group ostracism. She then jokingly urged him to “speak to the other fellows when they pass you, just for fun.” She also chastised him about his hypercritical attitude: “You seem never to duly appreciate your colored brethren. Are the Harvard representatives particularly loud? You would think that Harvard would get the best element of the race.”22 It had. She could not understand that his behavior had roots in her early childhood admonitions to avoid “low class persons” and only associate with “refined” playmates. But for Mary Locke, who lived in a predominantly Black world, this dictum had meant associating with only the best of the Black population; for Locke, it had become a demand that he associate mainly with upper-class Whites. His letters also cautioned her against becoming too intimate with her Black women friends in his absence. “Remember me to Janie and steer clear of that club. What you want to do if you want a diversion is to go to lectures, etc.” He wanted to ensure that his absence did not lead her to become more involved with the Black community and less focused on him. “I am glad you can find some diversion on Sunday,” he wrote on October 13, “but do not get too thick with either Lizzie or Mary. Time I get established you will be so affiliated with the race that you won’t want to leave them. Keep retired and distant with most of them.”23
Nonetheless, despite his disparagement of Black undergraduates, Locke continued to visit with them at Harvard. He wrote his mother in November:
Yesterday afternoon I went down to the stadium to see the last practice of the football team. I guess over 1500 students must have been in line with the University band leading. I went down with a colored brother Bowser. Well he acted like a fool—talked all sorts of nonsense—the “boys” wanted [to] let me know that their annual dance and card-party—subscription $1.00 mind you [—] was to come off. They generally let the new men know ahead of time so they could introduce them to some “lady” to bring. The “lady’s” name must be handed in by Thursday of next week.24
Over Thanksgiving the pressure to participate in the annual dance intensified.
About 10:30, my colored friend whom I have been trying to get shut of came in and said the “boys” were over in Hilton’s room and would like me to come over. Of course there was nothing to do but go and I thought I would meet some whom I might like. … Then I learned what they wanted me for—to ask me to this old dance of theirs. Subscription $1 mind you. I said I have never gone and do not care to and besides I have no one to take. Oh, we’ll fix that up for you and without asking me a bit they began to fix up among themselves whom I should take. You can imagine how furious I was. [“]Gentlemen I am here to study—I go to meetings of our club, I visit my schoolmates, and go to places when I have been formally introduced by friends at home but I do not go to dances and don’t approve of them.[”] One of them said, “Well we’ve counted on you and thought you were surely going.” I saw the hurt and happening to have $1 in my pocket I said, [“]That’s easily settled gentlemen as you have counted on me here’s my subscription but I cannot go.”25
Locke’s race and class-consciousness masked a deeper concern. As a closeted queer student in an aggressively heterosexual Black student community, he wanted to avoid any setting in which he would have to perform as if he were available heterosexually. That conflict came to a head two days later:
Last night Saturday these two fellows called and said they were passing on their way to Browns and stopped in to see if I would go. Browns they explained was a sort of “house for the fellows” and Brown was a graduate of Harvard, etc., etc. I had already said I had no engagement so they had me. I put on my coat and went thinking it was a few squares away. They said down Massachusetts Ave. Well they hailed a Roxbury car and I learned with a jolt that it was Mass Ave. Roxbury. One of them paid the fares and I began to think I had been sold. Well they landed at a rather nice looking house but the Brown whom I thought I was going to meet is the son who is now teaching at Tuskegee. It was the Brown girls I found out when they asked the mother at the door if the girls were home. In the parlor playing whist was this same Matthews, Mr. Brown[,] some other fellow and four girls. Well I just grit my teeth and endured it.
Rather than the socializing in Roxbury, it was the heterosexual flirtation of the scene that made him “grit” his teeth.
After we left they told me they thought I understood and that it was the “girls at home” night for the fellows. I never fell so completely into a trap in my life—I suppose it isn’t their fault for they thought I understood without explanations but you can imagine all I said. I was hot and let them know it.26
Mary did not think the incident was so bad and wondered why he reacted the way he did. She seemed not to realize that his hyper-Victorian policing of this incident was actually sexual panic over being forced into a social-sexual encounter with a “lady.” Perhaps Locke had not told his mother about his first sexual experience with a boy, as he claimed he had done, or maybe she did not conclude that that experience ruled out future heterosexual relationships. For Locke, it did; he was sure he was not interested in “girls at home.” And that brought him considerable anxiety. His vicious gendered labeling of Black women as “nigger wenches” barely deflected attention from his fear that a woman’s advances might produce a socially explosive revelation.
Remarkably, Locke did attend the dreaded dance and, in spite of his promise not to stay, enjoyed himself.
They did have the hall decorated very nicely in Harvard colors and they were all dancing something like a cake walk when I came in. It was so funny that I would willingly have watched them longer if it had not been that I was on my dignity. One fellow had a dress suit, one a tuxedo, the majority black suits with red ties, several mixed outing suits. The women were simply dressed outlandishly and strange to say there wasn’t a costly dress there.27
The dance reveals one of the deepest conflicts of Locke’s entire life—his pull toward the coziness of Black fellowship and social occasions that, in fact, valued and nurtured him in ways White situations did not, and yet his hostility and standoffishness toward working-class Black circumstances, combined with persistent sexual anxiety that he would be outed and rejected if he became too visible to the Black community. Locke’s sexuality prevented him having a closer relationship with the Black students. And yet he seemed to value their acceptance of him. “I find myself very cordially received by the considerable no of colored fellows here and feel very proud of the good work both scholastic & athletic some of them are doing here. Perhaps it is not within my province as a newcomer to criticize a slight tendency towards segregation when there is as little cause for it as there is here at Harvard, especially as it was at one of such gatherings that I got material to answer your questions about the football situation.”28
Locke did not have the problem of heterosexual expectations with his White friends. None of those friends would ever have invited him to a party where there was the potential of a romantic encounter with a White “lady.” Rather, his Central High friends seemed to want to avoid such situations themselves, being aesthetes for whom visiting “Cultured” sites, taking homo-social if not homosexual excursions into the countryside, and having beautiful experiences around Boston were the things to do. Locke took in them all with his newfound friends in tow.
I visited the Harvard Art Museum and the big University museum … the celebrated Academy of Fine Arts in Boston and the famous Boston Library. The paintings in the library reading room are simply so magnificent as to be overpowering. I enjoyed the afternoon immensely. [David (“Dap”)] Pfromm from the Central High School was with me.29
Locke and Pfromm, the son of a German-Jewish pharmacist in Philadelphia, met during his first week of classes. They had quickly become friends. Pfromm was a freshman like Locke, but less of an aesthete and rebel. Pfromm, who often accompanied Locke to church, did not appreciate Locke’s disdain for the religious exercises, yet both enjoyed the fine stained-glass windows in Appleton Chapel. Pfromm and Locke were also friends with Charles Dickerman, another graduate of Central High and a sophomore when Locke met him in October at his table in Memorial. “Dickus,” as his friends fondly called him, was already an experienced aesthete, well familiar with English literature, classical music, and modern art. By the spring of 1905, Locke had also added to his circle of close friends C. Rosenblum, another freshman who would major in English, and Bruno Beckhard, a wealthy graduate of Columbia Grammar School in New York who seemed to be at college mainly to have a good time. Locke was also friendly with John Hall Wheelock, the poet Charles Seeger, and Van Wyck Brooks.
But it was with Pfromm, Dickerman, and Beckhard that Locke spent much of his social time.
I met Dickerman and our millionaire friend Beckhardt [sic] (the one who surprised me with his special car) and we went out to [Nonantum?] Novembeja—a beautiful lake a few miles out, toward Newton. … Well, we went out and spent the afternoon canoeing and taking pictures. We got in late for supper—took it together and then went to Beckhardt’s room. Let me tell you of the room all his furniture is in quartered oak with buff yellow trimmings, the most unique things I have yet seen—the room is simply loaded with curios—saddle, spurs, riding whips, chafery samovars for tea, old pipes, a guitar, mandolin, violin, etc.—simply great—we settled ourselves down for the evening—Dickerman made a couch for himself of pillows on the floor and started smoking a Turkish water pipe—Beckhardt started his music and went from the guitar to the mandolin to the violin, and wound up on the mouth organ. Dickerman said he played best on that—It was not much in the way of music but it did patch out the conversation which ran from baseball games to Dick’s account of a spiritualistic sceance [sic] he once attended.30
After Beckhard’s, Locke went over to Dick’s room in Weld Hall to listen to him “read some new poetry that took us till one, or after, then he started to walk home with me and Cambridge was so beautiful we sat on the yard fence and talked till the clock struck two.”31 Over time, Locke’s friendship with Dickerman became quite intimate. They were likely lovers by the end of Locke’s Harvard years.
Perhaps aware of the contrast between his closeness with his White friends and the arms-length distance he maintained with his Black classmates, Locke explained to his mother the difference between the two as one of class aspiration. Being with his White classmates was an association that led “somewhere.” Friendship, he argued, was not solely based on taste, but on the reality of whether friends could help him. This was certainly true of Dickerman, who was instrumental to Locke’s introduction into broader Cambridge and Boston society. Shortly after they met, Dickerman took Locke to Civic Service House in Boston where he taught a class of “Jewish boys,” and Locke was invited to perform what passed as “philanthropic work up here.” Locke was looking for a way “in” to the Boston teaching scene and volunteered to come once a week to teach, even though it was unpaid. He believed it would lead to membership in the “famous Century Club of Boston, a philanthropic club to which Bruce and Booker Washington belong,” as he wrote to his mother. “Bruce was a classmate of the superintendents and did the same kind of work they ask me to do.” In the spring of 1905, Dickerman again eased Locke’s access to Cambridge society.
I was invited Thursday Evening to a meeting of some organization—at the time I did not know what it was and on arriving found that Dickerman, a CHS fellow—now Sophomore—had proposed me for membership in the Ethical Culture club. I was elected and of course was more than willing to join. It is a club organized on the plan of the Ethical Culture Society. … I am not over interested, but as it was very kind of Dickerman and being a small club offers opportunity for meeting the proper sort of fellows, I was glad to agree to attend.32
“Cultured” activities were valuable intrinsically and as a means of access to “refined” fellows. And that Dickerman helped Locke socially was also part of a larger scenario: Locke was Dickerman’s Black friend, whom Dickerman had decided to take on as a project. Himself a social climber, Dickerman already had made the inroads that he offered to the younger Locke as a benefit of their relationship. In Locke’s letter to his mother, he elaborated on his feelings for Dickerman.
I like him best of all the High School fellows up here—probably because I see more of him. We go down to the Civic Service House together and sit together at table. We spent part of the night talking Celtic Literature!!! He is a poet and an enthusiast—so I have to pretend to be interested. It is interesting with him—anyone else would bore you to death—but its not affectation with him. He’s always that way, and he has called my attention to several mighty good books. When he sees me in the Union Library he will go get something he is enthusiastic over and insist on my reading it. Friday night he was off on Yeats, the Irish poet and after lighting his Japanese incense, sat down to read me a poetical play of Yeats and a poem “he” had written after reading it. I was a little bored but it was warm, comfortable, and I didn’t mind the smoke of his old incense, so I found myself getting up to go at 12:30.33
Such late-night sessions had a subtle but profound impact on Locke—Dickerman moved him toward modernism. Dickerman cut the figure of a Bohemian with his Japanese incense and readings in Celtic literature, but blended cosmopolitanism and cultural nationalism together in a way that would outline Locke’s future elaboration of a Black culture. But in 1904, Locke only feigned interest in Celtic literature because he wanted to be intimate with Dickerman. Homosexual desire was beginning a slow process of intellectual growth—exposing him to ideas and trends he would not have been open to otherwise. In Dickerman’s room, while Locke angled for a romantic relationship, he was growing as an intellectual.
Life as an undergraduate was not just escapist romps with friends. He had a “corking good set of instructors,” he wrote his mother, and he put in long hours of study, even though he didn’t want to be known as a “grind.” In addition to Dean Hurlbut’s course in freshman composition and Professor Haskins’s course in medieval history—the latter a requisite along with German because of his deficiencies on the entrance examinations—Locke took English literature with LeBaron Briggs, dean of the School of Arts and Sciences, freshman Greek literature with Gulick, Harris, and John H. White, and an introductory philosophy course jointly taught by George Herbert Palmer and Ralph Barton Perry. Locke used Harvard’s liberal elective system to design a freshman curriculum—indeed his entire undergraduate education—along the lines of a classical humanities curriculum. His 1904–1905 course in Greek literature included Plato’s Apology along with Crito, Lysias, Xenophon, Euripides, and readings from the elegiac, iambic, and lyric poets. He continued the study of Greek literature throughout his time at Harvard. He took two semesters of Greek literature from the period of the Athenian supremacy in 1905–1906, White’s “History of Greek Drama” in the first semester of his senior year, and an advanced course of Aeschylus, Sophocles, Euripides, and Aristophanes in the second. He divided the rest of his undergraduate curriculum almost evenly between advanced courses in English and philosophy. In his freshman year, he had As in philosophy and history, a B+ in Briggs’s course, Bs in freshman composition and Greek literature, and only a C in German (a language he began at Harvard) to spoil things. His average was good enough to win the Price Greenleaf Scholarship that he had applied for but not received upon his admission. And he had also impressed two of Harvard’s most influential professors during his first semester there.
It was not until the end of October 1904 that Locke obtained a personal interview with Josiah Royce, one of the real “big boys he had letters to” at Harvard. Armed with Francis Brandt’s letter, Locke marched over to 103 Irving Street and introduced himself to a somewhat skeptical Mrs. Royce. Initially, she told her young suitor that the good doctor was retired; but then noticing the letters in his hand, asked him inside, after which she took his coat and hat, and asked him to wait in the parlor. Upon reading the letters, Dr. Royce asked Locke into the philosopher’s study, where they talked for about an hour.
Well, such a room! It was small—lined up to the very high ceiling with books—dozens lying in a heap on a table at one end, a revolving bookcase in the center of the room and a large leather reclining chair in which “his nibs” was. He was hardly sitting—the chair was so big and tilted back so far that he seemed to be lying down. His body is smaller than mine but his head is larger than Thompsons. He’s a genius. You know he has the reputation of being the greatest philosopher now living—and because of that and his ugliness is called “the modern Socrates.” Do you know he never budged the whole 3/4 of an hour I was there. He just held out his hand, said he was glad to meet me and had me bring a chair up near this bed of his. I suppose I got a remarkable reception for the queer fish that he is. He stared at me for a minute or two and then said, “Tell me all about yourself.” He made me tell how old I was, what schools I had attended[,] how I came to know Brandt, if I was of West Indian descent, if I had educated parents, if I liked philosophy etc etc etc. What do you think of that for a cross examination? It’s good I have gotten used to great men—I didn’t feel strange and my nerve carried me through. It was a good chance to let him know what the family stood for. He asked, What was your father? and he got a good dose. I guess he was trying me out. At any rate he was pleased and then began to ask about my plans and to give advice. He said that it was a mighty auspicious beginning and that he would like to personally advise me on any point in my work—that he hoped to see me in his higher philosophy classes—he then even went on to ask if I had plenty of acquaintances so as not to be lonely. Told me how hard his boy had found certain courses—and so on. He was delightful in his dry way afterwards—but first he wanted to know everything, I suppose, before he let himself out. I put the finishing touches on by thanking him for the service one of his books had been to me (I had read it a few hours previous to going to his house just so I could talk about it.) and said good night and left.34
Locke was already a master of the academic game, in which letters of introduction, flattery, and genteel self-presentation were essential to being taken seriously by the “great men” at Harvard. Royce’s patriarchal questions about Locke’s family show how much class was part of the judgment of whether Locke was the “right sort”—a Black Victorian who happened to be Black (and therefore probably a “genius”). Locke, on his side, discusses Royce in terms of his physical appearance and social reputation, as a commodity to appropriate for his own success at Harvard. In that sense, Locke was a hustler at Harvard, who collected associations and connections and saw success at Harvard as depending as much on social as intellectual performance.
Yet being a hustler perfectly matched the social and academic code of his environment. Harvard’s ascendancy in the latter quarter of the nineteenth century was due to its aggressiveness in innovating and refining the academic game of university self-promotion. Harvard’s president, Charles W. Eliot, recognized early the necessity of first-rate graduate schools to build a reputation for undergraduate instruction, placed greater emphasis on publication than teaching in departments, saw that assembling departments of academic “stars” was crucial to the prestige of a university, and raided other universities to lure away such potential stars. The “Golden Age” of philosophy at Harvard was itself a packaged advertisement for Harvard’s claim to being the best university in the world. Royce had been lured away from the University of California upon James’s personal evaluation of Royce’s “genius”; George Herbert Palmer had risen to the Alford Professorship less because of his philosophical ability than because of his role as a consummate judge of talent and promoter of the department’s (and university’s) interest and reputation; the appointment of German psychologist Hugo Muensterberg recognized the importance of German universities and of academic scholarship, and it also brought to the department a master academic game player, who used offers from other schools to raise his salary and academic position. As historian Bruce Kuklick puts it, Eliot’s faculty, while certainly gentlemen, were also “men on the make.”35 Locke correctly judged that if he wanted to be well regarded as a student, he too better be “on the make.” And he succeeded. Not until his third year would Locke take a course with Royce, and Royce’s recommendation for the Price Greenleaf Fellowship had certainly helped.
Locke’s most dramatic reception came from Dean Le Baron Briggs in his freshman English literature course. Early in the fall semester, Locke walked up to the desk at the front of the class to turn in a daily theme. He was greeted effusively by Briggs, who
shook hands[,] made quite a time and had me stand there talking until class was over. You can imagine how the fellows stared—there were about 150 in the class as it was our large section meeting. The colored fellow who invited me to the dance was handing in his theme just as Briggs was apologizing for being in bed when I called [at his home]. He got his ears full that time didn’t he?36
Briggs seemed infatuated with Locke and took it upon himself a month later to introduce him first to Mrs. Eliot and then to her husband, the president at the fall University Tea. Later that same semester, Locke was again shown off by an English professor, probably Briggs, who read Locke’s “examination book to the class”; and since he had cut the class, “all the fellows who have told me about it thought I staid [sic] away on purpose. I didn’t know anything about it and didn’t count on getting a little ‘rep’ for modesty.”37 Modesty was not one of Locke’s strong points, but he was glad that Briggs had responded so well. Although Briggs did not give him an A for the year’s work, he did write a letter of recommendation for Locke’s application for the Price Greenleaf. Locke’s professors were partly reacting out of their racial surprise that a Black student could do better than the average White student and also to his manner of approach to professors.
Yet Locke was also a student of exceptional ability, especially in philosophy, as one of his professors recognized. Early in February 1905, he learned that his fall semester work in ancient and modern philosophy (Philosophy 1B) was so good that Ralph Barton Perry requested a personal interview with him.
Thursday afternoon my philosophy instructor sent for me to call on him—He gave me my mark and talked over my work—was very glad to get in such close touch with him—he was very anxious to know what I intended to do—Would I study philosophy? I said—of course. I did intend to take some philosophy courses anyhow—so we talked those over—he complimented me on my work and asked me to come see him personally again. He is one of the younger men but quite well up—at any rate it will be pleasant to go—His room is simply ideal—books and pictures—not much else—but great—he has reproductions of frescoes and church decorations of 14th and 15th century Italian painters all around the room—I never saw such pictures in a private house in my life.38
Perry was the first member of the Philosophy Department to recognize Locke’s potential talent as a philosopher. Although Locke moaned to his mother later that he was tired of “writing things which I don’t understand” in his philosophy class, he was very able when it came to abstract reasoning and argumentation. Locke’s remarks are telling in another way: in 1905, he was more interested in the pictures of medieval frescoes than in becoming a philosopher.
Locke approximated the taste of his philosophy professor during his second year when he obtained a room in Grays Hall, or as he described it a “suite rather, bedroom and study facing right on the college yard.”39 His single unfurnished dormitory room gave him the opportunity to spend weekends buying furniture, rugs, pictures, and fabric, something he thoroughly enjoyed, although he complained incessantly to his mother about the hassle of tracking down good buys. He bought reproductions of paintings at second-hand shops and had them nicely framed, thereby approximating the kind of artwork he had seen in Professor Perry’s room at a fraction of the cost; he bought pillow stops, an old bolster, and made his own pillows for what became his favorite reading spot, the cushioned window seat that overlooked the yard. By the end of October, he had all of his bedroom furniture, a washstand, an oak chiffonier, and a bookcase, with only a desk and a rug to purchase to make it cozy for full-time studying.
Locke more fully enjoyed campus life his second year. His rooms allowed him to host activities for his circle of friends—Pfromm, Beckhard, Rosenblum, and Dickerman—in his quarters. He regularly studied in the Harvard Union until midnight, went by Beckhard’s and Pfromm’s for a brief chat, and then ended up at Dickerman’s, from which he generally emerged around 1 or 2 a.m. Locke also joined a debating club, tried out for crew as a coxswain (he was asked), and attended the Ethical Culture Society meetings where he heard a closed lecture by President Charles W. Eliot. The social event of the second year came in January 1906 when Locke, along with Pfromm and Dickerman, hosted a beer night at which he not only drank beer but also played cards, though without the reprobation he had expressed about similar activities of his Black classmates a year before. In a letter to his mother, he noted that after drinking four beers, he was reminded of his father, who had loved beer, and who seemed to have been criticized by Mary for indulging it a bit too much.40 The beer night was another sign of his transformation at Harvard: he was beginning to loosen up, to adopt less moralistic notions of appropriate behavior, and to dress more casually. As he wrote his mother in December 1905, “I beg to disagree with the universal sanction that seems to be given Mrs. Robinson’s ideas of how a gentleman should dress. The benefit of Harvard is that you learn what is proper with perfect permission to be a non-conformist and be and dress and act as independently as you please.”41 Harvard provided Locke with an alternative set of values—largely those of bohemianism—which began to crack the shell of moralism with which Mrs. Locke had armored her son.
Living on campus also seemed to improve his grades. His second year was his best: his average was 3.5. Even more impressive, the grades were achieved in more rigorous courses than he had taken the previous year. He elected Dr. Maynadier’s “English Literature from the death of Scott to the death of Tennyson” and Barrett Wendell’s famous English 46, “The Comparative History of World Literature.” And he took George Herbert Palmer’s Philosophy 4, “Ethics, The Theory of Morals,” while continuing his study of Greek by taking Professor Harris’s course in Greek literature during the Athenian supremacy. He obtained As in all of the above, with only a C and B-, respectively, in courses in German and Economics. He was rewarded with a lucrative Bowditch Scholarship for his junior year. He was highly motivated, as he confessed to his mother: “I am watching my marks closely with regard to next year—I seem to see dollars and cents on the examination page and its quite an incentive. It is just the sort of stimulant a person needs.”42
If there was any problem, it was that he had not yet settled on a major. Mr. Mearns, his English literature instructor at the School of Pedagogy, arranged to speak with Locke during a visit back in Philadelphia on how to go about getting honors in philosophy. Locke had already considered trying for honors in philosophy, but he was set on honors in English as well. Tension existed between his love for literature and art on the one hand, and his talent for philosophical reasoning on the other. Rather than resolve that tension into a single major, Locke believed he could take courses in both areas and succeed. He was right.
Perhaps the most important philosophy course of his second year was Palmer’s course in ethics. Taking that course gave Locke an opportunity to spend time with another important patron in the Philosophy Department. Without the metaphysical interest or theoretical skill of Royce, Palmer was nonetheless the backbone of the department’s idealist wing, and Locke’s choice of Philosophy 4 reflected both his intellectual orientation and his appreciation of Palmer’s potential importance to his later career. It also reflected Locke’s undergraduate preference for the genteel tradition in philosophy over the radical empiricism and pragmatism of William James. Locke’s choice of courses with Palmer suggests that he may have been attracted to philosophy because of its vision of a universal discourse that all men, regardless of race, could participate in. Professors like Palmer and Royce also emphasized the responsibility and loyalty of the individual to the larger community and thereby reinforced the Victorian side of Locke’s personality.
Palmer’s Philosophy 4 had been innovative when it was introduced in the 1880s, because Palmer taught the course as a systematic exploration of philosophical problems, rather than a history of thought. Palmer wanted to teach students to philosophize, instead of merely rote-learning the positions of other philosophers. Locke’s excellence in Palmer’s course attested to his growing ability to handle complex philosophical problems and to think originally. He was rewarded by genuine concern and interest from Palmer. During the spring of 1906, Locke visited Palmer’s home and the senior philosopher quizzed Locke on his future plans.
Then, the conversation turned toward the race question, since Palmer had known both Bruce and W. E. B. Du Bois as students.
[He] spoke very highly of Dr. Du Bois as a man of undisputable genius, but who was a failure—he should have done much more, says Palmer, with his opportunities—Atlanta is no place for him—this is very kind criticism for Professor Palmer’s wife Alice Freeman Palmer was responsible for financial help at Atlanta for years. … Palmer as usual spoke about Bruce—said he advised him to leave Tuskegee as Bruce wrote to him asking his advice. It was on Palmer’s recommendation that he got the Washington position and Palmer said if I wanted to teach in Washington, he would write for me at any-time. I of course told him that I too contemplated educational work, and that both father and grandfather had done it before me. Of course he thinks it the only right sort of thing for a colored man. It is strange but they are all daft on the Negro problem and seem to think that all we think about is its solution. Well perhaps we should, but if I am to work in it, its got to afford me a pretty decent and congenial way of living, or it can go to grass. I saw he was too set in his ways to stand much in the way of opposition, but I hinted that we also had our personal problems, and should, in cases, be allowed to follow a life of self-culture as most all scholars do.43
In one sense, Palmer’s advice was consistent with his overall philosophy of self-realization: only through self-sacrifice, Palmer argued in his treatises on ethics, could the separate self overcome alienation and achieve the highest moral aims. But Locke chafed under such advice. For him, service, the noblesse oblige of Victorian elitism, when applied racially, smacked of a double standard: the Black Talented Tenth should not aspire to equality, to “self-culture,” but should educate itself only to become missionaries of culture to the masses of Blacks, generally in segregated southern schools. That was definitely not Locke’s plan. Locke had come to Harvard on a pursuit of culture and imagined a role for himself as a custodian of American culture on par with those elderly men from whom he had letters of introduction. Of course none of these Harvard “fathers” could really comprehend what Locke intended to do with his education, but at least Palmer was willing to support the possibility of a year abroad and a return to graduate school in philosophy if Locke so desired.
Locke’s understanding of the thorny problems of self-culture, race service, and elite White paternalism was probably advanced by his association with James Harley, the only Black student he became friendly with as a Harvard undergraduate. Locke met Harley in the spring of 1905, and he wrote his mother:
There is a colored West Indian by the name of Harley here, and of course, he is different from the rest. He is a graduate of Howard, spent two years at Yale, is here for the year, and expects to go to England to study for the ministry and incidentally to study at Oxford—the two schools are connected. He is a very nice fellow and has become quite friendly. He criticized the colored fellows here, said they were conscious of their inferiority and justly so, that the house in which they were huddled was a “nigger Hell” he knew for he had been there, that he had noticed I was criticized as he was, and would like to know me. Where I met him was at the Ethical Society—and I think he became so very pleasant as he saw that I was “in the ring” there—I don’t think it patronizing however, for he is very prominent here, a good debater—and has a scholarship. He is very well thought of, of considerable ability—believes in social equality, is the typical West Indian with their fault of being conceited also—But you know what I think of conceit—when a man has something to be conceited over I call it self respect.44
Locke and Harley became friends initially because of their shared disdain for the other Black students, whom they labeled as “inferior,” and because both were committed to the “game” of competing with Whites for prizes and prestige at Harvard. In the spring term of 1906, Harley took a First in the prestigious Boylston Prize for Elocution. Afterward, he held a smoker in his room to which Locke was the only “colored person” invited. Like Locke, Harley socialized only with elite Whites and with each other after they met. Together they buttressed their isolation with their sense of being collaborators in the crime of aggressive upward mobility. Both faced an uncertain future as educated Black men upon graduation. No professional careers commensurate with their elite educations awaited them in the United States or the West Indies. That reality had already disposed Harley to perpetuate his education indefinitely. Born in Antigua of the British West Indies in 1873, Harley was thirty-two years old when Locke met him. Already a graduate of Howard University’s Law School and a transfer from Yale College, where he had spent a year as an undergraduate, Harley had realized he did not want to practice law, probably because there were few jobs for Black lawyers in the United States and none paid well. By the time Harley arrived at Harvard in 1903, he planned to go into the ministry; his declaration that he wished to become a minister in the Protestant Episcopal Church enabled him to obtain a Matthews Scholarship at Harvard. He majored in Semitic languages and history (the typical undergraduate major for future ministers) but excelled in elocution and planned to start his own church. Before doing so, he intended to go to Oxford, an aspiration that seemed presumptuous to the dean of Harvard College, Byron Hurlbut, who when he found out later that Harley had actually made it to Oxford, only remarked to ask when Harley was going back to help his race in the West Indies. Secretly, Harley rejected the ideology that all educated Blacks should return to serve their home communities and settled in England.
Harley provided Locke with a Black peer and a hard-nosed complement to his more aesthetic friend, Charles Dickerman. Harley’s outspoken, hot-tempered, fearlessness in telling anyone, White or Black, what he thought of him or her endeared him to Locke, whose father had possessed the same temperament. That also allowed Locke to feel superior. Mary Locke made the mistake of calling Harley cultured. “What made you think Harley was particularly cultured—he is refined as any man with his training should be, but cultured!! Well [it] doesn’t sit well on the fighting West Indian temperament. He is outspoken like all of them and doesn’t hesitate to sling mud and sarcasm when he gets good and ready,” Locke wrote back.45
Harley’s refusal to accommodate White norms for Black behavior got him into trouble with the Harvard College administrators. After winning the Matthews Scholarship, he angered the College’s tight-fisted Dean Hurlbut when he asked for more of his scholarship money to pay his living expenses and dues in the Debating Club. Hurlbut kept tight rein on scholarship money and refused to dispense funds except when he thought it appropriate. After Harley reacted angrily to Hurlbut’s rebuff of his request, Hurlbut wrote to a Father Field of the Episcopal Church to inquire about Harley’s “character” and financial resources. Hurlbut expressed his opinion that at thirty-two years of age, Harley ought to get a job. Father Field confirmed Hurlbut’s worst suspicions. Harley had performed Sunday school work at Field’s New York church with “continual grumbling,” and though “very able,” was unfortunately “bitter against white people” and therefore “dangerous among his own people for this reason.” Hurlbut lost no time in communicating this disturbing news to Dean Hodges, for whom Harley worked in “colored mission work” in Cambridge, and to any others who would listen. That summer Harley again startled college authorities by bringing a young White woman into his college dormitory room. For that he was expelled from the dorms. Locke confided to his mother, “Don’t breathe a word of this to anyone, but Harley is engaged to a white woman at Wellesley, and has taken us into his confidence. He is like all of the West Indians—they leave a trail of enemies everywhere. They are always doing exciting and preposterous things.”46
Once Hurlbut learned of Harley’s attitude toward Whites and his breach of campus (and racial) propriety, he seemed obsessed with hurting Harley, who, in turn, handed the dean a perfect weapon: a woman who had provided Harley with room and board while he was a student at Yale wrote to Harvard in the summer of 1905 to ask that Harley’s degree be held up until he paid the debt. When contacted, Harley argued that because the debt had been contracted at Yale and he intended to pay it, it was “none of Harvard’s business.” He was wrong. Harvard had long followed the tradition that all holders of the Harvard degree must be “gentlemen” and would not graduate anyone who had debts presented against them to the college. Hurlbut lost no time in bringing this challenge before the administrative board of the college, which ruled that though Harley had completed his coursework by the spring of 1906, he could not receive his degree until he paid the debt. Finally, in March 1907, Harley paid the debt and received his AB degree in June of that year. To keep Harley’s transgression visible on his record, Hurlbut stipulated that Harley’s degree be granted “A.B. 1906, as of 1907.” He sent letters that accompanied any requests for Harley’s file to explain that the delay was the action of the board in regard to Harley’s refusal to pay his debts. When Hurlbut insisted on writing a minister about the matter in spite of Harley’s request that he not do so, Hurlbut recalled that Harley “told me that I had no right to do this, that I was not his spiritual adviser. I told him that I was not, it was true, a member of the church, but that I did attend it, and that I proposed to write to the Bishop.” The problem for Harley as a Black Victorian was that, like Locke’s father, he let White people know that they were not his superior. Perhaps this affinity to his father’s fiery temperament was one reason Locke was attracted to him.
Locke adopted a more indirect approach to hostile Whites when his own financial difficulties brought conflict with the dean and the bursar of the college. In February 1906, Hurlbut informed Locke that only a portion of his scholarship money could be applied to that semester’s tuition bill and that Locke needed to make up the difference. Although Locke wrote his mother about the matter, he did not press her to borrow immediately and remained sanguine about paying: “I am quite sure that I can make new plans to carry things through. The only thing that worries me is that you should worry over matters instead of looking at it as a game, which we have to play the best we can losing here and winning there.”47 But in April, Locke was called by the bursar and then by the dean and threatened with suspension if he did not pay up. Finally, he was saved by Mary Locke, who was able to obtain a bond on May 2, with Mr. Bush’s co-signature, for the balance of Locke’s tuition. “The bill is paid,” he wrote his mother May 3, but Locke was angry.
The Bursar is satisfied. … MacDinnes, the assistant Bursar who is the exact opposite of the Bursar himself—very pleasant and accommodating, says, “Mr. Locke if you will come and see me personally whenever you get into financial difficulties and want your bill extended, why I guess we can arrange matters.” I frankly told the Dean [that the bursar] had not acted gentlemanly and that I would not go to see him no matter what happened. So now it is all over, no more money to go out to the University till the 2nd term bill of July 25 which will go over to September, I am surer now than before because of Mr. McInnes friendly attitude. The Dean and the Bursar can go to Hell—the Dean (that is Hurlbut) not Dear Briggs who is Dean of the Faculty and not the College and to whom Brandt sent me is a lovable man, but Hurlbut is a perfect ass, he would do me in a minute if he dared—but he knows I have influence, and I always take care to remind him of the fact and he keeps his hands off—though you can see them itching. He said “If that bill isn’t paid by May 2, you will have to leave college.” I said, “In the first place, we can pay by then; in the second place I won’t have to leave college for I have personal letters to President Eliot, that I can present in any emergency. Of course, I really haven’t them, but I could get them if the occasion came.48
By labeling the bursar’s actions as ungentlemanly, rather than “racist,” Locke neutralized the attack on his character and asserted, in terms of the Victorian code of behavior, that he was more the gentleman than the bursar. With Dean Hurlbut, Locke could bluff his possession of “letters,” another Victorian tool of respectability, to back down a man whose actions were condescending and bruising. By casting these conflicts in Victorian terms, Locke limited the labels that could be placed on his actions and avoided alienating potential White supporters by asserting racism. By contrast, Harley’s vituperative put-downs of Harvard authorities confirmed the label that he was “bitter against white people” and thus a dangerous man. By avoiding a purely personal clash and asserting his connections with other significant White patrons, Locke limited the damage the dean and the bursar could do to his reputation.
Locke differed from Harley in being fundamentally an optimist about race relations. He had enough positive experiences with Whites while growing up that he did not believe that all Whites were racist. Many of them had been enablers of his success: his experience had taught him that if one behaved as if Whites were not prejudiced, if one treated them as gentlemen and acted gentlemanly oneself, more often than not Whites would treat one well. But if one approached Whites with resentment, bitterness, and blame, they would respond in kind. That was the basis of his criticism of other Blacks at Harvard. In recounting one incident to his mother, he noted:
Tyson and the set raised quite a little stir at Memorial over the color question. 3 of them were at the same table, and thinking they were jim crowed kicked instead of acting like gentlemen and not noticing it or of quietly asking to be changed without giving any reasons—Tyson went to the Auditor and had the usual fuss. … I am so glad not to be in it. Tyson stopped me the other evening in the yard and told his tale—I listened—spoke very plainly about not looking for discrimination and dropped the subject.49
His response to Tyson showed that even though Locke had not taken a course from William James, he was performing a version of James’s pragmatic theory that truth was an outcome of our actions, not something standing outside of us. To Locke, there was no absolute truth of racism at Harvard, but rather, racism—and especially its impact on Black lives—was shaped by how people reacted to incidents such as Tyson recounted. Locke’s message to Tyson was performative: “Refuse to play the victim. Behave as if you belong here and maybe spectators will believe that you do!” Of course, Locke had had no real experience of virulent racism, the kind that could not be tricked out of its desire to destroy. But Locke was nonetheless expressing an early, naive version of the New Negro: the art of Black presentation in social space could be used to preserve one’s agency. Locke’s performative pragmatism mapped a path to self-empowerment, and he was not getting off that path to indulge someone else’s that was clearly not working.
Locke’s approach to racism was one reason he remained highly productive despite conflicts with the bursar and the dean over his finances that intense spring of 1906. Not only did he achieve his highest average in his coursework that spring but he also negotiated through the thicket of race and hierarchy at Harvard to find his mentor—Barrett Wendell, the professor of comparative literature he encountered in English 46 his second year. Wendell had become something of a fop by 1906. As an heir to the Boston Brahmin tradition of elite custodianship of American letters, Wendell had returned to teaching at Harvard from a year as an exchange professor at the Sorbonne wearing a monocle, sporting a cane, and acting like a Francophile dandy. Unlike others who experienced the transformation of cosmopolitan living, Wendell had a theory that explained it—that the Western literary tradition was not a universal, but a series of national, indeed, racial traditions that had evolved distinctive literary knowledges over the centuries that crystalized into traditions that contemporary artists could mine—and in his case perform. But Wendell was more than a dandy; he was an institution builder, who, with his ally the wealthy Mrs. Isabella Stewart Gardner, helped create and sustain the anchors of Boston’s culture. As he wrote Mrs. Gardner four years before he met Locke: “More and more, it seems to me that the future of our New England must depend on the standards of culture which we maintain and preserve here. The College, the Institute, the Library, the Orchestra,—and so on—are the real bases of our strength and our dignity in the years to come.” Locke would emulate this kind of language twenty-five years later with his own patron, Wendell’s notion that Culture was a patriotic duty. When Locke met Wendell, he met a model of the kind of aesthetic activist he would become.50
Wendell also found something that drew him to Locke. As Locke wrote to his mother after meeting the infamous Boston aesthete:
This afternoon I had my English conference, and a more delightful conference I have never had. Our professor is Barrett Wendell. … He is decidedly French—wears garters, smokes cigarettes and twirled his cane all during the conference but talked most entertainingly. The others left and I found myself with his highness and a Jewish rabbi. What a combination! and we talked for an hour or so on literary topics, which chiefly consisted in Barrett Wendell’s reminiscences and jokes.51
Wendell performed for Locke because he found something interesting in the young Black aesthete from Philadelphia—a carbon copy of himself, with, of course, the exception that Locke was Black. But since Wendell’s theory of literature contained a racial element, Locke was a fascinating example of something Wendell had not thought of—that a Black tradition in America had produced an aesthete who shared with him a love of the European traditions of literature. Wendell’s interest helped shape Locke’s emerging conception of how to make the argument for the existence and importance of a Black literary culture. In Wendell’s lectures on modern literature, Locke heard a counterargument to what he had imbibed at Central High, the School of Pedagogy, even in lectures by Irving Babbitt on Harvard’s campus, that Culture was universal. Wendell advocated the then-radical idea that all modern literature was fed by national traditions and all the best modern writers were those who mined those traditions. Wendell argued that since the end of the Renaissance, world literature had been essentially English, French, and German literature (and, Wendell hoped out loud, American literature), in part because literature reflected the modern period’s intense nationalism. For Wendell, literature changed with the mind and character of history, and thus, by looking at literature, the critic could gauge the pulse of the people and the times. In urging the cultivation of race among artists, Locke affirmed what he had acknowledged in his English 46 notes. “I see that I am a spiritual son of Barrett Wendell’s. I shall carry on his work.”52
That last remark clarified the double errand Locke was on when he came to Harvard. In one sense, it was an errand for himself, of self-culture, to soak up as much of Boston and Harvard’s aesthetic knowledge as he could gain while making himself into a Boston aesthete, a lover of art of all forms, a person who not only learned to consider in detail “legitimate works of art, but [also] everything in the world, as art.”53 But in seeing himself as carrying on Wendell’s work, he was also aspiring to a larger ambition that Wendell himself had only half approximated—to be a cultural leader, to find in aesthetics, a way to refashion the Black community, no less than identity, as a work of art. What was not yet clear, even to this self-adopted son, was how to do it without the well-established cultural institutions standing behind him as Wendell had inherited?
It was not clear. But Locke’s lone Black friend at Harvard provided a clue. In his Third Report of the Class of 1906, Harley recalled what happened when it was announced at the ceremonies that he had won a prize.
Giant Grim met me at the Episcopal Theological School in Cambridge, Mass. … It was that snowy morning when Dean Hodges … announced in chapel that [Harley’s submission] “Ivanhoe” had won the coveted seminary prize for the best essay on Japanese Shintoism. That $100 was too costly a matter. I got the money and was branded. I can hear their tender voices singing amid the cat-calls: “Who say dem niggers wont steal? Way down yonder in de corn feal.”54
Like Harley, Locke was a thief who refused to be satisfied with a segregated life within Harvard Yard or a deferential posture toward other White students as their superiors. Locke was not there to worship Harvard so much as to use it to succeed in the world of culture afterward. But Locke’s theft also concealed a hidden ambition—to steal knowledge of how to use aesthetics to transform a folk into a people who might free others like him who never set foot inside Harvard Yard.