6

Going for the Rhodes

It is not clear when he began to think of applying for the Rhodes Scholarship, but in the spring of 1906, just after finishing his essay on Tennyson, Locke wrote his mother to ask her to seek out information on how one applied for the scholarships. The Rhodes was a way for a poor Black Philadelphian to acquire an education generally reserved for the elite, since the Rhodes Trust had made study abroad available to numerous American boys since beginning to select scholars from America in 1903. Set up by the last will and testament of Cecil Rhodes, the British mining capitalist who made his millions in Africa, the Rhodes Trust provided $1,500 for a young scholar from each state to spend three years of study at Oxford University. Although Cecil Rhodes had conceived of the scholarships as a way to promote Anglo-Saxon unity in the world, he had not excluded persons of color from the competition: by drawing students from the colonies and the United States to Oxford, Rhodes hoped an education at Oxford would inspire them to extend Anglo-Saxon influence in their native lands. Selection was based solely on a candidate’s “literary and scholastic attainments; his fondness of and success in manly outdoor sports … his qualities of manhood, truth, courage, devotion to duty, sympathy for the protection of the weak, kindliness, unselfishness and fellowship; and his exhibition during school-days of moral force of character and instincts to lead and to take an interest in his schoolmates.”¹

By 1907, no Negro American had won the scholarship, but Rhodes officials had privately discussed the possibility. Some Rhodes officials even wondered whether the Trust should encourage such an appointment, but decided to refrain from any policy statement; they did not want to “venture into such a wasp’s nest,” as one official put it.² As it was, selection of candidates rested with American committees formed in each state. Probably the matter would take care of itself. With the rise of segregation in the South and the intensification of racial animosity toward Blacks throughout the nation, it seemed unlikely that any committee would select a Negro Rhodes Scholar in 1907.

At first glance, Locke was an inappropriate choice to be a Rhodes Scholar. They were typically rather athletic Americans. Not only was Locke not an athlete but also he was thoroughly indifferent to sports. As one of the tiniest students on campus, Locke had few options to satisfy the scholarship’s athletic requirement; in his senior year, he joined freshmen crew as a coxswain. Just as important, the scholarship emphasized manliness and high moral character; if Locke’s homosexuality had been known at the time, it probably would have disqualified him. Indeed, his financial difficulties at Harvard might even have disqualified him, since an English gentleman was supposed to avoid even the whiff of financial impropriety. But a second look suggested Locke was highly appropriate. He epitomized the bearing and attitude of the upright—and some probably would have said “uptight”—Victorian on campus, and his essay on Tennyson seemed to enthuse over Anglo-Saxon civilization and its benefits for everyone. By applying for the scholarship, Locke showed he possessed the kind of aggressive self-confidence that had made Rhodes a successful imperialist.³

But most important to Locke when he wrote his mother in May 1906 was that his plans for the scholarship be kept a secret. He knew that many Americans might object to a Black man winning the Rhodes Scholarship. Hence, Locke adopted an indirect approach to acquiring information about it: he asked that his mother place a notice in the Philadelphia Press correspondence columns about where information on the scholarship could be obtained. “The reason I do not want to ask up here,” he wrote her, “is that Harley suffered because he let his Oxford plans get out in public, and as I want to apply for a fellowship here in June 1906, and of course it is important that they should not know of the other application.” Harley did not apply for the Rhodes, which left the field clear for Locke to be the only Black Harvardian in the running. Actually, Harley’s Oxford prospects seemed rather slim in the spring of 1906 given his money problems and his engagement. But Harley’s public airing of interest in Oxford revealed an important lesson he wrote about later in his Third Harvard Report—that some Whites reacted angrily to a Black student being so uppity as to take prizes they thought should be reserved for Whites. As Locke informed his mother, “There are Oxford men here from whom I can and have gotten ample information about the place but I have never mentioned the Rhodes scholarship question, as it is a matter of influence pure and simple, and it is well to keep things dark to the very last.”⁴

Mary placed the notice, received a response, and conveyed the contact information to her son. Once he wrote the Rhodes committee, he learned that there were two parts to the selection process. First, he would have to pass Responsions, Oxford’s entrance exams (taken by all undergraduate Oxford applicants), an intensive set of questions in Greek, Latin, mathematics, and history. If he passed this exam, he would then have a personal interview with a committee either from the state of his residence or the state where he attended college. Each state chose one Rhodes Scholar to go to Oxford. First, of course, he had to pass the written exam, which would not be offered until the following January. Until then he would attend closely to his mounting coursework to keep his average high and deserve the letters of recommendation he would need from his Harvard professors.

Locke had several prominent professors to choose among. He had selected three literature courses for his senior year: Irving Babbitt’s rigorous “Literary Criticism in Comparative Literature,” which lasted for the year, Dean Briggs’s fall course on Browning, and if he gained admission, Charles T. Copeland’s English 12, the senior elective course in composition. He took Professor John W. White’s survey “History of Greek Drama” in the fall and followed it with an advanced course in Greek literature in the spring. But the main focus of his senior-year studies was his three philosophy courses: Palmer’s course in Kantian philosophy that fall, and Royce’s and George Santayana’s yearlong courses in metaphysics and Greek philosophy, respectively. Locke had just met Santayana at the end of September when he had had to spend an afternoon discussing his plans for honors in philosophy with the department’s current teaching faculty, Royce, Palmer, Santayana, and Hugo Münsterberg. “All professors were very pleasant,” he wrote his mother.

Royce chatted for nearly a half hour about the Negro question—asked me if I had read his paper—and when I said I was going to teach said I hope not in Atlanta. Prof. Palmer was delightful—He said [Roscoe Conkling] Bruce visited him this summer, and that he and his friends at Harvard recommended him for his position in Washington. If I want anything in Washington Palmer says he will write a recommendation—It will only be a short step to get a blanket recommendation for whatever may turn up and to “whomever it may concern.”⁵

Locke had already begun to evaluate which professors might possibly write him letters of recommendation for the Rhodes.

His course with Santayana became Locke’s most important that fall for two reasons. First, George Santayana was the philosophy professor who modeled most closely the kind of mature philosopher Locke would become—the aesthetically minded philosopher who lived the life of reason. Though Spanish-born, Santayana had become a Boston aesthete during the 1890s, a time of “rebellious, conceited, pessimistic aestheticism.”⁶ Santayana synthesized his philosophical orientation with his aesthetic sensibility to produce The Sense of Beauty (1898), the bible of philosophically inclined aesthetes of his “generation.” His philosophy complemented the literary outlook of Henry James, who also possessed a Santayana-like detachment from his surroundings. Santayana eventually abandoned America and teaching to live in Europe, where he remained prolific, and wrote The Life of Reason. In Santayana’s Greek philosophy course, he and Locke did not hit it off: Santayana gave Locke the only B he received in his philosophy courses that fall, while the other two, Royce and Palmer, gave him As.

A second and more important consequence of taking Santayana’s course was that Locke met Horace Meyer Kallen, a Jewish graduate student in philosophy, who himself was wrestling with his identity at Harvard. Born in 1883, this son of a Jewish rabbi had been an outstanding Harvard philosophy undergraduate graduating magna cum laude in 1903. After two years of graduate study in English at Princeton, Kallen was dismissed for being an “unbeliever,” a subterfuge for it having been discovered that he was Jewish. After unsuccessfully applying for a lectureship at Harvard in 1905, he became a graduate assistant in Santayana’s course that fall of 1906. Locke may have met Kallen prior to Santayana’s class, as he had been a social worker at the Civic Service House where Locke and Dickerman tutored. Kallen may have also been the “Jewish rabbi” that Locke referred to as being present at one of his meetings with Wendell in the fall of 1905. According to a 1971 interview with Kallen, however, their friendship dated from Santayana’s class and Kallen’s engagement of Locke in an intellectual debate over the significance of racial difference. Kallen remembered meeting Locke, “a very remarkable young man—very sensitive, very easily hurt—who insisted that he was a human being and that his color ought not to make any difference. And, of course, it was a mistaken insistence. It had to make a difference and it had to be accepted and respected and enjoyed for what it was.”⁷ Kallen credited Locke and their discussions for coming up with the phrase “cultural pluralism,” or “the right to be different.”⁸ One wonders whether at this early stage of his relationship with Locke Kallen understood the depth of Locke’s “difference” or whether Locke, as a closeted but unapologetic gay man, would have to be convinced of his “right to be different.”

Kallen was a student of William James, who had argued in Pragmatism: A New Name for Some Old Ways of Thinking that many metaphysical arguments revolved around inconsequential distinctions of language and that serious philosophical inquiry should focus only on those “differences that made a difference.” Kallen believed that racial differences were just those kinds of significant differences, real divisions of mankind in terms of traditions, beliefs, and group ideals that made a huge difference in people’s lives. Kallen’s concept of ethnic pluralism was equally indebted to Barrett Wendell, for it was in Wendell’s class that Kallen reconnected to his Jewish identity. In a lecture, Wendell argued that the Hebraic philosophy of individualism had influenced the Puritans and later the Founding Fathers. After Kallen challenged Wendell’s views as inconsistent with what the younger man knew of Jewish religion, he learned that his teacher meant the Hebraic philosophical tradition, not the religious one. Kallen underwent a conversion experience in which he adopted Wendell’s interpretation and defined Hebraism as “individualism … the right to be oneself, the right to be different.”

Wendell, Kallen admitted, “re-Judaized me.”

While Kallen characterized himself as the mature philosopher who brought Locke to a greater racial self-consciousness as a Black intellectual, theirs was more than a disagreement over identity politics; it was a serious debate over the nature of race. While Kallen considered Locke’s position naive, it did avoid an essentialism that might make race a nearly biological barrier. When Locke “insisted that he was a human being and that his color ought not to make any difference,” he asserted race was not real. Race was tradition, as Locke asserted later in his Dunbar lecture, something to be chosen, not imposed by society’s notion of what really mattered. Race was something he performed, with all the flexibility implicit in the term “performance,” in his daily approach to race on Harvard’s campus—sometimes asserting his racial identity by going to dances with other Black students, other times denying race’s power in his struggles with administrators. Locke was more the practicing pragmatist than Kallen, for Locke approached race as an improvisation made and remade through our actions. While naive in one sense, Locke’s conception of race was sophisticated in creating an unfinished racial landscape that preserved his agency. Nonetheless, debating these points with Kallen likely gave Locke confidence in advancing the strong voice of race pride in his Dunbar lecture.

A sign that Locke still held onto the notion that there was a universal tradition higher than any particular national identity can be seen in his decision to take a course from T. S. Eliot’s mentor, Irving Babbitt, that final year. As a critic of the elective system and specialization in higher education, Babbitt was a throwback to an earlier tradition that college education should produce well-rounded “gentlemen,” whose training in the classics made them into “humanists,” not the cultural nationalists that Wendell was turning out. Ironically, Locke used the elective system to fulfill exactly what Babbitt felt was the point of college education. By taking a variety of courses in English, Greek, and philosophy, Locke created for himself an integrated education in the humanities. And at Oxford, Locke would enroll in the program of Literae Humaniores, which provided intensive training in Greek, Latin, and classical culture—the so-called universal tradition of the West.

While the year’s courses challenged Locke, his mind returned to the Rhodes throughout the fall, and when he returned to Harvard after Christmas, he ignored his coursework and threw himself into studying for the Responsions. He planned to take the exams in Boston on January 17 and 18 and crammed all of the information he could into his head during those first three weeks of January 1907 to prepare. “I have been reading up my Greek and my Latin at the rate of 20 or 30 pages an hour—and am in no way near through—have not touched the mathematics as yet,” he wrote his mother, just three days before the exam. Though rushed, Locke was having the time of his life. “You cannot imagine how pleasant the work is—it is for such big stakes and though I have hopes at the same time I do not expect to get it for to aim at such is even an opportunity.” Bolstering himself and his mother against what was likely failure, he continued: “I suppose I should consult the oracle—what do you think? I am bound to go with the contest and even may decide to repeat it next year though if it comes then the opportunity would almost be too late.”⁹

Locke took the Rhodes exams, and while waiting for the results, crammed for his upcoming college exams in the first week of February. He also took advantage of the break to bring a copy of his Dunbar essay to Professor Charles T. Copeland’s office as a writing sample for his senior composition course, English 12. As he wrote his mother, “I didn’t have time to write anything new for it, and anything else would have been less well written even if it might have been better in terms of its style.” It was good enough, because Locke was admitted to the course. From Copeland, known by his students as “Copey,” Locke received the close attention his prose needed. Copey used his red pencil to urge Locke toward greater concreteness and detail in his writing. A comment by Copey on one of Locke’s essays, “Impressions of Dante,” conveys the spirit of the older man’s criticism.

A skillful combination of exposition and individualized criticism. Although you write well, your work sounds too much as if you knew you were writing. This is partly a symptom and effect of clever youth, and as such to be welcomed; but—the impression comes also in no small degree from excessive Latinity, and a kind of rhetorical rotundity of phrase[.] Your sonorous summarizings also smell of the platform. Now what I propose is that we should continue to be clever ambitious and young but that we should abate our rhetorical transports. If this be criticism, make the most of it.¹⁰

In response to one of Locke’s impressionistic short stories, Copey continued his sound commentary.

Such pervading obscurity of expression, such vagueness of human presentation, is excusable only when the atmosphere (to use a word that is now almost slang) is charged with imagination, when there is a poetic glamour and allurement over the whole work. Both Masterlinck and Yeats succeed from time to time in a sort of imaginative triumph of the vague. This story of yours, I regret to say, seems to me never to get far above the level of prose, and therefore I can’t help regarding it as a failure; you are capable of much better things.¹¹

Copeland’s comments on Locke’s book review of Wells’s Future in America caught one of the weaknesses of Locke’s self-conscious, self-referential style of criticism.

[This is] a highly generalized comment on Wells’s book. As it is interesting to me who have read that book, so it would be bewildering or meaningless to those who have not read it. The ideal book review I suppose constructs a working image of the book, and then either breaks or exalts that image or else walks round and about it taking cool, peering views from every point. As I have read the book I am much more interested in your critique than I should be if it were an ideal review. Nevertheless you better put what I have said in your pipe, and smoke it.¹²

But Locke persisted in the style that Copey criticized, believing, after Pater in Studies of the History of the Renaissance, that criticism should begin and end with one’s own attitude toward the work of art.

Copeland’s influence may have been more than advising to tighten his prose. Copeland modeled for Locke how to be a sympathetic literary critic that encouraged students to become creative writers. As Van Wyck Brooks recalled, Copeland as well as Dean Briggs assumed their students would become writers and offered advice on charting a literary career. Copeland recommended to Locke that he continue to write those “better things” and devote himself full-time to a career as a writer. He went so far as to give Locke names of New York editors he should contact to try placing his short stories. Later he even suggested that Locke attempt to serve as a foreign correspondent for one of the major literary magazines. Locke owed Copeland a debt for providing unconflicted support. In the spring of 1907, Copeland wrote a strong letter of recommendation for Locke’s Rhodes Scholarship application.

That shortly came in handy because on February 10, he “got the very pleasant news that I had passed the Rhodes examinations.” An important decision loomed. Finalists had the option of appearing for their interview before the committee of the state in which they resided or before the committee of the state in which their college was located. Because he had listed his aunt and uncle’s residence at 715 Sixth Street in Philadelphia as his home address on his Harvard College application, Locke had the option of being considered from Pennsylvania, New Jersey (where his mother resided), or Massachusetts. Given the strength of candidates he would likely face in New Jersey (from Princeton), the choice came down to Pennsylvania or Massachusetts. He wrote his mother, “I must hastily get all the information I possibly can get and then do what I think best. Their [sic] are advantages on each side and as yet I don’t know where the most lie. At present I for several reasons favor Pennsylvania—the competition is not near so strong as it will be here—But I must see and talk the matter over with the Deans and several other professors here before I decide.” If he went before the Massachusetts board, he would be one of six Harvard candidates, one of whom would be selected by the “Committee on Scholarships of Harvard College … as best fitted to go before the Committee of Selection for the final choice.” The advantage of the Massachusetts appearance was:

[If I can] get the Harvard selection, I am almost sure of the appointment and the whole thing hinges on that. By registering before the Pennsylvania committee Harvard is compelled to advance me as her candidate in Pennsylvania since I am the only Harvard man competing from that state. I must decide quickly and you see it is quite a puzzle—But as the certificate holds good [as having passed the entrance exams] in even of my failing this year I can apply again next year either in Massachusetts or in Pennsylvania or in New Jersey—wherever the best chances lie.¹³

Choosing the sure thing of being Harvard’s candidate, he decided to appear before the Pennsylvania committee. The only drawback was that it involved the expense of an additional trip at a time when finances were already tight. On February 28, he wrote his mother that he needed her to send him $44.45, which was all of the money left over from her living expenses for the month, to pay his term bill, due on March 2. He would borrow the money for his trip home from his friend Bruno Beckhardt and “come the regular Fall River [Line]—which is safe, if any are, and then come from Jersey City by trolley as I shall have time to do so—I think by hard work I can land the Rhodes in Philadelphia. At any rate I am going to make a vicious try for it—and will tend to other business while I am on [home turf]—Philadelphia school etc.—”¹⁴

Locke was not so confident of winning the scholarship that he did not want to investigate teaching opportunities in Philadelphia as well as elsewhere. His friend Beckhardt had also promised to write him a letter of introduction to Dr. Felix Adler of the Ethical Culture Society in New York if Locke decided to seek a teaching position in that city. Locke even attended a lecture at Harvard’s Ethical Culture Society at which a Mr. Hapgood of the Hapgood Employment Agencies discussed business opportunities for Harvard graduates. “I have always wanted to dabble in business on the side, perhaps that’s the Hawkins blood clamoring for an outlet,” he wrote his mother. But clearly, the Rhodes Scholarship consumed his interest and energy as the early March trip to Philadelphia approached. “I shall try and try hard, and the Pennsylvania Committee will see that one negro has the nerve and the backing to thrust himself on their serious consideration if but for a few hours.” He believed that he could eventually “go to Oxford Rhodes or no Rhodes in a few years,” but would fight hard this time, because “its too good a chance to miss.” Before traveling to Philadelphia, he gathered information on the competition. He was one of six candidates who would be interviewed by a committee of five college presidents, including President Harrison of the University of Pennsylvania, who chaired the committee. He thanked his mother for “the information about George Wanger [it] came in very handy—he is the only serious rival—and a very serious one. He is [the] son of Congressman Wanger, has just made Phi Beta Kappa, and is quite prominent in his class—I think myself he will get it—but I am going to give him a tussle for I shall bring down a startling bunch of references.”¹⁵ Actually, William Harrison informed Locke shortly thereafter that at this level of competition, letters should be mailed. Here was a symbol of the distance Locke had come in the academic world since he had first arrived on Harvard’s campus in 1904 with his letters in hand. Locke hurried around campus that last week of February collecting letters from his most respected professors.

But something clued Locke not to ask Barrett Wendell for a letter or even to discuss his plans with him, even though it was Wendell whose theories had been most important to his intellectual growth at Harvard. It was a wise decision. Years later, Wendell wrote to Horace Kallen, a Jewish friend of Locke’s, and stated: “As an American, I cannot but feel that Locke, in applying for a Rhodes Scholarship which involves some suggestion of national representation, committed an error of judgment. … The terms of the Rhodes foundation, if I am not in error, are carefully phrased to the effect that mere scholarship is not all that is required. The purpose of it was to ensure, so far as possible, the kind of man who might be expected in maturity to be widely, comprehensively representative of what is best in the state which sent him. At least for many years to come, no negro can make just this claim anywhere in America. Before he can, the kind of American which unmixed native blood has made me must be only a memory. It is sad—I admit—not least so to me for the reason that I am passing—perhaps [I am] of the past altogether [sic].”¹⁶ What saved Locke from possibly having a disastrous letter written by Wendell was a “sixth sense” of whom Locke could not trust with his outsized ambition to be a “representative” American.

Apparently, Wendell was not the only one who believed it was ill-advised for Locke to apply for the Rhodes Scholarship. When he arrived back home on the morning of March 7, Locke learned that his old nemesis, Dean Hurlbut, had failed to send the college’s official letter of recommendation to the committee. Locke urgently telegraphed the dean. Hurlbut did send his letter to the committee with only a perfunctory acknowledgment of Locke’s accomplishments: “his connection with Harvard College has been creditable,” it concluded. But more important, Hurlbut omitted any reference to Locke’s financial difficulties and mailed it promptly. Here, not angering Hurlbut in their earlier conflict had paid off.

More surprising was the reaction of his mother. In what may be an apocryphal story, Locke recalled to a friend that when he arrived home, Mary Locke, now elderly, was bending over, performing the ritual for proper Philadelphians—even though they lived in Camden—of washing down the front steps of her home. Locke bounded around the corner, his tiny, 4´11˝, ninety-five-pound frame brimming with enthusiasm. He recalled rushing up to her, exclaiming, “Mother, I’m home to interview for the Rhodes scholarship. Isn’t that wonderful?”

“Yes,” Locke recalled his mother saying, and then to his surprise, she returned to washing down the steps. Flabbergasted by her lackadaisical attitude, he queried: “Why mother, aren’t you glad?” Still washing the steps and without turning her head, she announced: “I don’t know why you are bothering to apply for that Rhodes thing. You know they will never give it to a Negro.” Locke recalled being shocked. Standing up as straight and tall as his small frame would allow, he reputedly said: “I am going to win that Rhodes Scholarship. It is the least that Rhodes can do considering all the wealth he took out of Africa.”

Although she had not wished to discourage him at a distance, she could not help voicing her opinion that it was unwise for him to apply for the Rhodes. Locke rejected her attitude that race prejudice was an insurmountable obstacle. As he remarked about one of her friends who experienced difficulty with the Camden school system: “soon she too will take up the cry of prejudice—well—I don’t lay any stock in the prejudice argument though it seems to be the fashionable excuse—Lord save me from ever offering it as an excuse no matter what happened.” But Mary Locke may have had another reason for not encouraging him. She may have believed his overweening confidence that he would succeed would, eventually, meet a racial barrier he could not overcome. He was hardwired for propulsive forward motion, filled with the confidence that came from never having experienced real racism.¹⁷

Locke’s confidence was confirmed in the case of the Rhodes Scholarship. A Rhodes Scholarship committee of distinguished college administrators, including Provost Harrison of the University of Pennsylvania, and Presidents Swain of Swarthmore College, Moffatt of Washington and Jefferson College, Russell of Westminster College, and Haas of Muhlenberg College, selected him over six other candidates, all from colleges whose presidents were on the committee. Although reports circulated afterward that the committee had not interviewed Locke (and hence it did not know he was Black), he did appear before the committee at 2 p.m. on Saturday, March 9. The minutes of John Haas, the committee secretary, confirm that “after a careful examination of all letters of recommendation, and a personal conference with each candidate, the Committee unanimously resolved that while all applicants had reached a very high standard, Mr. Alain Leroy Locke be awarded the scholarship for his specially mature mentality and high, definite purpose.”¹⁸ While his record, demeanor, and personal bearing certainly contributed to his success, he may also have impressed the committee by the way in which he handled the “racial question.” Locke later recalled that the committee had asked him: “Why do you want the scholarship?” While such a question was relevant to all the candidates, Locke sensed its racial import in his case and replied, “Besides the further education … I want to see the race problem from the outside. I don’t want to run away from it, but I do want to see it in perspective”—from the vantage point, apparently, that residence in Europe would offer.¹⁹ The committee was understandably charmed by such a mature answer from a young man. As Franklin Spencer Edmonds, a lawyer, later relayed to Locke, he had made an “excellent impression” on the committee, according to President Swain of Swarthmore.

Yet in the wake of the decision, at least one member of the committee would have difficulty defending the committee’s action. Provost Harrison was later asked by George Parkin, the organizing secretary of the Rhodes Trust, how it occurred that the committee had selected a Negro. Perhaps feeling he had to defend the committee’s judgment, Harrison reputedly asserted that it had been a colorblind decision. Harrison lied to Parkin that the committee had received such outstanding letters of recommendation from Harvard without any mention of Locke’s race that the committee members had decided unanimously in favor of Locke before the interview. They then thought it unfair to change their opinions once they learned he was Black. While it was true that Locke had received outstanding letters from his Harvard professors, one letter addressed to Provost Harrison from Dean Briggs and dated March 6 stated clearly, “Mr. A. R. Locke, a young colored student from Philadelphia, tells me that he is an applicant for a Rhodes scholarship.”²⁰ The committee knew Locke was Black and had decided to make a statement for racial justice. But afterward Harrison found it difficult to explain how an American committee could select a Negro for the award in spite of his race. Parkin’s question not only signaled the Trust’s consternation if not displeasure with the appointment, but also the problem for Locke and others connected with the decision: although individual ability had won the award for Locke, it would be almost impossible to separate his winning the scholarship from the larger issues of race and Negro status in the United States.

The appointment catapulted Locke into national attention. On March 13, 1907, the New York Times announced, “Negro Wins Scholarship, Locke Gets the Rhodes Award in Competition with Fifty,” and went on to state that “those who selected Locke said that merit alone won for him.” As Parkin noted in the special report he prepared on the selection, “the comments of the American press have not been unfavorable.”²¹ Yet there were exceptions to the tolerant respect for achievement that characterized most newspaper accounts throughout the country. F. J. Wylie, assistant secretary of the Rhodes Trust, had a brother-in-law at Harvard, who felt that electing a Negro to the Rhodes Scholarships would hurt its reputation. This young northerner wrote, “Have you heard that a negro has been chosen by Pennsylvania to go to Oxford as a Rhodes Scholar? This negro, Locke, is at Harvard and from all accounts, though clever, he is decidedly objectionable. I do not know him personally, but he is not at all pleasant to look at. I do not see why Oxford should not refuse to admit him.”²²

Mention of Locke’s award was conspicuously absent from such major southern newspapers as the Atlanta Constitution, the Richmond Times Dispatch, and the New Orleans Daily Picayune. The opinion of much of the South, however, was articulated by Mr. Gustaf R. West Fledt, a New Orleans businessman and a member of the board of administrators at Tulane University. He wrote the British ambassador to protest Locke’s election to the Rhodes Scholarship. He claimed, “The appointment of negroes will make the Rhodes scholarships unpopular in the South.” Southern Rhodes Scholars at Oxford echoed this opinion. They were shocked that a “negro” would soon enter what they had been told by Rhodes officials was a “Brotherhood” of the elect. They protested by sending a representative to London, who challenged Locke’s appointment before the trustees of the scholarship. Like the Tulane University administrator, their chief argument was that the election would damage the image of the Rhodes Trust in the South. Southerners would not apply for scholarships that involved association with Blacks. Some threatened to resign their scholarships if Locke’s name was not withdrawn.

From the standpoint of the Trust, canceling Locke’s appointment was out of the question, “a vain hope,” as Sir Francis Wylie, the Rhodes Scholarship administrator at Oxford, put it. To overrule the action of the Pennsylvania committee would have been unprecedented and damaging to the program of selection. To cancel his appointment would, as Parkin put it, “bring up the colour problem in an acute form throughout our own Empire.” Nevertheless, the trustees of the Rhodes Scholarship considered the southern challenge serious enough to review the appointment at a meeting on April 16, 1907. They “confirmed the election of a black American, Mr. Alain Leroy Locke, of Pennsylvania to the scholarship for which he had been selected,” basing their decision on “clause 24 of the Will,” which stated that “no student shall be qualified or disqualified for election to a Scholarship on account of his race or religious opinions.”²³ One wonders why they even bothered to meet, but perhaps the trustees hoped such a ruling would put the issue to rest.

It did not. Although no Rhodes Scholar resigned his appointment and none apparently refused a scholarship in the future because of the appointment, the southern Rhodes Scholars did not quietly acquiesce, but made plans to exclude him from social functions and, when that failed, absent themselves from integrated functions. The conflict also affected Francis Wylie, a former college tutor, who had begun his tenure as Rhodes secretary with the first class of scholars in 1903, and who, with his being American-born, regarded the community of Rhodes Scholars as his extended family. Now that harmonious community life was threatened by a race problem that could potentially divide the community permanently. Parkin predicted that Locke’s appointment would cause southern scholars to request to be moved to other colleges from the one to which Locke would be assigned. Wylie anticipated this response and attempted to avoid a scene early in the year by trying to place scholars who might object to Locke at colleges away from the “coloured man.” In a notebook that Wylie kept on all of the Rhodes Scholars, Locke’s entry contains the note, “ ‘not with Mississippi or Alabama (n’d letters) not to Univ or Lincoln.”²⁴

Actually, Wylie had difficulty placing Locke at any college. While winning the Rhodes brought automatic appointment to the university, each scholar had to be accepted by one of the residential colleges. Every year, Wylie had some difficulty placing Rhodes Scholars, since they were not as highly prized as English undergraduates. Skill in a particular sport or excellence in a particular field of study valued at the college were factors that might overcome the fact that Rhodes Scholars came to Oxford with little social standing. No scholar, however, would be as difficult for Wylie to place in 1907 as Locke. On April 22, Wylie received from Locke a list of colleges he wished to seek admission to, beginning with his favorite, Magdalen (the college Oscar Wilde had attended), followed by Balliol, Merton, Brasenose, and Christ Church. On May 4, however, Wylie had to write him to request a new list of colleges, since all of these had refused him. Before Locke could answer, Wylie submitted his name to Worcester and then to Hertford, which on May 18 accepted Locke. Wylie wrote Locke that same day to accept Hertford. Although it is impossible to determine whether race or press attention to Locke’s appointment played a part in the these colleges’ decisions, he was rejected by six colleges in a year when the next most difficult case was that of Benjamin Lacy from North Carolina who was rejected by three.

Locke was displeased with his selection and expressed it in a letter that asked Wylie to resubmit his application to the colleges on the original list. “Because of the historic nature of my appointment, and the attention on my activities while at Oxford that will undoubtedly follow, it is imperative that I be situated at one of the better and more visible colleges at Oxford.”²⁵ Hertford was one of the newest and poorest of colleges, and Locke desired a more prestigious launching pad for his career at Oxford. But Wylie wrote back that given that all of the other colleges had their fill of Rhodes Scholars, it would be unwise for him to reject the one college that had accepted him. That was certainly true, but Wylie had other motives for wanting Locke to accept Hertford. Once he had learned that Hertford had taken Locke, Wylie had written to Lacy, who had been accepted by Hertford after Locke, to ask whether Lacy would “accept as negro been acc. at Hertford.” Lacy chose to be “recovered from Hertford” and eventually was accepted by Worcester. Wylie was so concerned about potential objections to Locke that he even informed a non-southerner, Mr. Shirley Townshend Wing of Ohio, that the “negro” scholar would be at Hertford. He too chose to be recovered from Hertford, eventually landing at Wadham. Clearly, Wylie took it upon himself to ensure that the racial sensibilities of White Americans would not be offended by having to reside in the same college with Locke. But in seeking to reduce the potential conflict, Wylie confirmed those feelings as legitimate. Even more tellingly, he granted other scholars the freedom to switch colleges, yet denied the same right to Locke. Wylie did not recover Locke from Hertford, nor resubmit his application to the other colleges. Although Locke had no way of knowing the elaborate maneuvers taken in his case, he sensed something was amiss and refused to accept Hertford until he arrived at Oxford in the fall. No doubt his decision gave Wylie a nervous summer. It also affected Locke: there could be little doubt now that going to Oxford as the Black Rhodes Scholar was going to be much more complicated than going to Harvard had been.

Locke’s appointment also received a great deal of notice from the African American press, which interpreted his winning of the scholarship as a “distinguished honor” that he brought to “his race.” In an era when Black Americans were habitually depicted as ignorant buffoons or subhuman criminals in White newspapers, the Black press seized on Locke’s selection as ammunition against White racist claims that all Blacks were intellectually inferior. Had not a Negro boy in fair and open competition bested White boys? Was that not evidence that Negroes had the capacity for the highest civilization? Such newspapers also drew attention to Locke’s dark complexion as a refutation of claims by White commentators that only African Americans of considerable White ancestry excelled intellectually. A newspaper reporter who witnessed Du Bois’s superb valedictory speech at Harvard in 1898 had specifically mentioned his “white blood.” Locke, on the other hand, was portrayed by the Black press as one of the “living refutations that superior mental possessions belong only to people of fair complexions, and those who are absorbing the highest influences are significantly uplifting the standards of their race.” The newspaper concluded, “Alain Le Roy Locke … is one more example to be quoted in evidence of the brain-power that resides in the pure Negro race.”²⁶

He was suddenly a “representative man” to be used against prejudice and a source of inspiration for the race. Such organizations as The American Missionary interpreted his appointment as confirming the truthfulness of the ideology of uplift that imbued Locke’s middle-class upbringing in Philadelphia. Despite all the odds, a Black man could compete with the best White students and win. Rather than complain about the inequities of opportunity, Blacks should plunge into competition with hard work and dedication. Indeed, part of the reason that both Black newspapers and northern White newspapers praised Locke and the appointment was that it confirmed an essentially laissez-faire approach to American race relations. Perhaps it was because barely a majority of Black Americans could read and write in America in 1907 that the accomplishment of a single Black man in winning the Rhodes took on such symbolic meaning.

Although this ideology of individual initiative was actually Locke’s own personal racial philosophy, he chafed under the deluge of letters from well-meaning friends and unknown people who seized upon his accomplishment as a symbol of racial progress. Some were from close friends, but the majority were from acquaintances, some he barely knew and some who ruffled his sensitive feathers. Locke wrote his mother:

I don’t like Duty’s letter and will write him something to that effect—as usual he meddles into personalities—he isn’t very tactful—“tell him to be self possessed, self composed” grates on me—why because all these Negroes are surprised because they didn’t know my plans—do they think I was taken as unawares as they—I will tell him that I expected to go abroad as a Harvard Fellow anyway and that I did not care for this muddying of a purely personal issue of my life with the race problem—I am not a race problem—I am Alain LeRoy Locke and if these people don’t stop I’ll tell them something that will make them—There now—I have written Duty—my good saints—but it piles up.²⁷

Even those who were close family friends received letters from him that must have raised some eyebrows.

Mother’s letter today brings your kind note of congratulation—and it was one of the few of its kind that I feel I can genuinely accept as implying any past or future obligations on my part. By a kind of fate it seems that I have been indebted to very few persons in order that I might the more heavily be indebted to my Mother—Yet to some I am indebted, but in a most agreeable fashion—for some few have believed in me, and since whatever credit I take to myself I take because after a certain fashion I have always believed in myself—I consider as true friends only those who have believed and hoped with me—For this accept my most hearty thanks.²⁸

Clearly, Locke wanted his achievement to be his and his close friends’ only. But at a time when the American Negro was soundly criticized for the so-called failure of Reconstruction and reputed lack of substantial moral and intellectual progress since slavery, his appointment was a success that many less privileged Black people wanted to be a part of. Understandably, there were some excesses of enthusiasm. Perhaps the worst cases were letters from those who hardly knew him but sought to capitalize on his success for their own purposes. The “Brotherhood of Andrew and Philip,” a Philadelphia benevolent society, elected him to honorary membership after receiving a reluctant reply to their letter of fulsome acknowledgment, and then had the audacity to write requesting a photograph of Locke that they could sell to bring in needed funds for the “Brotherhood.”²⁹ Many African Americans seemed to want to be related in some tangential way to the Rhodes Scholar.

Mary was inundated with expressions of congratulation from distant relatives. “First Mrs. Adelaide Locke—who hurried in to congratulate and talk and talk. I was glad to see—her—she—sent much love and told me to say she was the only person not surprised, because she always predicted great things of you.” Mary Locke had “20 letters on hand. You see I am somebody too—I can’t send you all—but will send you those answered, or those you have not seen. … The people that have been at the door and stopped me—on the St. are legions—I am going to have a sign stating that I am the mother of the prodigy.” One of those letters informed him that “we have discovered some cousins or resurrected some—I haven’t heard of them since [18]73—They have money and live at Wash[ington] but I never bothered—the fun of it is, that they are related on both mother’s—and the Hawkins’ side. So you see you are opening doors for ‘ma’ as well as the race.”³⁰

That was certainly the case, as Mary received congratulations from such Black society families as the Mintons and Black community leaders such as J. W. Cromwell, her husband’s law school friend. Suddenly, she was invited to so many people’s houses she barely had to cook dinner for several weeks. Particularly poignant was her visit to Uncle Harry and Aunt Lizzie, whose Philadelphia residence was Locke’s official home address.

I could not help being amused at Harry’s—They are both as proud and as pleased as Punch. Harry was alone when I went in Thurs. and disconcerted me, by breaking out and crying—said he was crying for joy—and he sobbed away, while I sat there like the dog-eyed fool. … Harry said the house had been besieged by people—black & white—The people who live around there & those people at the church I expect—to see the new “Moses” that is to lift the race. It’s all one big joke to me—The race is Sensational—when your father opened the doors of the P.O. to his race it was almost the same—when he needed money and friends—they were sadly wanting. So keep your head—my boy.³¹

As her roomer Bush told her, “The people col’d. are talking about nothing else.”

Talk throughout Camden centered on how a Camden boy had won the Rhodes, and therein lay a problem: one of the Camden newspapers, the Post Telegram, ran a story under the headline, “Camden Colored Man Wins Scholarship.” When Locke heard of this from his mother, he sensed the danger immediately: if it were discovered that he actually resided in Camden with his mother, he might be disqualified from the scholarship. His March 23 letter to his mother summarized his response:

I have seen a lawyer. … I understand that as of age I can claim separate legal residence from you. I have written to the Post Telegram as follows:

Editor, Post Telegram

My dear Sir

My attention has just been called to an article in your paper for March 14 under the caption “Camden Colored Man Wins Scholarship.” Many incorrect statements that have appeared in the public press have been matters of insignificant detail, and I have not troubled to correct them. But that a reliable newspaper should claim Camden residence for me is of sufficient import to warrant correction on my part. I would think it quite sufficient merely to inform you that such a statement is incorrect, rather than to ask for the usual acknowledgment in order that there be no further consequences or responsibility for what is, as yet, only a reportorial mistake, were I not legally advised to enclose a signed statement that a young man of age may have separate residence from his parents, and a directory address is not necessarily a legal residence.³²

He then chastised her for talking to people.

This settles the affair I hope—though I want you to watch the Telegram very closely for a week or so … but for the sake of the heavenly twins do keep quiet—and as to Cornish [her principal at Mt. Vernon where she taught]—trust him not—I think he was responsible for it anyway—you know he is a friend of the Post Telegram—so say nothing to him unless he says something to you and then say I cannot say anything—Roy has retained a lawyer … I have been ordered to say nothing. I know Cornish put That in—and it all comes from you confiding in him—I have always told you not to—Otherwise how came it that the Courier said nothing and the Post Telegram did.³³

But it was not her fault, of course. He had decided to claim Pennsylvania rather than New Jersey as his home state, and it had made a difference. If he had gone for the Rhodes in New Jersey, he would probably not have won. The New Jersey Rhodes winner was Donald Grant Herring, a Princeton football star, intercollegiate wrestling champion, and excellent student. As the press noted, “The Committee on Selection consisted of President Woodrow Wilson, Dean H. B. Fine, of Princeton, and President Damerest, of Rutgers College.”³⁴ The committee was stacked with Princeton people, not the least of whom was Woodrow Wilson, who as president of Princeton condoned the policy of exclusion of Negroes and as president of the United States was responsible for the segregation of the Post Office, among other federal agencies. Locke had made the right choice to be considered from Pennsylvania, but his deception threatened to come back to haunt him.

Fortunately, there was no further publicity in the Post Telegram. Locke had wisely refrained from asking for a printed retraction. But such close public scrutiny of his life was beginning to cause problems. Newspaper interest and attention continued. More than a week after the announcement, he returned to his room to discover a card slipped under his door from a reporter for one of the Hearst newspapers who wanted an interview. The next day that reporter caught up with him in the Harvard Union and told Locke that if he did not give him an interview, the reporter would make up the answers and print it anyway. Stumbling over his words, Locke answered the questions, but surprisingly, no story ever appeared. Locke began to long for his former anonymity. “I just wished they would stop and leave me alone,” he moaned to his mother.³⁵

Locke did enjoy some of the attention brought by the appointment. Suddenly he was no longer just a bright, interesting Negro boy, but the Rhodes Scholar, a Black genius; and that changed White opinion of him as much as Black. “Oh did I tell you,” he continued, “I got a letter from the editor of the Independent asking me to write them an article of 2000 to 3000 words on my impressions of Oxford after I have been there long enough to form an impression.” “Did I tell you about the dinner invitations—Well Sunday afternoon I am to go to the Downses, Sunday evening to the Scammells—the Scammells are English people—the father an Oxford man the son a classmate of mine, who are of course ‘very interested’ which means very curious—I shall go indulge their curiosity for their uncle is an editor of the Westminster Review and it means an introduction to him.” Taking a moment out from the euphoria, he mused: “Strange though, how quickly people—even cultivated men, show an increasing interest and friendliness in success—its instructive I suppose.”³⁶

One payoff of this new interest came that April: he was appointed to be a delegate to the three-day Episcopalian Church Conference of New England Schools and Colleges that was held in Cambridge. As a delegate, he was responsible for entertaining a visitor to the conference, dining with the group, and attending a variety of lectures.

I met several of the boys from Groton school and they were of course very much interested in me Principal Peabody having spoken of me up there at school—they were politely curious as only fellows of that sort of training can be—so I was asked to go to Apthorp house where they were staying where a party of us chatted and talked till midnight[.] Several of them come to Harvard next September, and on second thought I was particularly pleasant to them when I thought someone of them might have to be tutored for the September exams. … However, I was very glad to have met them.³⁷

He was also able to make the acquaintance of a Mr. Carleton—“a graduate of Brasemore College at Oxford—of course he talked and talked and talked—told me very valuable things, gave me several introductions to friends of his who are now Dons. ‘Dons’ you may as well know for now on are the younger instructors of fellowship holders to Oxford.” Locke himself acknowledged that “if I had not been Rhodes Scholar I not only would not have been invited as a delegate to the conference—but if I had gone would have been a nonentity instead of the star side show—everyone was brought and I was introduced as Rhodes scholar elect until I was sick and tired of it.”³⁸ Celebrity status was intoxicating, and Locke would have to marshal all of his self-discipline to “keep” his “head,” as Mary suggested.

Newfound status also brought renewed challenges, as when he socialized with the Black bourgeoisie of Boston. On one occasion a Mrs. Etta Williamson, on whom Locke called, seemed to try to “fix him up” with her daughter.

She is very foolish—and of course very uneducated. … What do you think they did—went out and left the Williamson girl and me alone—that shows how much they know about things(!)—fortunately 2 other Negro summer girls came in and I got involved in a conversation, almost a controversy over separate schools etc. They evidently tried to rag the Rhodes Scholar but got paid back with interest—I led them into the deep waters and left them there to drown.³⁹

Despite such attention, Locke needed to focus his energy back on his work, which was considerable in those months after the Rhodes announcement. He had to submit his Bowdoin Prize essays in March, catch up on his coursework in April, much of which he had had to neglect during March, and translate a poem for the Sargent Prize. He needed to prepare for two exams in the condition subjects from his entrance exams—algebra and physics—that he had to pass before he could graduate. Finally, he had to take special exams in philosophy early in May, plus answer a senior thesis question, in order to receive honors.

Tuesday afternoon from 2–5:30 I took an examination on the Outlines of Modern Philosophy—Wednesday two exams, one on Plato and one on Kant … the Department is trying to size me up—pretty thoroughly it seems—This morning [May 10] I got my special thesis subject—Professor Royce wrote out the paper—What relation has the study of metaphysics to the practical problems of life? Specify some of the uses of metaphysical study, if you see any such uses, in relation to the problems of life. If the study seems in any respect impractical or useless or dangerous define the respects in which this seems true. What particular problems of metaphysic seem to you to have the most practical import. That’s a personal question if ever there was one—Prof. Royce from personal conversation with me knows I am unpractical and of course its the severest sort of a test to propose—The thesis is supposed to show philosophic power and is due in 48 hours—Well before I set to work solving the problems of life—before I monkey with the Absolute, thought I might as well be practical and write a letter to Mamma.⁴⁰

Mary Locke remained his psychological anchor in this sea of intellectual and emotional stresses. He drew back the curtain and revealed his inner feelings only with her. “Yes, I must play the genius, but I hope you are never taken in. I need you more than anything to keep me straight.” When that anchor was missing, Locke became extremely agitated, as he did the last week of May after receiving no letter from her for over a week. He dashed off a telegram to her, “Are you ill? Can wire cash. Love, Roy.” His mother, needless to say, was frightened by the telegram and sent an answer back with the messenger. She had imagined something had happened to him. Afterward, he tried to explain. “Well, I was a bit worried—you know you said you would write Thursday night—and then there was no note with the money order—I thought you were sick.” He continued, “You mustn’t be so old fogey—nor must you ever worry me up—or sometime you’ll have me coming across the Atlantic on an express steamship for nothing.”⁴¹

Locke was feeling apprehensive in the face of their coming separation. That separation would also mean a dramatic change for her. She would move out of the house into a room in Claphans’s house on the same street, since there would be no need for her to pay the expense of maintaining a full residence in his absence. More than ever, she would be in other people’s care. As his Harvard commencement in June approached, he began to view it as a special occasion on which to reward her for all the sacrifices she had made for him. He wished to place her on the pedestal and show the world that here was the person who really deserved credit for his successes. He also hoped that he would have definite prospects for summer tutoring, and that he could then pay her back a bit by having her spend the summer with him in New England. Then, one of his ships came in.

I was a bit worried over financial affairs—laying plans and worrying how we were going to come out—So I went to be on it and this morning was awakened by a letter falling with a click through the letter slot—Strange—it didn’t contain money—but it contained the next best thing—good news and the promise of money—Don’t cackle overmuch—but I just got notice that I had won the first Bowdoin prize with my essay on Tennyson and His Literary Heritage—That means $250, a bronze medal, a public reading and some more popularity or notoriety as it seems to be in my case—damn the luck—Well that is quite a thing here at Harvard and quite a personal vindication as I tried twice before and failed—Of course it is the largest and chiefest literary prize here—also the oldest Emerson, Holmes, Phillips Brooks and lots of other notables have won it. … Just yesterday I counted up on my Phil 9 notebook margin that I needed $500 for my plans this summer. Well here’s 250 of it now.⁴²

Now that finances were a bit better, Locke threw himself with gusto into preparations for his mother’s trip to Cambridge for the commencement. He would find her a cheap room for the bulk of her stay, but would spend the extra money for her to be able to receive visitors in one of the better hotels for one day. In a “Letter of Instructions,” he gave her detailed instructions on the types of hats, bags, and accessories she must purchase to be properly attired. Of greatest importance was the dress that she would have to have made.

Tell Smith [her favorite dressmaker] you want a corking good dress of crepe de chine, grey or black, preferably black with some grey about the trimmings—that will do for formal afternoon and evening wear—Now this one dress must look right—give her free rein—only see she doesn’t go to the extreme of fashion—go over patterns with her—send one she selects and I will approve and return immediately.

There was more: “begin to get your face and hands in shape. Go to your drugstore Brooks for Jolivons etc.—you will need a few little hotel articles.” He concluded “a fancy parasol [is] absolutely necessary.”⁴³

Mary Locke began to crack under the strain to live up to his requirements with very little money on hand. “This trip is making me sick,” she wrote on June 7, after providing lists of the hats, bags, and accessories she had priced in local stores. In addition, she had been forced into downtown stores for fittings that challenged her Victorian notions of propriety. “I had to be fitted at Gimbels for corsets today. She [Smith] ordered me to get corsets made—said I looked like I was going to ‘increase the family.’ ” When Mary went in, she discovered to her horror that instead of paying the $3.00 she had been promised, “I was so hard to fit—I had to pay $3.85—3.50 for Corset & .35 for bust. … It fits and I am minus a stomach. I had to take off everything but my shirt and stockings. Can you imagine me? Do tear this up—but I had to tell you—I felt like an old fool—I had no idea that was the way.”⁴⁴ Incredibly, she included a swatch of the black voile in her letter for his approval.

Although Mary did not make it to Cambridge until after his public reading of “Tennyson and His Literary Heritage,” the commencement appears to have come off well for both of them. Not only did he graduate magna cum laude for his overall performance in his courses but he also got his honors in philosophy. Altogether, he was the star attraction of that year’s commencement. Unfortunately, she was not able to stay in New England with him. Try as hard as he might, he could not secure tutoring, even with Copeland’s intervention with the dean. After Mary Locke returned to Camden at the end of June, Locke continued to hustle after each fleeting rumor of work, in competition with dozens of other Harvard graduates, for another month. Indeed, his fellow Black graduates were in much worse straits: “Bowser, the ‘author of Shelleyian verse’ is on the Pullmans, Tyson is working on the steamboats—and from New York, Harris is yard laborer—so it goes—”⁴⁵ Matthews, the star of the baseball team, had been forced to leave college. Publicity in the Boston newspaper the Guardian made Locke sympathize with Matthews’s plight. But the reality was clear: there were few, if any, positions of worth available to his fellow Black Harvardians, and without the Rhodes, he too would have had no prospects.

July’s relative calm was broken by another newspaper incident: the Boston Globe picked up a story, reputedly attributed to “Pennsylvania men,” that they objected “to [the] choice of the Harvard man” for the Rhodes. No names accompanied the report, which stated “the feeling among certain classes of students is against Locke’s representing Pennsylvania at Oxford on the ground that he did not qualify in social standing and athletic ability. It is also rumored that the undergraduates at Harvard resented Locke’s being chosen.” Ironically, the newspaper article went on to contradict the report by asserting that Locke was popular among his classmates at Harvard and “was chummy with some of the best scholars.” Although he “has never gone in ‘strong’ for athletics, principally because of his small stature,” Locke was “one of the best students in college,” who had been “one of the seven men of his class upon whom the college bestowed one of the much-coveted Detus,” and “one of the 3 men to receive the grade A in English 12, the advanced course in English composition.”⁴⁶ Locke was concerned that a Black paper would get ahold of the story and “stir things up and first thing you know my residence will be disputed.” He successfully squashed the story in the Boston Herald by personally going to the city editor and getting it “held up in time before it spread—It only came out in their first edition which they send up in the country [for] Massachusetts and Maine etc., in the second edition for Boston it was cut out. Notice of it was left in the summary of the day’s news, and the Negroes of Boston have been hunting for the article ever since I hear.”⁴⁷ Maude Trotter Stewart of the Guardian had contacted Locke to get more information on the purported incident, but he did not answer her. In fact, this “story” was nothing more than a newspaper-created rumor, as Locke noted to his mother.

It showed, however, that it was time to leave the United States before any more “news” broke about his controversial appointment. Fortunately, he would not be going alone. His friend Carl Downes, son of the editor of the Boston Transcript and an excellent graduate student in English, had written to Oxford asking permission to spend a year in residence. In contrast to his reluctant endorsement of Locke, Hurlbut wrote an enthusiastic letter of recommendation to Oxford for Downes, whose grade point average and overall achievement did not equal Locke’s. Downes was accepted and able to accompany Locke on his voyage. Dickerman would be coming over to visit in the summer of 1908, and Kallen would be in residence working under F. C. S. Schiller, James’s pragmatist counterpart at Oxford. All in all, Locke would have a good collection of friends to ease the transition.

The day before he left it rained hard all day, which matched Mary Locke’s dreary mood. She had wanted to accompany him to New York, but he convinced her it was not worth the effort; and so, she sat around all day, saddened that this was finally goodbye. The next day, September 24, Locke took an early train to New York, but apparently had some difficulty meeting up with Downes and his uncle. They were late for their ship’s departure, and only by speeding through New York in a cab with Locke’s trunk on top were Downes and Locke able to reach Hoboken before the Wilhelm departed. When finally settled safely on board, Locke wrote a farewell letter to his abandoned mother:

Am on board all right sailing out into the ocean now—just out of sight of Liberty statue. … The boat is rocking considerable but I am not sick yet. I feel very hopeful just as if one had a new world to conquer—I have in a sense—Well here[’]s good luck for both of us—I shall be thinking of you lots—and as soon as I can arrange to have you over you know I will—Well I must hurry—Mother dear do be hopeful and thankful and cheer up. Goodbye, your loving boy, Roy.

Alain Locke, England, 1908. Courtesy of the Moorland-Spingarn Research Center, Howard University.