Chapter 1
1. The Washington (D.C.) Evening Star, April 23, 1922.
2. The Washington (D.C.) Evening Star, April 25, 1922. Copy of death notice, General Correspondence, Alain Locke Papers, Unprocessed, Manuscript Division, The Moorland-Spingarn Research Center, Howard University; hereafter cited as ALP.
3. Interview with
Mae Miller Sullivan, April 4, 1976, Washington, D.C.
5. Douglas K. Stafford, “Alain Locke: The Child, the Man, and the People,”
Journal of Negro Education 30, no. 1 (Winter 1961): 25–34, 29.
6. Interview with Metz T. P. Lochard, June 13, 1975, Chicago, Ill.
7. Crisis 24, no. 3 (July 1922): 127.
8. Langston Hughes, “Mother to Son.”
The Norton Anthology of African American Literature, ed. Henry Louis Gates Jr. and Nellie Y. McKay (New York: Norton, 1997), 1254–1255.
9. Crisis 24, no. 3 (July 1922): 127–128.
12. Alain Locke, “Hail Philadelphia,”
Opals 1 (Spring 1927): 3.
Chapter 2
1. Although Alain Locke gave September 13, 1886, as his birthday, it certainly was 1885; no Alain or Alan Locke was recorded born in Philadelphia in 1886, but an Arthur Locke was born in 1885. See birth certificate, “Arthur Locke,” Department of Records, Vital Statistics, Philadelphia, Pa.; and “Personal Astrology,” envelope. ALP.
2. W. E. B. Du Bois,
The Philadelphia Negro (Philadelphia: University of Pennsylvania Press, 1899), 61–62.
3. Wm. F. Miller et al. to Ishmael Locke, December 5, 1844, Ishmael Locke Folder. ALP.
4. Philip S. Foner and George E. Walker, eds.,
The Proceedings of the Black State Conventions, 1840–1865, vol. 2.
Proceedings and Address of the Coloured Citizens of N.J. Convened at Trenton, August 21st and 22nd, 1849 for the Purpose of Taking the Initiatory Measures for Obtaining the Right of Suffrage in this Our Native State (Philadelphia: Temple University Press, 1980).
5. Martin Green,
Children of the Sun: A Narrative of “Decadence in England after 1918” (New York: Basic, 1976), 27.
6. Christopher J. Perry, “Pencil Pusher’s Points: A Brief Sketch of Pliny I. Locke, One of the Brainiest Men of His Day and Time,” The Philadelphia Tribune, 1905.
8. Pliny Locke (PL) to Mary Locke (ML), July 29, 1878. ALP.
10. PL to ML, January 15, 1869. ALP.
11. PL to ML, February 22, 1869. ALP.
12. PL to ML, December 15, 1872. ALP.
13. PL to ML, October 13, 1875. ALP.
14. PL to ML, May 19, 1872. ALP.
16. PL to ML, December 22, 1876. ALP.
17. Perry, “Pencil Pusher’s Points.”
18. Autobiographical Sketch, n.d. ALP.
20. Toni Morrison,
Song of Solomon (New York: Vintage International, 1977), 132.
21. Interview with Arthur Davis, April 4, 1975, Washington, D.C.
22. Biographical Memo: Alain (LeRoy) Locke, n.d. ALP.
25. Autobiographical Sketch, n.d. ALP.
27. Douglas K. Stafford, “Alain Locke: The Child, the Man, and the People,” Journal of Negro Education 30, no. 1 (Winter 1961): 28.
Chapter 3
1. Robert E. Fennell interview, April 11, 1987, Washington, D.C.
2. My reference to Locke as “child god” and Sartre as a “child King” comes from Annie Cohen-Solal,
Jean-Paul Sartre: A Life, trans. Anna Cancogni (New York: New Press, 2005), 27.
3. See Rayford Logan,
The Betrayal of the Negro, from Rutherford B. Hayes to Woodrow Wilson (New York: Collier, 1965).
4. Henry Turner, “The American Negro and His Fatherland” (speech given at the Congress of Africa in Atlanta, December 13–15, 1985). Later published in
Africa and the American Negro: Addresses and Proceedings of the Congress on Africa of Gammon Theological Seminary in Connection with the Cotton States and International Exposition, ed. J. W. E. Bowen (Atlanta: Gammon Theological Seminary, 1896), 195–198.
5. Robert E. Fennell interview.
6. Emma Lapansky, “ ‘Since They Got Those Separate Churches’: Afro-Americans and Racism in Jacksonian Philadelphia,”
American Quarterly 32, no. 1 (Spring 1980): 54–78.
7. Mary Locke (ML) to Alain Locke (AL), May 22, 1905. ALP.
8. ML to AL, n.d. [possibly October 1904]. ALP.
10. I am inspired here by Martin Green’s superb study,
The Problem of Boston (New York: Norton, 1966), especially
chapter 1: “The Problem of Culture.” Of course, I realize that Philadelphia was not Boston, and never focused as much of its resources on creating a society that fostered great literature as Boston did. But Philadelphia was no literary slouch, either, and was able, to claim, for example, Benjamin Franklin, Edgar Allan Poe, Mark Twain, and Walt Whitman, even if Philadelphia never fully embraced Whitman, and some substantial publishing concerns such as the Curtis Publishing Company that published, among other things, the
Ladies Home Journal. My point here is that Philadelphia educated and nurtured in Locke a high-minded notion of culture, taste, and standards that prepared him to enter Harvard and the world of the Boston aesthetes as a peer.
11. ML to AL, May 7, 1906. ALP.
12. Interview with Sadie Alexander, April 30, 1983, Philadelphia, Pa.
13. Douglas K. Stafford, “Alain Locke: The Child, the Man, and the People,” Journal of Negro Education 30, no. 1 (Winter 1961): 28.
18. Handbook of the Central High School (Philadelphia, 1922), 15.
20. Interview with William Banner, April 10, 1982, Washington, D.C.; School of Pedagogy Reports; in Robert Thompson to Hart, May 17, 1904, L folder. HA.
21. Hughes Mearns to AL, December 21, 1925. ALP.
22. Albert Rowland to AL, n.d. ALP.
23. Phil Boyer (PB) to AL, n.d. ALP.
26. AL to HM, August 20, 1904. ALP.
27. Martin Green,
Children of the Sun: Narrative of Decadence in England After 1918 (London: Pimlico, 1992).
28. Locke’s essay written at the School of Pedagogy on American drama, ca. 1903.
31. AL to PB, March 29, 1949. ALP.
Chapter 4
1. Alain Locke (AL) to Mary Locke (ML), September [n.d.,] 1904. ALP.
5. Rollo Brown,
Harvard in the Golden Age (New York: Current, 1948) 17.
6. AL to ML, October 10, 1904. ALP.
7. Autobiographical Memoir, n.d. ALP.
8. ML to AL, n.d. (noted as her third letter to Locke at Harvard, Wed. 2
p.m. 1904). ALP.
9. ML to AL, September 22, 1904. ALP.
10. AL to ML, September 21, 1904 (noted as Monday evening). ALP.
11. AL to ML, September 23, 1904. ALP.
13. AL to ML, September 26, 1904. ALP.
14. W. E. B. Du Bois, “A Negro Student at Harvard,”
Massachusetts Review 1 (May 1960): 439.
15. AL to ML, September 21, 1904. ALP. Note: Page 6, on which the reference to “coons” appears, is missing from folder 25, Box 164-47.
16. AL to ML, October 4, 1904. ALP.
17. AL to ML, October 17, 1904. ALP.
19. AL to ML, October 6, 1904. ALP.
23. AL to ML, October 13, 1904. ALP.
24. AL to ML, November 17, 1904. ALP.
25. AL to ML, November 27, 1904. ALP.
27. AL to ML, December 2, 1904. ALP.
28. AL to ML, November 30, 1904. ALP.
29. AL to ML, September 27, 1904. ALP.
32. AL to ML, March 7, 1905. ALP.
34. AL to ML, October 21, 1904 (noted as Friday). ALP.
35. Bruce Kuklick,
The Rise of the American Philosophy: Cambridge, Massachusetts, 1860–1930 (New Haven: Yale University Press, 1979), 139.
38. AL to ML, February 17, 1905. ALP.
39. AL to ML, September [n.d.,] 1906. ALP.
40. AL to ML, January 10, 1906. ALP.
41. AL to ML, December 9, 1905. ALP.
42. AL to ML, [Spring (n.d.), 1906]. ALP.
44. AL to ML, April 2, 1905. ALP.
45. AL to ML, n.d. (ca. 1905). ALP.
47. AL to ML, February 19, 1906. ALP.
48. AL to ML, May 3, 1906. ALP.
49. AL to ML, October 24, 1905. ALP.
50. Martin Green,
The Problem of Boston (New York: Norton, 1966), 23.
51. AL to ML, December 9, 1905. ALP.
54. “Secretary’s Third Report: Harvard Class of 1906. Biographical Sketch by James Arthur Harley” (Crimson Printing Co., 1906), 178.
Chapter 5
1. Notes written on “The Romantic Movement as Expressed by John Keats,” January 1905. ALP.
3. English 46 class notes. ALP.
4. Alain Locke, “The Prometheus Myth: A Study in Literary Tradition” (essay submitted for the 1905 Bowdoin Prize competition).
6. Alain Locke, “Art as a Catharsis” (submitted in 1905 for Dr. D. H. Maynadier’s course on English Literature).
10. Matthew Arnold,
Culture and Anarchy (London: Smith, Elder & Company, 1869).
11. Edwin H. Abbot, Albert Matthews, and Paul E. More, who judged the winning essay.
12. Alain Locke, “Tennyson and His Literary Heritage,” June 4, 1907: 1. Harvard Library, HU 89.165.692.
15. Marcellus Blount, “The Preacherly Text: African American Poetry and Vernacular Performance,”
PMLA 107, no. 3, Special Topic: Performance (May 1992): 582–593.
18. The Dunbar lecture. ALP.
22. See W. B. Yeats, “The Young Ireland League,” in
W. B. Yeats: Early Articles and Reviews: Uncollected Articles and Reviews Written Between 1886–1900, ed. by John P. Frayne and Madeeine Marchaterre (New York: Scribner, 2004), 146–148.
23. Alain Locke (AL) to Mary Locke (ML), February 12, 1907. ALP.
24. ML to AL, February 25, 1907. ALP.
25. AL to ML, April 19, 1907. ALP.
Chapter 6
1. R. F. Scholz and S. K. Hornbeck,
Oxford and the Rhodes Scholarships (London: Leopold Classic Library, 1907), 40.
2. Lord Rosebery to Parkin, March 17, 1903, Sir George R. Parkin Papers, Archives Branch, Public Archives, Canada.
3. See Brian Roberts,
Cecil Rhodes: Flawed Colossus (London: Thistle, 2015).
4. Alain Locke (AL) to Mary Locke (ML), May 10, 1906. ALP.
5. AL to ML, September [n.d.,] 1906. ALP.
6. George Santayana to Horace Meyer Kallen, November 10, 1913, MS, Horace Kallen Papers, American Jewish Archives. Cincinnati, Ohio.
7. Sarah Schmidt interviews with Horace Kallen (1971). HKP.
8. Horace Meyer Kallen, “Alain Locke and Cultural Pluralism,”
Journal of Philosophy 54, no. 5 (February 1957): 119–127.
9. AL to ML, January 14, 1907. ALP.
10. Charles T. Copeland comments written on Alain Locke’s essay, “Impressions of Dante,” January 1907. ALP.
12. Copeland’s comments on Locke’s book review of Wells’s
Future in America, 1907. ALP.
13. AL to ML, February 10, 1907. ALP.
14. AL to ML, February 28, 1907. ALP.
15. AL to ML, March 3, 1907. ALP.
16. Barrett Wendell to Horace Kallen, n.d. HKP.
17. AL to ML, March 2, 1907. ALP. This letter suggests that Mary communicated to him that her “prophecies” weren’t “favorable” for him getting the Rhodes.
18. The minutes of John Haas, March 9, 1907. ALP.
19. Arthur Fauset,
For Freedom: A Biographical Study of the American Negro (Philadelphia: Franklin Publishing and Supply Co., 1934), 175.
20. Dean L. B. B. Briggs, Dean of Faculty of Arts and Sciences, Harvard to Provost Harrison, March 6, 1907. ALP.
21. George R. Parkin, “Appointment of a Negro Scholar,” Special Report (1907), Rhodes Scholarship Trust Records, Microfilm, Canada Archives.
22. Quoted in a letter from C. Boyd to Rosebery, April 6, 1907. (RST).
23. Parkin, Postscript, “Negro Scholar.” (RST).
24. Sir Francis Wylie, “The Rhodes Scholars and Oxford, 1902–1931,” in
The First Fifty Years of the Rhodes Scholarships, 1903–1953, ed. Lord Elton (London: Oxford, 1956), 99.
25. AL to Sir Francis Wylie (SFW), May [n.d.,] 1907. ALP.
26. “The First Colored Man to Go on the Rhodes Foundation,” the
American Missionary 61, no. 8 (October 1907): 247.
27. AL to ML, March 23, 1907. ALP.
28. AL to Duty, quoted in AL to ML, n.d. ALP.
29. S. T. Bivins to AL, March 29, 1907. ALP.
30. ML to AL, n.d. (ca. March 17, 1907). ALP.
32. AL to ML, March 23, 1907. ALP.
34. See
Harrisburg Telegraph from Harrisburg, Pennsylvania, and the
Danville Morning News from Danville, Pennsylvania (Monday, April 15, 1907 issues): 1.
37. AL to ML, April 1907. ALP.
39. AL to ML, July 15, 1907. ALP.
40. AL to ML, May 10, 1907. ALP.
42. AL to ML, June 3, 1907. ALP.
44. ML to AL, June 7, 1907. ALP.
46. “Fewer Lynchings: Record for 20 Years in the Last Six Months” (remarks by President Eliot),
Boston Globe, March 12, 1907, 5.
47. AL to ML, July 15, 1907. ALP.
Chapter 7
1. Alain Locke (AL) to Mary Locke (ML), September 24, 1907. ALP.
3. AL to ML, September 30, 1907. ALP.
4. AL to ML, October 23, 1907. ALP.
9. AL to ML, October 7, 1907. ALP.
10. George Parkin to President Benjamin Wheeler, October 8, 1908. (RST).
11. AL to ML, October 7, 1907. ALP.
12. AL to ML, October 23, 1907. ALP.
13. Horace Kallen’s diary, October 18, 1907. (HKP).
14. HK to Barrett Wendell, October 22, 1907. (HKP).
15. Written on back of letter: Elinor Dicey to AL, October 24, 1907. ALP.
16. AL to ML, December 1, 1907. ALP.
18. Appointment card: AL meeting with F. S. Wylie, October 21, 1907. ALP.
19. AL to ML, November 1, 1907. ALP.
20. Horace Kallen, “Alain Locke and Cultural Pluralism,”
Journal of Philosophy 54 (February 28, 1957): 122.
21. AL to ML, December 1, 1907. ALP.
24. Douglas Stafford, “Alain Locke: The Child, the Man, and the People,”
Journal of Negro Education 25 (Winter 1961): 28.
25. Horace Meyer Kallen, “Alain Locke and Cultural Pluralism,” Journal of Philosophy 54, no. 5 (February 1957): 122–123. HKP.
30. AL to anonymous friend. n.d. ALP.
31. AL to ML, December 1, 1907. ALP.
Chapter 8
1. Alain Locke (AL) to Mary Locke (ML), December 5, 1908. ALP.
2. AL to ML, January 3, 1908. ALP.
6. AL to ML, January 9, 1908. ALP.
7. ML to AL, January 21, 1908. ALP.
8. AL to ML, n.d. 1908. ALP.
9. Horace Kallen to AL, January 17, 1908. ALP.
10. AL to ML, January 18, 1908. ALP.
12. Notes written on back of invitation to visit Cairds of Balliol College, February 19, 1908. ALP.
13. AL to ML, n.d. 1908. ALP.
14. Dr. Collier’s examination notes. n.d. ALP.
15. AL to ML, n.d. 1908. ALP.
16. AL to ML, n.d. 1908. ALP.
17. AL to ML, March 14, 1908. ALP.
18. Isaka Seme (IS) to Booker T. Washington, April 15, 1908. ALP.
19. AL to ML, March 17, 1908. ALP.
29. Alain Leroy Locke, “Oxford Contrasts,”
The Independent 67 (July–December 1909): 139.
30. Edward Burnett Tylor,
Primitive Culture: Researches into the Development of Mythology, Philosophy, Religion, Art and Custom (London: John Murray, 1871).
31. Thomas Babington Macaulay, “Minute of 2 February 1835 on Indian Education,”
Macaulay, Prose and Poetry, selected by G. M. Young (Cambridge, Mass.: Harvard University Press, 1957), 721–724, 729.
32. Alain Locke, “Epilogue,” The Oxford Cosmopolitan, 1908.
36. Alain Locke, “Harlem,”
Survey Graphic (March 1, 1925): 630.
37. AL to ML, June 18, 1908. ALP.
38. AL to ML, May 27, 1908. ALP.
Chapter 9
1. Alain Locke (AL) to Mary Locke (ML), September 16, 1908. ALP.
3. ML to AL, n.d. 1908. ALP.
4. AL to ML, n.d. 1908. ALP.
5. AL to ML, October 31, 1908. ALP.
6. Hamid El Alaily, “Modern Egypt,”
The Oxford Cosmopolitan 1 (November 1908): 22.
7. Moustafa Kamel Pasha as cited in Alaily, “Modern Egypt.”
10. Har Dayal, “Obstacles to Cosmopolitanism,” The Oxford Cosmopolitan 1 (October 1908): 27–35.
12. [Proposal] AL to Assistant Registrar of Oxford University, n.d. ALP; Minutes of Education Committee, Hertford College, January 16, 1909. HCA; AL to ML, November [n.d.]. ALP.
15. AL to ML, December 19, 1908. ALP.
17. Sydney Franklin (SF) to AL, June 2, 1909. ALP.
20. SF to AL, January 31, 1909. ALP.
21. AL to ML, December 15, 1908. ALP.
22. W. Boyd notes, Hertford governing board minutes, January 16, 1909.
23. AL to ML, February 10, 1909. ALP.
24. AL to ML, n.d. [1909]. ALP.
25. Locke, “Notes April 1909, Southern Rhodes Scholars vs. English Tory Allies.” ALP.
Chapter 10
1. Alain Locke (AL) to Mary Locke (ML), March 15, 1909. ALP.
5. AL to ML, March 22, 1909. ALP.
6. AL to ML, April 3, 1909. ALP.
7. AL to ML, April 12, 1909. ALP.
8. AL to ML, April 18, 1909. ALP.
9. AL to ML, April 28, 1909. ALP.
11. AL to ML, April 27, 1909. ALP.
12. AL to ML, April 12, 1909. ALP. The book, which was not “bosh,” was Wilbur Urban’s
Valuation: Its Nature and Laws, Being an Introduction to the General Theory of Value (1909).
13. AL to ML, May 5, 1909. ALP.
18. ML diary. July 31, 1914. ALP.
19. ML diary. August 23, 1914. ALP.
20. Alain Locke, “The American Temperament,”
North American Review 1914 (August 1911): 262–270. In Jeffrey C. Stewart’s
The Critical Temper of Alain Locke: A Selection of His Essays on Art and Culture (New York: Garland, 1983), 399.
21. Locke, “The American Temperament,” 400.
22. AL to ML, March 3, 1910. ALP.
23. AL Cable to Booker T. Washington (BTW), March 12, 1910. ALP.
24. BTW to Locke, Telegram, April 18, 1910. ALP.
25. ML to AL, April 20, 1910. ALP.
Chapter 11
1. Chancellor Court Record, June 3, 1910, University Archives, Bodleian Library, Oxford University.
2. Henry Boyd, Hertford College Board Meeting Notes, May 31, 1910. HCA.
3. Booker T. Washington, letter of recommendation for Alain Locke to Lawrence Abbott, editor of the
Outlook. ALP.
4. Alain Locke (AL) to Booker T. Washington (BTW), June 15, 1910. ALP.
6. BTW to AL, July 7, 1910. ALP.
7. Sydney Franklin to AL, July 12, 1910. ALP.
8. ML to AL, July 11, 1910. ALP.
9. ML to AL, July 12, 1910. ALP.
10. ML to AL, August 4, 1910. ALP.
11. J. Bush to AL, August 21, 1910. ALP.
12. Frederich von Voss (FV) to AL, August 19, 1910. ALP.
14. FV to AL, Spring 1911. ALP.
17. Locke’s Thesis, “The Concept of Value,” 124–125. ALP.
21. Hugo Munsterberg to AL, January 11, 1911. ALP.
22. “Meeting of the Board Holders,” minutes of Literae Humaniores board decision 3:17, February 8, 1911.
24. Notes by H. Boyd the Principal, Herford College Munisments 4/2/6, March 10, 1910, Bodleian Library, Oxford.
25. ML to AL, April 2, 1910. ALP.
27. ML to AL, April 11, 1910. ALP.
Chapter 12
1. Lionel de Fonseka to AL, April 7, 1911. ALP.
2. Alain Locke, “Some Aspects of Modernism,” 1911. ALP.
5. Jayston Edwards to AL, April 24, 1911. ALP.
6. See Robert Gooding-Williams’s
In the Shadow of Du Bois (Cambridge, Mass.: Harvard University Press, 2009), 57–60.
7. Lee Harry Liebersohn,
Fate and Utopia in German Sociology, 1870–1923 (Cambridge, Mass.: MIT Press, 1990).
8. Lionel de Fonseka (LdF) to AL, June 28, 1911. ALP.
12. Alfred Fouillee, “Race from the Sociological Point of View,” First International Races Congress (July 26, 1911), First Session titled
Fundamental Considerations.
13. Franz Boas, “The Instability of Human Types,” First International Races Congress (July 26, 1911), Second Session titled The Conditions of Progress: General Problems.
16. Israel Zangwill, “The Jewish Race,” First International Races Congress (July 28, 1911), Fifth Session titled The Modern Conscience.
19. The London Times (July 29, 1911), 4.
20. Louis Lochner,
Always the Unexpected (New York: Macmillan, 1956), 39.
21. ML to AL, August 3, 1911. ALP.
24. Locke, typescript note, ca. 1932. ALP.
Chapter 13
1. Alain Locke (AL) to Mary Locke (ML), November 2, 1911. ALP.
2. Alain Locke, “The Negro and a Race Tradition” (speech, Yonkers Negro Society for Historical Research in New York, December 12, 1911). ALP.
4. W. E. B. Du Bois, “Of the Training of Men,” in The Souls of Black Folk (1903), published in W.E.B. Du Bois: Writings, The Library of America (Cambridge: Cambridge University, 1986), 438.
6. John Bruce (JB) to John Cromwell (JC), December 11, 1911. ALP.
9. JB to JC, October 15, 1917. ALP.
10. AL to ML, February 17, 1912. ALP.
11. JB to JC, February 8, 1912. ALP.
12. JB to JC, December 11, 1911. ALP.
13. Booker T. Washington (BTW) to AL, January 8, 1912. ALP.
14. BTW to S. G. Elbert (SGE), February 26, 1912. ALP.
16. “Immense Crowd Hears Dr. Booker Washington Speak,”
Pensacola Journal, March 2, 1912, 7.
17. AL to ML, March 2, 1912. ALP.
18. AL to ML, March 8, 1912. ALP.
20. Al to ML, March 18, 1912. ALP.
21. Carl Diton (CD) to AL, March 12, 1912. ALP.
22. CD to AL, March 24, 1912. ALP.
23. ML to AL, Fall 1911. ALP.
24. AL to BTW, July 1912. ALP.
25. Telegram from Lewis Moore to AL, September 14, 1912. ALP.
26. AL to BTW, September 1912, Booker T. Washington Papers, Library of Congress.
27. Alain Locke, “Cosmopolitanism and Culture,” unpublished manuscript. ALP.
Chapter 14
1. Mary Locke (ML) to Alain Locke (AL), September 24, 1912. ALP.
2. Bishop Levi Coppin to AL, October 23, 1911. ALP.
3. AL to Booker T. Washington (BTW), September 16, 1912. BTW.
4. AL report to Dean Moore, 1915. ALP.
6. Christian Fleetwood to AL, February 20, 2012, ALP.
7. AL to ML, January 1913. ALP.
8. AL to ML, February 16, 1913. ALP.
10. Lionel de Fonseka (LdF) to AL, March 18, 1913. ALP.
11. AL to ML, February 27, 1913. ALP.
12. Alexander Walters (AW) to AL, April 9, 1913. ALP.
13. Charles F. Kellogg,
NAACP: A History of the NAACP, vol. 1,
1909–1920 (Baltimore: John Hopkins University Press, 1967), 159–166.
14. Alexander Walters (AW) to AL, September 3, 1913. ALP.
15. AL to ML, January 15, 1914. ALP.
17. See Mabel O. Wilson,
Negro Building: Black Americans in the World of Fairs and Museums (Berkeley: University of California Press, 2012), 147–149.
18. ML to Varick, August 4, 1914. ALP.
19. ML Diary, July 31, 1914. ALP.
20. ML to Varick, August 4, 1914. ALP.
22. “Gerard Bringing Refugees: His Special with 400 Americans Goes to Rotterdam,”
New York Times, August 14, 1914, 4.
23. Gilchrist Stewart telegraph to AL, October 13, 1914. ALP.
24. Handwritten notes on the telegraph.
25. August 12, diary, Kemper Harreld, in possession of Josephine Harreld Love.
26. ML to AL, n.d. 1911. ALP.
27. Alain Locke, “The Great Disillusionment,” September 26, 1914, in Race Contacts and Interracial Relations: Alain LeRoy Locke, ed. Jeffrey C. Stewart (Washington, D.C.: Howard University Press, 1992), 107.
29. “Europe at Armageddon,”
The North American Review 1142 (September 2014): 321–322.
30. Locke, “The Great Disillusionment,” 108.
34. AL to ML, October 28, 1914. ALP.
36. AL to ML, November 19, 1914. ALP.
37. AL to Booker T. Washington, April 29, 1915. BTW.
38. AL to ML, February 8, 1915. ALP.
39. “My dear Dr. Newman, I have been thinking for sometime over the new Course on Racial Contact proposed by Professor Locke and recommended by the Faculty of the Teachers’ College of Howard University. That matter was presented to our Trustees some time ago and I think it was referred back to you and the Executive Committee for further consideration. I visited Columbia University this summer and my vision was very much enlarged. There were over a hundred colored students among the plus six thousand whites … I thought of ‘Dear Old Howard’ and was proud that she was represented by our Professor Gregory and our Professor Locke. I am sending you a clipping from the Catalogue and would call your special attention to the paragraph marked and under the heading, ‘Missions.’ This shows that Columbia is ‘stealing’ the thunder of Howard. This Course inaugurated this summer at Columbia is practically the same as that proposed by Professor Locke at Howard. Howard, I think, can justly claim priority in this field, which apparently is being rapidly developed at several other Universities.” William Sinclair to Rev. S. M. Newman, September 18, 1915. ALP.
40. W. E. B. Du Bois,
The Conservation of the Races. Occasional Papers, 2. The American Negro Academy, 1897.
41. Alain Locke, lecture 5, “Race Progress and Race Adjustment,” in
Race Contacts and Interracial Relations, 100.
42. AL to ML, March 28, 1916. ALP.
43. AL to ML, April 9, 1916. ALP.
44. Alain Locke,
Race Contacts and Interracial Relations.
Chapter 15
1. Alain Locke (AL) to Mary Locke (ML), n.d. (summer 1916). ALP.
3. ML to AL, June 28, 1916. ALP.
4. William Stanley Braithwaite,
Anthology of Magazine Verse (1916): xiii–xiv.
5. AL to Archibald Grimke, n.d. [March 1916]. Archibald Grimke Papers, Moorland-Spingarn Research Center, Howard University.
7. See Kevin Quashie’s book,
The Sovereignty of Quiet: Beyond Resistance in Black Culture (New Brunswick: Rutgers University Press, 2012) for a superb discussion of the art versus propaganda debate that has greatly informed my own understanding of the losses that a purely activist notion of Black identity exacts. I thank Monife Love Asante for bringing this wonderful book to my attention.
9. Alain Locke, “A Criticism of the Bosanquetian Doctrine of Judgment Forms,” turned in January 8, 1917, to Alfred Hoernle’s Logical Theory course. ALP.
10. Alfred Hoernle’s comment to paper. ALP.
11. Ralph Barton Perry, “The Definition of Value,”
Journal of Philosophy, Psychology and Scientific Methods 11 (March 12, 1914): 150.
12. Alain Locke, “The Problem of Classification in the Theory of Value: Or an Outline of a Genetic System of Values” (PhD diss., Harvard University, 1918).
13. Alain Locke, scribble on back of Hoernle’s invitation, February 23, 1917. ALP.
14. Alain Locke, scribble on the back of CHS club meeting invitation, January 18, 1917. ALP.
15. Meta Warrick Fuller to ML, January 23, 1917. ALP; C. Henry Dickerman to AL, September 28, 1917. ALP; Plenyano Gbe Wolo to AL, November 3, 1917, May 9, 1919, June 3, 1921. ALP; Moco McCaulay, “The Remarkable Untold Story of Plenyono Gbe Wolo, Harvard’s First African Graduate,”
The Liberian Echo (January 27, 2016).
http://liberianecho.com/the-remarkable-untold-story-of-plenyono-gbe-wolo-harvards-first-african-graduate/, accessed May 22, 2017.
16. Alain Locke, “Emile Verhaeren,” in The Critical Temper of Alain Locke, 35.
18. Locke, “Emile Verhaeren,” in
The Critical Temper of Alain Locke, 36.
19. Locke, “The Problem of Classification.”
20. AL to Arthur Schomburg, n.d. ALP.
21. Alain Locke’s written tribute to Bishop Walters. ALP.
Chapter 16
1. R. R. Thompson to Alain Locke (AL), July 15, 1917. ALP.
4. Montgomery Gregory (MG) to AL, August [n.d.,] 1917. ALP.
6. MG to AL, April 1, 1918. ALP.
7. MG to AL, April 23, 1918. ALP.
9. AL to Ralph Barton Perry, Fall 1917. ALP.
11. Ralph Barton Perry,
The Present Conflict of Ideals: A Study of the Philosophical Background of the World War (New York: Longmans, Green, 1918).
12. Alain Locke presentation, later published as “The Role of the Talented Tenth,”
Howard University Record 12 (December 7, 1918): 15–18.
13. Alain Locke, “Howard Univ. in the War—A Record of Patriotic Service,”
Howard University Record 13 (1919): 169.
14. Jeffrey C. Stewart, ed.,
Race Contacts and Interracial Relations: Alain LeRoy Locke (Washington, D.C.: Howard University Press, 1992), 53.
15. William Stanley Braithwaite (WSB) to AL, July 27, 1919. ALP.
18. AL to Langston Hughes (LH), n.d. (circa April 1923). ALP.
19. “Theatrical Notes,”
The New York Times, November 2, 1920, 26.
20. W. E. B. Du Bois (WEBDB) to AL and Montgomery Gregory (MG), April 4, 1919. ALP.
22. The New York Times, November 2, 1920.
23. Lincoln Johnson to AL, March 14, 1919. ALP.
24. Georgia Douglas Johnson,
Bronze:
A Book of Verse (New York: Books for Libraries Press, 1922; 1971).
25. Georgia Douglas Johnson to AL, August 10, 1920. ALP.
26. Nathan Pinchback Toomer to AL, November [n.d.,] 1919. ALP.
Chapter 17
1. Alain Locke (AL) to Sir Francis Wylie, n.d. 1921. ALP.
2. Jean Toomer (JL) to AL, January 26, 1921. ALP.
4. JT to AL, November 8, 1921. ALP.
5. Helen Irvin to AL, February [n.d.,] 1922. ALP.
6. William Crusor George to AL, n.d. ALP.
7. Helen Irvin to Miss Hunt, February [n.d.,] 1922. ALP.
8. Isabella Claphan to Locke, n.d., [1922]. ALP.
9. William George (WG) to AL, n.d., [1922]. ALP.
10. Scribbled notes on a letter. ALP.
12. WG to AL, May 7, 1922. ALP.
13. WG to AL, May 17, 1922. ALP.
14. AL to WG’s parents, n.d. (ca. May 28, 1922). ALP.
15. WG to AL, n.d. (June 1922). ALP.
16. AL to WG, July 4, 1922. ALP.
20. W. E. B. Du Bois, The Souls of the Black Folk (Boston: Bedford, 1903; 1997), 38.
22. Handwritten, “Homo Ball” at “
Madeline till 12:15.” ALP.
23. Alain Locke, “Steps Toward the Negro Theatre,” Crisis (December 1922): 66.
25. “Hinkemann” (1922). ALP.
Hinkemann is a German expressionist play by the left-wing playwright Ernst Toller. Performances of the play were attacked by national socialists in 1924. See
https://de.wikipedia.org/wiki/Hinkemann, accessed May 17, 2017.
26. Stephen Spender,
World Within World: The Autobiography of Stephen Spender (London: Hamish Hamilton, 1951), 97.
27. Otto Friedrich,
Before the Deluge: A Portrait of Berlin in the 1920s (New York: Harper & Row, 1995), 11.
Chapter 18
1. Jean Toomer (JT) to Alain Locke (AL), August 1923. ALP.
2. JT to Georgia Douglas Johnson, January 7, 1920. ALP.
3. JT to AL, August 1923. ALP.
4. Countee Cullen (CC) to AL, September 24, 1922. ALP.
6. CC to AL, January 12, 1923. ALP.
7. CC to AL, January 29, 1923. ALP.
9. AL to CC, n.d. (ca. February/March) 1923. ALP.
10. CC to AL, March 3, 1923. ALP.
12. CC to AL, April 4, 1923. ALP.
14. CC to AL, May 1923. ALP.
15. Helen Irvin to AL, February 13, 1923. ALP.
16. AL to CC, February 3, 1923. ALP.
18. CC to AL, January 20, 1923. ALP.
19. AL to Langston Hughes (LH), January 17, 1923. ALP.
20. LH to AL, February 19, 1923. ALP.
22. Charles Spurgeon Johnson (CSJ) to AL, January 4, 1923. ALP.
23. Alain Locke,
Goat Alley, Opportunity 1, no. 2 (February 1923): 30.
24. CSJ to AL, February 1923. ALP.
25. Alain Locke, “Public Opinion in War and Peace,”
Opportunity 1, no. 7 (July 1923): 223.
26. CSJ to AL, June 6, 1923. ALP.
28. Eugene Kinckle Jones to AL, July 6, 1923. ALP.
29. LH to AL, April 6, 1923. ALP.
33. LH to AL, [May 1923]. ALP.
35. LH to AL, Thursday [May 1923]. ALP.
36. CC to AL, April 13, 1923. ALP.
39. CC to AL, June 8, 1923. ALP.
40. CC to AL, August 26, 1923. ALP.
41. CC to AL, August 23, 1923. ALP.
Chapter 19
1. Helen Irvin (HI) to Alain Locke (AL), June 28, 1923. ALP.
2. Roscoe Conkling Bruce to AL, October 22, 1923. ALP.
3. CSJ to AL, ca. 1923. ALP.
4. Melville Herskovits to AL, September 1923. ALP.
5. Alain Locke, “The Problem of Race Classification,” Opportunity 1, no. 9 (September 1923): 261.
7. Alain Locke, “The Colonial Literature of France,” Opportunity 1, no. 11 (November 1923): 331.
10. Herbert Marcuse,
The Aesthetic Dimension (Boston: Beacon, 1977).
11. Alain Locke, “The Black Watch on the Rhine,” Opportunity 2, no. 13 (January 1924): 7.
13. Locke, “The Black Watch,” 6.
16. René Maran, “French Colonial Policy: Open Letter to Prof. Locke,”
Opportunity 2, no. 21 (September 1924): 261; also appeared in
Les Continents of June 15, 1924.
18. Claude McKay to AL, August 1923. ALP.
19. Claude McKay,
A Long Way from Home (New York: Arno, 1969 [1937]), 312–313.
20. Helen Irvin to AL, November 1923. ALP.
21. Alain Locke, “Roland Hayes, An Appreciation,” Opportunity 1, no. 12 (December 1923): 356.
25. Ralph Ellison, “The Little Man at Chehaw Station: The American Artist and His Audience,”
The American Scholar 47, no. 1 (Winter 1978): 26.
26. Locke, “Roland Hayes,” 358.
28. Roland Hayes (RH) to AL, December 1, 1923. ALP.
30. RH to AL, October 4, 1924. ALP.
33. Alain Locke, “Impressions of Luxor,”
Howard Alumnus 2, no. 4 (May 1924): 74–78.
Chapter 20
1. Alain Locke, “Impressions of Haifa,”
Bahái World 2 (1928): 125.
2. Alain Locke (AL) to Ms. Parsons, n.d. 1928. ALP.
3. Locke, “Impressions,” 125.
5. Jon Woodson,
To Make a New Race: Gurdjieff, Toomer and the Harlem Renaissance (Jackson: University Press of Mississippi, 1999).
6. Charles Mason Remey, “The Universal Consciousness of the Baha’i Revelation: A Brief Treatise Introductory to the Study of the Baha’i Religion” (New York: Baha’i Publishing Committee, 1925).
7. Alain Locke, “Apropos of Africa,”
Opportunity 2, no. 14 (February 1924): 37.
8. Alain Locke, “Impressions of Luxor,”
Howard Alumnus 2, no. 4 (May 1924): 74–78.
9. AL to Montgomery Gregory (MG), n.d. 1924. ALP.
10. AL to Kamal Hamdy, n.d. 1924. ALP.
11. Locke, “Apropos,” 40.
16. Locke’s Cairo guidebook. ALP.
19. Locke, “Impressions of Luxor,” 74–78.
20. George Foucart to AL, January 19, 1924. ALP.
21. Locke, “Impressions of Luxor,” 74–78.
Chapter 21
1. Card from the
Tyrrhenia. ALP.
2. Alain Locke, “Apropos of Africa,” Opportunity 2, no. 14 (February 1924): 37.
10. J. Stanley Durkee to George Foucart, September [n.d.,] 1924. ALP.
11. Alain Locke, “Max Rheinhardt Reads the Negro’s Dramatic Horoscope,” Opportunity 2 (May 1924): 145; (
Critical Temper, 77). Locke (or the typesetter) misspelled Reinhardt as Rheinhardt.
14. The Studio Theatre:
The Millennium Project: Part One. Waiting for Godot (Washington, D.C.: 1998), 5.
16. Locke, “Max Rheinhardt,” 146.
17. AL to Walter White (WW), January 24, 1924. ALP.
18. WW to Herman Lieber, February 3, 1924. ALP.
19. WW to AL, February 6, 1924. ALP.
21. “American Institute of Negro Letters, Music and Art,” ca. February 1924. ALP.
Chapter 22
1. Charles S. Johnson (CSJ) to Alain Locke (AL), March 4, 1924. ALP.
2. CSJ to AL, March 1924. ALP.
4. CSJ to AL, January 10, 1924. ALP.
5. CSJ to AL, March 7, 1924. ALP.
6. Gwendolyn Bennett to AL, March 21, 1924. ALP.
7. CSJ to AL, March 19, 1924. ALP.
8. Alain Locke lecture to the Civic Club, March 12, 1924. ALP.
10. “The Debut of the Younger School of Negro Writers,”
Opportunity 2, no. 17 (May 1924): 143.
11. Carl Van Doren, “The Younger Generation of Negro Writers,”
Opportunity 2, no. 17 (May 1924): 144.
12. Locke, “The Debut,” 143.
13. Van Doren, “The Younger Generation,” 144.
14. Interview with Arthur Fauset, December 27, 1980, Philadelphia, Pa.
15. Barnes to Dewey, March 22, 1924. ALP.
16. Jessie Fauset to AL, January 9, 1934 [erroneously dated 1933]. ALP.
17. David Levering Lewis,
When Harlem Was in Vogue (New York: Penguin repr., 1997); Arnold Rampersad,
The Life of Langston Hughes, vol. 6,
1902–1941: I, Too, Sing America (Life of Langston Hughes, 1902–1941), 2nd ed. (New York: Oxford University Press, 2002); and Thadious Davis,
Nella Larsen, Novelist of the Harlem Renaissance: A Woman’s Life Unveiled (Baton Rouge: Louisiana State University Press, 1996).
18. “Young Writers Group Dinner to Fellow Member at Civic Club,”
The New York Age, March 29, 1924, 8.
Chapter 23
1. Albert Barnes (AB) to Howard University, January 25, 1924. ALP.
3. Bertrand Russell,
Autobiography (London: Routledge, 1991), 463.
4. According to Arthur Fauset, Locke and Johnson were rivals as well as colleagues in the effort to secure access to African art. Interview with Arthur Fauset, December 27, 1980. Philadelphia, Pa.
5. Marianna Torgovnick,
Gone Primitive: Savage Intellects, Modern Lives (Chicago: University of Chicago Press, 1991).
6. AB to Alain Locke (AL), January 25, 1924. ALP.
7. AB to AL, March 3, 1924. ALP.
8. Copy of letter from Walter White (WW) to AB, March 24, 1924. ALP. “I am rather thrilled at my good fortune in meeting and talking with you at the dinner last Friday night. I find that much of that good fortune is due to the kindness of our mutual friend, Mr. Locke, who arranged that we should sit together.”
9. Copy of AB to WW, March 25, 1924. ALP.
11. AB to AL, March 25, 1924.
12. AB to WW, March 27, 1924.
13. Interview with Arthur Fauset, December 27, 1980, Philadelphia, Pa.
14. Copy of Charles S. Johnson (CSJ) to AB, April 7, 1924. ALP.
15. CJ to AL, May 1924. ALP.
16. Albert Barnes, “The Temple,”
Opportunity 2, no. 17 (May 1924): 139.
17. AB to AL, May 7, 1924. ALP.
18. AL to Belata Heroui, March 23, 1924. ALP.
Chapter 24
1. Claude McKay to Alain Locke (AL), May 1, 1924. ALP.
2. Eric Walrond to AL, June 4, 1924. ALP.
3. Langston Hughes (LH) telegram to AL, February 2, 1924. ALP.
4. LH to AL, February 4, 1924. ALP.
5. AL to LH, May 22, 1924. LHP.
6. Jessie Fauset to LH. LHP.
7. LH to Harold Jackman. LHP.
8. Paul Kellogg (PK) to AL, April 7, 1924. ALP.
9. PK to AL, May 10, 1924. ALP.
10. PK to Albert Barnes, May 28, 1924. Barnes Foundation.
11. PK to AL, May 10, 1924. ALP.
13. PK to AL, June 17, 1924. ALP.
14. Arnold Rampersad, The Life of Langston Hughes, vol. 6, 1902–1941: I, Too, Sing America (Life of Langston Hughes, 1902–1941), 2nd ed. (New York: Oxford University Press, 2002), 91.
15. LH to Countee Cullen, July 1924. LHP.
16. AL to LH, August 10, 1924. ALP.
20. Rampersad,
The Life of Langston Hughes, 93–94.
21. Langston Hughes,
The Big Sea: An Autobiography (New York: Hill and Wang, 1940), xx.
22. Rampersad,
The Life of Langston Hughes, 94.
23. CJ to AL, August 8, 1924. ALP.
25. René Maran’s Open Letter to Prof. Locke appeared in
Les Continents of June 15, 1924. Republished in “French Colonial Policy: Open Letters,”
Opportunity 2, no. 21 (September 1924): 261. Although Johnson also published Locke’s reply to the letter, Locke’s response deferred to Maran’s greater knowledge of French colonialism in a somewhat awkward and embarrassed concessionary missive.
26. J. P. Gee and J. Green, “Discourse Analysis, Learning, and Social Practice: A Methodological Study,”
Review of Research in Education 23 (ed. E. W. Gordon), American Educational Research Association, Washington, D.C.: 119–169.
27. AL to PK, n.d., Paul Kellogg Papers, Social Welfare Archives, University of Minnesota.
28. Alain Locke, “The New Negro,” n.d. ALP.
30. Alain Locke, “The Negro Mind,” Survey Graphic Folder. ALP.
31. Alain Locke, “Harlem,” Survey Graphic 53, no. 11 (March 1, 1925): 630.
33. Previous version of “Harlem,” titled “The New Setting.” ALP.
34. Alain Locke, “Harlem,” 629.
35. Locke, “The New Negro,” n.d. ALP.
Chapter 25
1. Claude McKay (CK) to Alain Locke (AL), September 22, 1924. ALP.
2. Paul Kellogg to AL, September 26, 1924. ALP.
3. Alain Locke, “Harlem,”
Survey Graphic 53 (March 1, 1925): 630.
4. CK to AL, October 7, 1924. ALP.
6. AL to CK, October 7, 1924. ALP.
7. PK to Kelly Miller, October 27, 1924. ALP.
8. Cornel West, “The New Cultural Politics of Difference,”
October 53 (1990): 93–109.
9. Interview with William Banner, April 10, 1982, Washington, D.C.
11. Claude McKay, “Like a Strong Tree,”
Survey Graphic 53 (March 1, 1925): 662.
12. Anne Spencer, “Lady, Lady,”
Survey Graphic 53 (March 1, 1925): 661.
13. Elise J. McDougald to AL, November 17, 1924. ALP.
14. Countee Cullen (CC) to AL, October 27, 1924. ALP.
15. Locke, “Harlem,” 630.
16. Arthur A. Schomburg, “The Negro Digs Up His Past,”
Survey Graphic 53 (March 1, 1925): 670.
17. J. A. Rogers to AL, March 7, 1925. ALP.
18. J. A. Rogers, “Jazz at Home,”
Survey Graphic 53 (March 1, 1925): 712.
19. Locke, “
Enter the New Negro,”
Survey Graphic 53 (March 1, 1925): 631.
20. Geddes Smith (GS) to AL, January 23, 1925. ALP.
21. CC to AL, October 17, 1924. ALP.
22. CC to AL, October 31, 1924. ALP.
23. CC to AL, November 28, 1924. ALP.
24. CC to AL, December 9, 1924. ALP.
25. CC to AL, December 20, 1924. ALP.
26. PK to AL, December 23, 1924. ALP.
28. CC to AL, January 19, 1925. ALP.
29. CC to AL, January 1925. ALP.
30. CC to AL, February 1925. ALP.
32. AL to Melville Herskovits, April 24, 1924. ALP.
33. See Walter A. Jackson, “Melville Herskovits and the Search for Afro-American Culture,” in
Malinowski, Rivers Benedict and Others, ed. George W. Stocking Jr. (Madison: University of Wisconsin Press, 1986), 98–101.
34. Melville J. Herskovits, “The Dilemma of Social Pattern,” Survey Graphic 51 (March 1, 1925): 677.
36. GS to AL, January 26, 1925. ALP.
37. Locke, prefatory notes to Herskovits, “The Dilemma,” 676.
38. Konrad Bercovici, “The Rhythm of Harlem,” Survey Graphic 51 (March 1, 1925): 679.
40. PK to AL, February 5, 1925. ALP.
41. PK to AL, February 12, 1925. ALP.
43. PK to AL, February 17, 1925. ALP.
Chapter 26
1. Howard University Catalogue, 1923–1926 [January 1924], Washington, D.C., Founders Library.
2. Emmett Scott to Alain Locke (AL), June 16, 1925. ALP.
3. Locke to Jesse Moorland, January 1925, ALP. Also, see the “Memorial of the Teachers of the Academic Faculty to the Board of Trustees,” Howard University, November 25, 1924. ALP.
4. James Weldon Johnson (JWJ) to AL, March 10, 1925. ALP.
5. Kellogg to JWJ, n.d. ALP.
6. “New Negro is only an integral part in Seventh Ave. Business. Survey of Business Development on Seventh Avenue,”
New York Age, March 28, 1925, 1.
7. Elise McDougald to AL, n.d. ALP.
8. Alain Locke, “To Certain of Our Philistines,”
Opportunity 3 (May 1925): 156; also in
The Critical Temper of Alain Locke: A Selection of His Essays on Art and Culture, ed. Jeffrey C. Stewart (New York: Garland, 1983), 162.
9. Locke, “To Certain,” 155.
10. Paul Kellogg (PK) to AL, March 20, 1925. ALP.
11. PK to AL, May 21, 1925. ALP.
12. AL to PK, March 24, 1925. SWArchives.
13. Maxwell Perkins to Kenderdine, March 19, 1925. ALP.
14. AL to PK, March 24, 1925. SWArchives.
15. PK to Kahn Fellowship, n.d. ALP.
16. PK to AL, April 8, 1925. ALP. As Kellogg wrote, “Yesterday, we had a little gathering of reins at the Library. All of us felt that yours is one of the least satisfactory of the portraits; but the gallery is certainly stunning. None of the art critics have visited it, and no downtown gallery has made overtures to display the pictures, so that Mr. Reiss is a little bit disconsolate. But that is the price of pioneering. We were really all of us breaking new ground in this Harlem number.” Because of dissatisfaction with the first portrait, Reiss did a second portrait of Locke, which was published in
The New Negro: An Interpretation (1925) and appears on the cover of this book.
17. E. Franklin Frazier (EFF) to AL, May 26, 1925. ALP.
18. EFF to AL, May 1, 1925. ALP.
19. Raymond Wolters,
The New Negro on Campus: Black College Rebellions of the 1920s (Princeton: Princeton University Press, 1975), 113.
20. Rayford W. Logan,
Howard University: The First Hundred Years, 1867–1967 (New York: New York University Press, 2004), 220–222.
21. William Hansberry to Jesse Moorland, June 1924. JMP.
22. AL to Charles R. Brown, June 1924. ALP.
23. HU Club of New York City Resolution, June 17, 1925. ALP.
24. Wolters, The New Negro on Campus, 108.
26. A. W. Mitchell, “The Case of the Howard Professors Decapitated by the Durkee Regime,” The Howard Welfare League, Washington D.C. August 8, 1925. W. E. B. Du Bois Papers (MS 312). Special Collections and University Archives, University of Massachusetts Amherst Libraries.
28. Such sophistication in student planning reflected a level of personal commitment Locke had been urging on students for the last ten years. Locke had urged students to find in service to the race, the finest opportunity for their individual fulfillment. Now he was seeing it manifested, ironically, in the area of protest, which he had disparaged before, but now an area made more to him because it was protest for his reinstatement. As one of his former students put it: “I have decided to remain here [in Washington, after his graduation] because I now feel that it would be unloyal for me to desert old H. in its bitterest moments. I should cast my lot & be willing to fight too. I feel also that I would be unworthy of your friendship if I would not be willing to sacrifice something since you have been forced to suffer for our welfare. At first I thought that I could not tolerate going up there anymore after the harsh actions of the trustees but now I feel that it is my duty to help reestablish normalcy and bring justice to the ones that are humiliated.”
29. Alain Locke, “Negro Education Bids for Par,” Survey Graphic 54 (September 1925): 567.
32. Alain Locke, “More of the Negro in Art,”
Opportunity 3 (1925). Reprinted in
The Critical Temper of Alain Locke: A Selection of Essays on Art and Culture, ed. Jeffrey C. Stewart (New York: Garland), 1983.
33. Winold Reiss to AL, December 31, 1925. ALP.
Chapter 27
1. Alain Locke (AL) to Jessie Fauset, n.d. [August 1925]. ALP.
2. William Braithwaite, “The Negro in American Literature,” in
The New Negro: An Interpretation, ed. Alain Locke (New York: Albert and Charles Boni, 1925), 31.
3. Jessie Redmon Fauset, “The Gift of Laughter,” in
The New Negro: An Interpretation, ed. Alain Locke (New York: Albert and Charles Boni, 1925), 162.
4. Alain Locke, foreword to
The New Negro: An Interpretation, ed. Alain Locke (New York: Albert and Charles Boni, 1925), ix.
5. George Parker to Charles R. Brown, September 16, 1925. ALP.
6. AL to L. S. Curtis, n.d. 1925. ALP.
7. AL to Paul Kellogg (PK), n.d. 1925. ALP.
8. AL to Roscoe Conkling Bruce, n.d. 1925. ALP.
9. Franz Boas to A. O. Leuschner, n.d. 1925. ALP.
10. W. E. B. Du Bois, “A Negro Art Renaissance,”
Los Angeles Times, June 14, 1925.
11. The New York Times Book Review, December 30, 1926.
12. H. L. Mencken, for
American Mercury (February 1926). Review excerpt in Box 710. PKP.
13. I am indebted to Martha Nadell for first pointing this out to me. See her
Enter the New Negroes: Images of Race in American Culture (Cambridge, Mass.: Harvard University Press, 2004) and her discussion of the “inartistic.” It was rational to eliminate many of these portraits of “Harlem Types” as the book’s purpose was to represent the national New Negro movement.
14. See Michel Foucault, “Foucault Maurice Florence,” in
Aesthetics, Method, and Epistemology, ed. James D. Faubion (New York: New Press, 1998), 459–477.
15. Interview with Doxey Wilkerson, May 6, 1982, Washington, D.C.
16. Unfortunately for Locke and Parker, as of September 1925, African American opinion was divided on the issue of whether a change in administration was needed at Howard. The administration increasingly utilized its allies to carry out a propaganda campaign in the Black newspapers to make the argument that the current protest by the alumni and its allies was destined to destroy the university. This argument found sympathetic ears among those who agreed with racial conservatives that the progress already made by the race in institutions like Howard was too precious to threaten with “rioting, lawlessness, disorders, strikes.” Dr. J. E. Shepard,
the Black president of North Carolina College for Negroes (later North Carolina A&T) made this argument in a September issue of the
New York Age; and in an editorial that accompanied Shepard’s statement, the
Age’s editors argued that the alumni associations had yet to make a persuasive case against the Durkee administration, because most of the charges were too vague. But even here, the
Age argued that the only action that seemed to “require explanation or defence[
sic], is the abrupt dismissal of four of its ablest and most efficient professors.” Locke’s case, therefore, and those of his fellow professors, remained the most effective challenge to the legitimacy and rationality of Durkee and the current administration.
17. John Hurst (JH) to AL, October 28, 1925. ALP.
18. JH to AL, November 13, 1925. ALP.
19. “1. His educational policies have been erratic, ill-advised and productive of sudden, arbitrary and disrupting changes in the organization and management of the university. 2. He has ignored the regular channels and customs of the university, especially in the appointment and dismissal of faculty members without the advice, recommendation and knowledge of the deans and heads of the departments. 3. By reason of personal disagreement with Dr. Durkee, the university has lost a number of the most scholarly members of the teaching force, some of whom had national and international reputations. 4. He had pursued an arbitrary and dictatorial policy, supported by a system of espionage and intimidation, and has established a reputation of personal suspicion, unreliability, reliance upon rumor without investigation, and personal animus and bias. 5. He has disregarded and antagonized the officials of the alumni association … by imposing upon this body an alumni secretary of his personal choice. … He has insulted and violently handled faculty members, particularly Dr. Thomas W. Turner, whom he forcibly ejected from his office, and Dean Kelly Miller, whom he called a ‘contemptible cur.’ He diverted approximately 50 percent of the sum of $15,000 provided by the trustees for increases of salaries of academic teachers to the employment of new teachers, all of whom he preferentially retained in June 1925 when his so-called retrenchment program went into effect. He has been arbitrary and vindictive in his recommendations of promotions, increases of salary and other executive action with reference to the teaching force. His influence has been irreparably impaired by his open affront and insult to the Race in his acceptance of the presidency of the Curry School of Expression.” List taken from Raymond Wolters,
The New Negro on Campus: Black College Rebellions of the 1920s (Princeton: Princeton University Press, 1975): 125–126.
20. Wolters,
The New Negro on Campus, 126–127.
21. Jean Genet,
The Blacks: A Clown Show, trans. Bernard Frechtman (New York: Grove, 1994).
22. These conjectures about Locke’s testimony are taken from a “Memorandum: Alain Leroy Locke: Howard University. 1925.” ALP.
23. Executive Committee and the Budget Committee, June 15, 1925.
24. PK to AL, December 14, 1925. ALP; AL to Charles Brown, January 30, 1926. ALP.
25. Mary White Ovington, “The Negro’s Gifts,”
The Bookman (March 1926): 98.
26. Pittsburgh Courier, December 19, 1925; George Schuyler, “Shafts and Darts,”
The Messenger 8 (January 1926): 9.
27. Ernest Boyd, “Review of The New Negro,”
The Independent (January 16, 1926). Review copy in Box 710. PKP.
28. AL to PK, February 23, 1926, Box 710. PKP.
29. J. P. Whipple, “Can the Negro Save His Act,”
Survey Graphic (January 1, 1926): 114.
30. Emmett J. Scott to Arthur Mitchell, 1232 U Street, NW, 4 Feb. 1926 on Allied Industrial Finance Corporation stationary. ALP.
31. Thomas Dyett to AL, February 10, 1926. ALP.
Chapter 28
1. Interview with Charles Prudhomme, April 11, 1976. Washington, D.C.
3. W. E. B. Du Bois, “Review,”
Crisis 31 (January 1926): 140–141.
4. Alain Locke, “Negro Youth Speaks,”
The New Negro: An Interpretation, ed. Alain Locke (New York: Albert and Charles Boni, 1925), 50–51.
5. Hazel Harrison to Alain Locke (AL), n.d. 1926. ALP.
6. Alain Locke, “Color—A Review,” Opportunity 4, no. 36 (January 1926): 14.
8. Alain Locke, “The Negro Poets of the United States,” in
Anthology of Magazine Verse for 1926 and Yearbook of American Poetry, ed. William Braithwaite (Boston: B. J. Brimmer Co., 1926), 143; Jeffrey C. Stewart,
The Critical Temper of Alain Locke: A Selection of His Essays on Art and Culture (New York: Garland, 1983), 43.
9. Crisis 31 (February 1926): 165.
10. Crisis 31 (March 1926): 219.
11. Elise Johnson McDougald, “The Double Task: The Struggle of Negro Women for Sex and Race Emancipation,”
Survey Graphic 53 (March 1, 1925): 689.
12. David Levering Lewis,
W. E. B. Du Bois: The First for Equality and the American Century, 1919–1963 (New York: Henry Holt, 2000), 204–205.
13. Alain Locke, “The Negro and the American Stage,”
Theatre Arts Monthly 10 (February 1926): 113; Stewart,
The Critical Temper of Alain Locke, 80.
14. Alain Locke, “The Drama of Negro Life,”
Theatre Arts Monthly (October 1926): 701–702;
Stewart, The Critical Temper, 87–88.
16. Anna J. Cooper to AL, May 12, 1926. ALP.
18. Lydia Gibson Miner to AL, January 1, 1926. ALP.
19. George Foster Peabody (GFP) to AL, February 11, 1926. ALP.
21. GFP to AL, February 13, 1926. ALP.
25. Alain Locke, review of “The Weary Blues,” by Langston Hughes, Palms 4, no. 1 (October 1926): 25–29.
27. Zora Neal Hurston to Countee Cullen (CC), March 11, [1926], Countee Cullen Papers, Manuscript Division, Library of Congress.
28. Alain Locke, “Fire: A Negro Magazine,” review of
Fire!! Survey Graphic 15 (September 1927): 563.
29. Alain Locke, “Our Little Renaissance,”
Ebony and Topaz, ed. Charles S. Johnson (New York: National Urban League, 1927), 117;
The Critical Temper of Alain Locke, 21.
30. W. E. B. Du Bois (WEBDB) to Jesse Moorland, May 5, 1927. WEBDP.
31. Lewis,
W. E. B. Du Bois, 162.
32. Allison Davis, “Our Negro Intellectuals,”
Crisis 35 (August 1928): 268–269.
33. Carl Van Vechten to Langston Hughes (LH), August 2, 1928. Langston Hughes Papers, Yale.
34. Alain Locke, “Beauty Instead of Ashes,”
The Nation 126 (April 18, 1928): 432. Reprinted in
The Critical Temper of Alain Locke, 23.
35. Locke, “Beauty Instead of Ashes,” 434.
36. Alain Locke, “Art or Propaganda?”
Harlem 1 (November 1928): 12;
The Critical Temper of Alain Locke, 27.
Chapter 29
1. Edith Isaacs to Alain Locke (AL), August 18, 1926. ALP.
2. Alain Locke, “Art Lessons from the Congo,”
Survey Graphic 57 (February 1, 1927): 587;
The Critical Temper of Alain Locke: A Selection of His Essays on Art and Culture (New York: Garland, 1983), 137.
3. Charlotte Mason diary entry, March 6, 1927, Mason Notebooks. ALP.
6. Mason diary entry, February 20–21, 1927; edited August 11, 1927. ALP.
7. Mason diary entry, March 6, 1927. ALP.
8. Ardie Sue Myers, “Relations of a Godmother: Patronage During the Harlem Renaissance” (MA thesis, George Washington University, 1981); interview with Arthur Huff Fauset, December 27, 1980, Philadelphia, Pa.
9. Jeffrey Stewart, “A Biography of Alain Locke: Philosopher of the Harlem Renaissance” (PhD diss., Yale University, 1979).
10. Charlotte Osgood Mason, “The Passing of a Prophet: A True Narrative of Death and Life,”
The North American Review 185, no. 621 (August 16, 1907): 869–879.
11. Thomas Munro, “Art: Good and Bad Negro Art,”
The Nation 2 (March 2, 1927): 242.
12. Alain Locke, “African Art in America,” The Nation 124, no. 3219 (March 16, 1927): 29.
14. Alain Locke, The New Negro: An Interpretation (1925; New York: Albert and Charles Boni, 1927), 19.
16. AL to Arthur Spingarn, February 25, 1927. Arthur Spingarn Papers, MSRC, HU.
17. Mason diary entry, March 6, 1927. ALP.
18. Mason diary entry, March 10, 1927. ALP.
20. Charlotte Mason (CM) to AL, March 17/27, 1927. ALP.
21. Mason diary entry, March 10, 1927; edited August 10, 1927. ALP.
22. Mason diary entry, March 18, 1927. ALP.
23. Mason diary entry, March 18, 1927; edited August 10, 1927. ALP.
24. Mason diary entry, April 16, 1927. ALP.
25. Mason diary entry, May 1, 1927. Mason Notebooks.
27. Mason diary entry, April 19, 1927. ALP.
28. Mason diary entry, March 10, 1927. ALP.
29. Mason diary entry, April 24, 1927. ALP.
30. For a discussion of the “lost mother,” see Claudia Tate,
Psychoanalysis and Black Novels: Desire and the Protocols of Race (New York: Oxford University Press, 1998), 46, 56–58.
31. See Tony Bennett, “The Exhibitionary Complex,”
New Formations 4 (Spring 1988): 73–102.
32. E. Franklin Frazier,
The Black Bourgeoisie: The Book That Brought the Shock of Self-Revelation to Middle-Class Blacks in America (New York: Simon & Schuster, 1997).
33. Mason diary entry, April 30, 1927. ALP.
34. Mason diary entry, May 1, 1927. ALP.
35. Mason diary entry, May 21, 1927. ALP.
36. Rampersad,
Life of Langston Hughes, 148.
37. Interview with Richard Bruce Nugent, ca. 1985, Hoboken, N.J.
38. Claude McKay (CM) to AL, June 4, 1927. ALP.
39. Lewis S. Baer to AL, August 1, 1927. ALP.
40. Michel Foucault,
Discipline and Punish: The Birth of the Prison, trans. Alan Sheridan (New York: Vintage, 1995), 195–228.
Chapter 30
1. Langston Hughes, “Those Bad New Negroes: A Critique on Critics,”
Pittsburgh Courier, April 14, 1927.
2. See Arthur Rampersad,
The Life of Langston Hughes, vol. 6,
1902–1941, 2nd ed.,
I, Too, Sing America (Life of Langston Hughes, 1902–1941) (New York: Oxford University Press, 2002), 152.
3. Richard Sheppard,
Modernism—Dada—Postmodernism (Evanston, Ill.: Northwestern University Press, 2000), 13–19.
4. See Michael Hardt and Antonio Negri,
Empire (Cambridge, Mass.: Harvard University Press, 2000), 73–92.
5. See Jon Woodson’s
To Make a New Race: Gurdjieff, Toomer, and the Harlem Renaissance (Jackson: University of Mississippi Press, 1999). Some of the artists who came under Toomer’s teachings of Gurdjieff’s doctrines included George Schuyler, Wallace Thurman, Dorothy Peterson, Nella Larsen, Aaron Douglas, Arna Bontemps, Harold Jackman, Rudolph Fisher, and Zora Neale Hurston. Woodson argues that one evidence of the secret reference to Gurdjieff was to place coded references to his name and beliefs throughout the works of these artists so that the initiated could recognize them and the uninitiated would not.
6. See Rampersad,
The Life of Langston Hughes, 153.
7. See Brent Hayes Edwards,
The Practice of Diaspora: Literature, Translation, and the Rise of Black Internationalism (Cambridge, Mass.: Harvard University Press, 2003), 16–23. “Trans-interpretation” comes from a presentation by Chela Sandoval on May 2, 2017, at UC Santa Barbara.
8. Alain Locke (AL) to Charlotte Mason (CM), September 13, 1927. ALP.
12. CM to AL, September 20, 1927. ALP.
Chapter 31
1. “That which had been negligently trodden under foot by those who were harnessing and provisioning themselves for long journeys into far countries is suddenly found to be richer than all foreign parts,” had mused Emerson (Ralph Waldo Emerson, “The American Scholar,” a speech given on August 31, 1837, to the Phi Beta Kappa Society at the First Parish in Cambridge in Cambridge, Massachusetts).
2. Telegram, Alain Locke (AL) to Charlotte Mason (CM), January 15, 1928. ALP.
3. AL to Zora Neale Hurston (ZNH), February 24, 1928. ALP.
5. AL to CM, February 19, 1928. ALP.
6. “I very much appreciate your inquiry as to my availability for assignment to your school. … My commitments now make it impossible for me to be available before February 1929. I shall hope, however, to keep in touch with appointments situation in the interim.” AL to Gilbert J. Raynor, principal, Alexander Hamilton High School, Brooklyn, New York, June 2, 1928. ALP.
7. AL to CM, February 22, 1928. LHP.
8. ZNH to Langston Hughes (LH), April 12, 1928. LHP.
9. ZNH to LH, May 1, 1928. LHP.
11. Hurston wrote to Hughes specifically recommending that he tour the South reading his poetry, “not in auditoriums, but in camps, and water-fronts and the like. You are the poet of the people and your subjects are crazy about you. Why not? There never has been a poet [that] has been acceptable to His Majesty, the man in the gutter before, and laugh if you will, but that man in the gutter is the god-maker, the creator of everything that lasts.” ZNH to LH, November 22, 1928. Yale.
12. W. E. B. Du Bois, “So the Girl Marries,”
Crisis (June 1928): 202.
13. Locke, “From Letter to Countee Cullen,” n.d. ALP.
14. “Report of Speech by Marcus Garvey,”
The Marcus Garvey and UNIA Papers (vol. 3): 278–279. (Originally published in the
Chicago Tribune, Paris edition, ca. October 6, 1928.)
15. Raymond Buell to AL, October 16, 1928. ALP.
16. Interview with Arthur Davis, April 4, 1975, Washington, D.C.; Rayford W. Logan,
Howard University: The First Hundred Years, 1867–1967 (New York: New York University Press, 1969), 258–269.
18. AL to CM, January [n.d.,] 1929. ALP.
19. Alain Locke, “The Negro’s Contribution to American Art and Literature,” Annals 140 (1928): 234.
21. Alain Locke, “1928: A Retrospective Review,”
Opportunity 7, no. 1 (January 1929): 11.
Chapter 32
1. From a typed copy of Article 22, located in the ALP.
3. “Memorandum: FOREIGN POLICY ASSOCIATION; Alain Locke re African Mandates Study Project,” May 26, 1927. ALP.
4. Rayford Logan,
The Operation of the Mandate System in Africa, 1919–1927 (Washington, D.C.: Foundation, 1942); Raymond Buell,
The Native Problem in Africa, 2 vols. (New York: Macmillan, 1928).
5. See Rose Cherubin, “Culture and the
Kalos: Inquiry, Justice, and Value in Locke and Aristotle,” in
Philosophic Values and World Citizenship, ed. Jacoby Adeshei Carter and Leonard Harris (Lanham, Md.: Rowman & Littlefield, 2010), 7–19.
6. AL to Paul Kellogg (PK), January [n.d.,] 1929. ALP.
7. Charlotte Mason (CM) to AL, January [n.d.,] 1929. ALP.
8. Eugene D. Genovese,
Roll Jordan Roll: The World the Slaves Made (New York: Vintage, 1976).
9. Zonia Baber to AL, January 23, 1929; January 24, 1929. ALP.
10. AL to CM, February 20, 1929. ALP.
11. AL to Langston Hughes (LH), January 23, 1929. ALP.
13. Zora Neale Hurston (ZNH) to LH, July 23, 1929. Yale.
14. AL to Albert Dunham, April 20, 1929. ALP.
15. ZNH to LH, July 23, 1929. Yale.
16. ZNH to LH, October 15, 1929. Yale.
17. ZNH to LH, December 10, 1929. Yale.
20. AL to AD, May 22, 1929. ALP.
21. Albert Dunham (AD) to AL, June 1, 1929. ALP.
22. Wallace Thurman, “Both Sides of the Color Line,”
Survey Graphic 62 (June 1, 1929): 325–326; Julia Peterkin, “Review of Scarlet Sister Mary,”
Opportunity 7, no. 6 (June 1929): 190–191.
23. Alain Locke, “Beauty and the Provinces,”
The Stylus 2 (June 1929): 3–4.
24. AL to AD, May 22, 1929. ALP.
26. AD to AL, June 1, 1929. ALP.
27. AL to AD, June 11, 1929. ALP.
29. AL to LH, December 6, 1929. ALP.
30. ZNH to AL and LH, June 14, 1928. ALP.
31. Locke came to Hurston’s rescue several times from 1928 to 1930. In May 1928, after he had smoothed Mason’s racial sensitivities after Hurston’s “white folks can’t be trusted” blunder, Locke again had to help smooth over Mason’s anger at Hurston’s publication of “How It Feels to Be Colored Me” in
The World Tomorrow. Locke had to vouch for the fact that Hurston had written and submitted that article before Hurston and Mason met, and thus it was not covered by the contractual agreement that specified Hurston not publish any of her material collected during Mason’s financial support.
32. See Valerie Boyd, Wrapped in Rainbows: The Life of Zora Neale Hurston (New York: Scribner, 2003), 195.
34. CM to LH, June 6, 1930. LHP.
36. CM to LH, Telegram, June 17, 1930. LHP.
38. Interview with Louise Patterson, March 17, 1987. Oakland, Calif.
39. Hurston discussed her reputed rewriting of
Mule Bone to her own specifications without any of Hughes interventions and suggestions in her January 20, 1931, letter to Mrs. Mason. ALP.
40. Hurston to Mason, January 20, 1928. ALP.
41. CM to AL, January 15, 1928. ALP.
42. CM to AL, April 20, 1929. ALP.
43. CM to AL, May 21, 1930. ALP.
44. CM to AL, July 12, 1929. ALP.
45. AL to CM, May 24, 1931. ALP.
46. Locke to L. Hollingsworth Wood, May 13, 1931. ALP.
47. AL to CM, March 29, 1931. ALP.
Chapter 33
1. Charles P. Henry,
Ralph Bunche: Model Negro or American Other? (New York: New York University Press, 1999).
2. Pearl T. Robinson, “Ralph Bunche the Africanist: Revisiting Paradigms Lost,” in
Trustee for the Human Community: Ralph J. Bunche, the United Nations, and the Decolonization of Africa, ed. Robert A. Hill and Edmond J. Keller (Athens: Ohio University Press, 2010), 73.
3. Ralph Bunche (RB) to Dean E. P. Davis at Howard University, December 22, 1930, Ralph Bunche Papers, Collection Number 2051, Department of Special Collections, Charles E. Young Research Library. UCLA.
4. A. N. Holcombe (ANH) to RB, August 7, 1930, Ralph Bunche Papers, Collection Number 2051, Department of Special Collections, Charles E. Young Research Library. UCLA.
5. ANH to RB, December 11, 1930, Ralph Bunche Papers, Collection Number 2051, Department of Special Collections, Charles E. Young Research Library. UCLA.
6. RB to ANH, Department of Government, Harvard University, February 28, 1931, Ralph Bunche Papers, Collection Number 2051, Department of Special Collections, Charles E. Young Research Library. UCLA.
7. Bill Jay,
Views on Nudes (London: Focal, 1972), 92.
8. Interview with Richard Long, March 3, 2012, Atlanta, Ga.
9. Fragment in Locke’s handwriting, n.d. ALP.
10. Interview with Richard Bruce Nugent, December 11, 1982, Hoboken, N.J.
11. Alain Locke, “This Year of Grace: Outstanding Books of the Year in Negro Literature,” Opportunity 9 (February 1931): 48.
15. AL to Mary Brady (MB), February 24, 1931. ALP.
16. Alain Locke, “The American Negro as Artist,”
The American Magazine of Art 23 (September 1931): 210. Reproduced in Jeffrey C. Stewart,
The Critical Temper of Alain Locke: A Selection of His Essays on Art and Culture (New York: Garland, 1983), 171.
17. Locke, “The American Negro,” 217.
18. AL to Charlotte Mason (CM), November 10, 1932. ALP.
19. AL to CM, February 8, 1932. ALP.
21. Locke fragment, n.d. ALP.
22. AL to CM, January 28, 1932. ALP.
23. Louis T. Achille, Lyon, France, to author, March 16, 1992.
25. For example, in
chapter 4, Bunche writes: “The organized and official partition of Africa occurred … [and] … no single motive is applicable of course, but it is a safe assumption to make in a capitalistic, industrial world, the economic motive was the dominating one. The justification was easy to find. In the first place it was pointed out that no people have the right to isolate themselves (and their riches) from the rest of the world, while the world on the other hand has a superior right to take what it needs. (Footnote a. Girault, Principes de Colonization). The creed of imperialism paraded economic necessity as adequate justification, which was simple enough—the raw materials of the ‘backward regions’ were necessary for a hungry and overpopulated world.” P. 75. “French Administration in Togoland and Dahomey,” 1934, Ralph Bunche Papers, Collection Number 2051, Department of Special Collections, Charles E. Young Research Library. UCLA.
26. MB to AL, January 28, 1933. ALP.
27. See, for example, Locke’s articles, “To Certain of Our Philistines,” “The Negro Poets of the United States,” and “The Drama of Negro Life,” in Stewart,
The Critical Temper of Alain Locke, 161–162, 43–46, 91.
28. Synopsis of radio Broadcast with Alain Locke, Mary Brady, and Alan Bement in connection with Harmon exhibition of contemporary Negro art. 1933. ALP.
35. 2 Corinthians 6:17, King James Bible.
37. This sculpture is now part of the Howard University Gallery of Arts collection, left to Howard by Locke in his will.
Chapter 34
1. See James Young,
Black Writers of the Thirties (Baton Rouge: Louisiana State University Press, 1973).
2. Alain Locke, “The Saving Grace of Realism: Retrospective Review of the Negro Literature of 1933,”
Opportunity 13 (January 1934): 8–9; reprinted in Jeffrey C. Stewart,
The Critical Temper of Alain Locke: A Selection of His Essays on Art and Culture (New York: Garland, 1983), 221–222.
3. Alain Locke (AL) to Charlotte Mason (CM), May 20, 1933. ALP.
4. Emily Miller (EM) to AL, February 20, 1933. ALP.
5. AL to EM, March 30 1933. ALP.
6. AL to CM, May 20, 1933. ALP.
7. AL to CM, June 19, 1933. ALP.
9. AL to CM, August 30, 1933. ALP.
10. AL to CM, August 18, 1933. ALP.
11. AL to CM, October 25, 1933. ALP.
12. AL to CM, November 5, 1933. ALP.
13. AL to CM, November 13, 1933. ALP.
14. AL to CM, December 12, 1933. ALP.
16. Interview with Doxey Wilkerson, May 6, 1982, Washington, D.C.
17. AL to CM, December 21, 1933. ALP.
Chapter 35
1. Interview with Harold Lewis, April 17, 1982, Washington, D.C.
2. See Jonathan Holloway,
Confronting the Veil: Abram Harris Jr., E. Franklin Frazier, and Ralph Bunche, 1919–1941 (Chapel Hill: University of North Carolina Press, 2002).
3. Interview with Harold Lewis, April 17, 1982, Washington, D.C.
4. The strategy referenced here is taken from Gayatri Chakravorty Spivak,
An Aesthetic Education in the Era of Globalization (Cambridge, Mass.: Harvard University Press, 2012), 3.
5. Morse Cartwright (MC) to Alain Locke (AL), May 28, 1933. ALP.
6. Locke, Memorandum on Adult Education Among Negroes, February 26, 1934. ALP.
7. AL to Charlotte Mason (CM), January 11, 1934. ALP. Dunham was not the only brilliant casualty of 1934. Rudolph Fisher, the physician, novelist, and the best short-story writer of the Renaissance, expired that December of intestinal cancer, brought on by overexposure to X-rays in his own laboratory. That same month, Wallace Thurman died of tuberculosis, although most of his friends believed he really died of alcoholism—and his paralyzing self-consciousness. For Locke, both were already dead before their actual passing. As he told Mrs. Mason, they were, in his opinion, consumed by “egotism.”
9. Interview with Robert E. Fennell, April 11, 1987, Washington, D.C.
10. Jessie Fauset to AL, January 9, 1933 [actually 1934]. ALP.
11. Alain Locke, “The Saving Grace of Realism: Retrospective Review of the Negro Literature of 1933,” Opportunity 13 (January 1934): 8.
13. Jessie Fauset (JF) to AL, January 9, 1933 [actually 1934]. ALP.
14. Locke, Memorandum on Adult Education Among Negroes, February 26, 1934. ALP.
15. AL to CM, January 21, 1934. ALP.
18. AL to CM, April 2, 1934. ALP.
19. AL to CM, April 14, 1934. ALP.
20. Morse Cartwright (MC) to AL, March 28, 1934. ALP.
21. MC to AL, April 19, 1934. ALP.
22. AL to CM, June 7, 1934. ALP.
23. AL to CM, June 30, 1934. ALP.
24. MC to AL, May 28, 1934. ALP.
25. AL to CM, July 5, 1934. ALP.
28. AL to CM, July 26, 1934. ALP.
31. AL to CM, August 10, 1934. ALP.
34. AL to CM, August 18, 1934. ALP.
35. AL to CM, August 27, 1934. ALP.
36. AL to CM, September 10, 1934. ALP.
38. Alain Locke, “Towards a Critique of Negro Music,”
Opportunity 12 (November 1934): 328. Reprinted in Jeffrey C. Stewart,
The Critical Temper of Alain Locke: A Selection of His Essays on Art and Culture (New York: Garland, 1983), 109.
Chapter 36
1. Alain Locke (AL) to T. V. Smith (TVS), August 26, 1951. ALP. For Locke’s work in helping Smith with his campaign, see AL to TVS, January 24, 1935. ALP.
2. Solomon Rosenfeld (SR) to AL, April 4, 1934. ALP.
3. SR to AL, December 12, 1934. ALP.
4. Morse Cartwright to AL, December 21, 1934. ALP.
5. Interview with Harold Lewis, April 17, 1982, Washington, D.C.
6. Mary Beattie Brady (MB) to AL, January 15, 1935. ALP.
7. Interview with Harold Lewis.
8. See Robert Goldwater,
Primitivism in Modern Painting (1938; New York, London: Harper & Brothers, 1967).
9. MB to AL, January 15, 1935. ALP.
10. AL to “Colleagues,” February 1, 1935. ALP.
12. AL to Charlotte Mason (CM), January 13, 1935. ALP.
13. See Brian Urquhart,
Ralph Bunche: An American Life (New York: W.W. Norton), 45.
14. Interview with Harold Lewis, April 17, 1982, Washington, D.C.
15. AL to CM, January 13, 1935. ALP.
16. Sterling Denhard Spero and Abram Lincoln Harris, The Black Worker: The Negro and the Labor Movement (New York: Columbia University Press, 1931).
18. James Johnson Sweeney to Locke, May 11, 1935. ALP.
19. Alain Locke, “African Art: Classic Style,”
American Magazine of Art 28 (May 1935): 271–278.
20. Raymond Buell, “Autonomy vs. Assimilation: A Comparative View” (lecture delivered at the Minorities Conference held at Howard University, April 5, 1935).
21. TVS to AL, June 5, 1935. ALP.
22. Horace Kallen to AL, May 9, 1935. ALP.
23. Carter G. Woodson (CGW) to AL, April 4, 1935. ALP.
24. AL to CGW, April 2, 1935. ALP.
25. CGW to AL, April 9, 1935. ALP.
26. AL to CGW, April 8, 1935. ALP.
27. CGW to AL, April 1935. ALP.
28. Jacqueline Goggin,
Carter G. Woodson: A Life in Black History (Baton Rouge: Louisiana State University Press, 1997): payments from Carnegie Corporation in 1921 for ASNLH.
29. AL to TVS, June 20, 1935. ALP.
30. TVS to AL, June 24, 1935. ALP.
31. Alain Locke, “Values and Imperatives,” in L. Harris, ed., The Philosophy of Alain Locke: Harlem Renaissance and Beyond (Philadelphia: Temple University Press, 1991), 34.
38. AL to CGW, June 1935. ALP.
39. AL to Lyman Bryson, June 8, 1936. ALP.
40. AL to CGW, April 2, 1935. ALP.
41. David Levering Lewis,
W. E. B. Du Bois: The Fight for Equality and the American Century, 1919–1963 (New York: Henry Holt, 2000), 445–447.
Chapter 37
1. “Mischief Out of Misery,”
Time 25, no. 13 (April 1935): 13.
2. Alain Locke, “Deep River: Deeper Sea: Retrospective Review of the Literature of the Negro for 1935,”
Opportunity 14, no. 1 (January 1936): 8.
3. Alain Locke (AL) to Charlotte Mason (CM), June 30, 1935. ALP.
6. “A Harlem Center of Culture,” memorandum AL to MB, n.d., ca. 1935. ALP.
9. AL to CM, April 4, 1935. ALP.
10. PK to AL, January 17, 1936. PKP.
11. Meyer Schapiro, “Race, Nationality, and Art,”
Art Front 2, no. 4 (March 1936): 10.
12. Alain Locke, “Harlem: Mecca of the New Negro,”
Survey Graphic 3 (March 1925): 630.
13. Harold Cruse,
The Crisis of the Negro Intellectual: A Historical Analysis of the Failure of Black Leadership (1967; New York Review Books Classics, 2005).
14. Alvia J. Wardlaw,
The Art of John Biggers: View from the Upper Room (New York: Harry N. Abrams, in association with the Museum of Fine Arts, Houston, 1995), 28.
15. Viktor Lowenfeld,
Hampton Bulletin of 1943, 27.
16. Interview with Daniel Aaron, October 15, 2011, Cambridge, Mass.
17. Interview with Ladislas Segy, June 15, 1982, New York.
18. AL to Mary Beattie Brady (MB), May 27, 1936. ALP.
19. Memorandum titled, “THE HARLEM ARTISTS’ GUILD,” in AL to MB, May 27, 1936. ALP.
20. MB to AL, May 29, 1936. ALP.
24. Morse Cartwright (MC) to AL, May 3, 1936. ALP.
25. AL to MC, May 4, 1936. ALP.
26. AL to Paul Kellogg (PK), n.d. 1936. ALP.
28. AL to CM, September 11, 1936. ALP.
29. Janet Sabloff to PK, October 14, 1936. PKP.
30. PK to Fiorello H. La Guardia, September 11, 1936. New York Municipal Archives.
31. Interview with Harold Lewis, April 17, 1982, Washington, D.C.
32. AL to PK, September 4, 1937. PKP.
33. E. Franklin Frazier to Victor Weybright, July 3, 1936. PKP.
34. Oswald Garrison Villard review of Locke’s article, n.d., unpublished. ALP.
Chapter 38
1. John P. Davis (JD) to Alain Locke (AL), September 30, 1937. ALP.
2. “Resume of Talk and Discussion: Alain Locke Sunday Afternoon Session: National Negro Congress,” n.d. [1937]. ALP.
7. Lyman Bryson to AL, June 23, 1936. ALP.
8. AL to Beals, March 9, 1937; LB to AL, June 23, 1936. ALP.
9. Alain Locke, “God Save Reality! A Retrospective Review of the Literature of the Negro: 1936,” in
The Critical Temper of Alain Locke: A Selection of His Essays on Art and Culture, ed. Jeffrey C. Stewart (New York: Garland, 1983), 252; originally published in
Opportunity 15, no. 2 (February 1937): 8–13, 40–44.
10. Ruth Raphael to Locke, April 27, 1937. ALP.
11. Alain Locke, “Spiritual Truancy,” New Challenge 2 (Fall 1937): 81.
13. Locke, “Spiritual Truancy,” 83.
14. Alain Locke, “Jingo, Counter-Jingo and Us—Part 1. Retrospective Review of the Literature of the Negro: 1937,” Opportunity 16, no. 1 (January 1938): 8.
17. Locke,
Critical Temper, 269.
19. Alain Locke, “The Negro: ‘New’ or Newer,”
Opportunity 17 (January 1939): 5.
20. Alain Locke, “Of Native Sons: Real and Otherwise,”
Opportunity 19 (January–February 1941): 299.
Chapter 39
1. Interview with Robert Martin, August 8, 1982, Washington, D.C.
2. Interview with Robert E. Fennell, April 11, 1987, Washington, D.C.
3. W. E. B. Du Bois,
W.E.B. Du Bois: Writings, The Library of America (Cambridge: University of Cambridge, 1986), 364.
4. Interview with Dr. William Banner, April 10, 1982, Washington, D.C.
5. Alain Locke,
Negro Poetry and Fiction or
Negro Art: Past and Present. Bronze Booklet (1942).
6. Interview with Robert E. Fennell.
7. Interview with Richard Bruce Nugent, December 11, 1982, Hoboken, N.J.
8. Alain Locke, letter to the editor,
Art Front (October 1937): 19–20.
9. Interview with John Biggers, January 17, 1990. Dallas, Tex.
10. One of the latter,
Negro Youth, a study of one of her students at Palmer Institute, had won honorable mention at the 1930 Harmon Foundation exhibition.
11. Alain Locke (AL) to Charlotte Mason (CM), May 1938. ALP.
12. AL to CM, July 21, 1938. ALP.
13. Lionel de Fonseka (LdF) to AL, July 28, 1938. ALP.
17. W. E. B. Du Bois,
Souls of the Black Folk (Boston: Bedford, 1903; 1997), 2–3.
Chapter 40
1. Frederick P. Keppel (FPK) to Alain Locke (AL), December 13, 1938.
2. AL to FPK, December 20, 1938. ALP.
3. Romare Bearden and Harry Henderson,
A History of African-American Artists from 1792 to the Present (New York: Pantheon, 1993), 240–241.
4. AL to Mary Beattie Brady (MB), January 25, 1939. ALP.
6. Interview with Richard Long, March 3, 2012, Atlanta, Ga.
7. AL to MB, January 25, 1939. ALP.
8. Alain Locke, foreword to
Contemporary Negro Art. The Baltimore Museum of Art. Exhibition of February 3–19, 1939, and accompanying catalog.
9. Margaret Vendryes,
Expression and Repression of Identity: Race, Religion and Sexuality in the Art of American Sculptor Richmond Barthé (PhD diss., Princeton University, UMI Press, 1997).
10. Alain Locke, “Advance on the Art Front,”
Opportunity 17, no. 5 (May 1939): 132.
11. Jacob Lawrence to AL, ca. June 1939. ALP.
12. Bearden and Henderson,
A History of African-American Artists.
13. Confidential to AL from Morse A. Cartwright, May 1, 1939. ALP.
15. Morse A. Cartwright (MAC) to AL, May 31, 1939. ALP.
16. Claude Barnett (CB) to AL, April 20, 1940. ALP.
17. CB to AL, May 14, 1940. ALP.
18. AL to MB, ca. July 3, 1940. ALP.
Chapter 41
1. Alain Locke (AL) to Charlotte Mason (CM), January 15, 1939. ALP.
3. Mark Naison,
Communists in Harlem during the Depression (Urbana-Champaign: University of Illinois Press, 2005).
4. Cedric Dover,
Half-Caste (London: Secker & Warburg, 1937).
5. Frederick Redefer to AL, telegram, February 22, 1939. ALP.
6. AL to Mary Beattie Brady (MB), n.d. ALP.
7. Franklin Folson to Alain Locke, March 21, 1940. ALP.
8. Alain Locke, “To the League of American Writers on the Fourth Annual Conference” (report given to the American Committee for the Protection of Foreign Born. Hotel Annapolis, Washington, D.C., March 2–3, 1940).
9. Wayne D. Shirley, “William Grant Still’s Choral Ballad and They Lynched Him on a Tree,”
American Music 12, no. 4:425–461.
10. William Grant Still, “And They Lynched Him from a Tree,” choral ballad first performed as radio broadcast, October 1939.
12. Alain Locke, “Ballad for Democracy,”
Opportunity 18, no. 8 (August 1940): 228.
13. Alain Locke and Bernhard J. Stern, eds.,
When Peoples Meet: A Study in Race and Culture Contacts (New York: Progressive Education Association, 1942).
14. AL to CM, September 13, 1940. ALP.
15. AL to Charles Sebree (CS), April 6, 1940. ALP.
17. CS to AL, n.d. 1940. ALP.
18. CS to AL, April 10, 1940. ALP.
19. AL to CS, April [n.d.,] 1940. ALP.
20. Countee Cullen (CC) to AL, April 25, 1940. ALP.
21. CS to AL, April 22, 1940. ALP.
22. Countee Cullen and Sebree Charles,
The Lost Zoo: A Rhyme for the Young, but Not Too Young (New York: Harper & Bros., 1940).
23. Woodson was so thrilled with Porter’s generally critical review that Woodson chose it as the best review of 1940. Refusing to let his animus toward Locke having the gall to create his own—and now quite successful—adult-education publishing series, Woodson was determined to find every opportunity to publicly dismiss the products of Locke’s press. Certainly, criticality toward the book was warranted. But that it was motivated by a sense of unnecessary rivalry speaks to the sad legacy of this period of Black intellectual history, when a handful of Harvard-educated Black intellectuals found competition a more appropriate use of their meager resources than collaboration.
24. Ishmael P. Flory to AL, May 13, 1940. ALP.
25. Theodore Ward to AL, n.d. ALP.
26. Alain Locke, “Spirituals,” in Jeffrey C. Stewart,
The Critical Temper of Alain Locke (New York: Garland, 1983).
27. Alain Locke speech as part of “Program of Negro Folk Song with Commentary Emancipation Celebration,” December 20, 1940.
28. Margaret T. G. Burroughs, quoted in George J. Mavigliano and Richard A. Lawson,
The Federal Art Project in Illinois, 1935–1943 (Carbondale: Southern Illinois University Press, 1990), 67.
29. Peter Pollack (PP) to AL, n.d. ALP.
30. Burroughs in
The Federal Art Project, 67.
33. Charles White quoted in
The Federal Art Project in Illinois, 72.
34. Erin P. Cohn, “Art Fronts: Visual Culture and Race Politics in Mid-Twentieth Century United States, 2010,” Publicly Accessible Penn Dissertations: 107.
35. AL to PP, May 7, 1941. PPP.
36. Eleanor Roosevelt’s trip to Chicago,
Chicago Defender, May 8, 1941.
37. See Peter J. Bloom,
French Colonial Documentary: Mythologies of Humanitarianism (Ann Arbor: University of Michigan Press, 2008), 35–37.
38. Alain Locke, “Chicago’s New Southside Art Center,”
Magazine of Art 34, no. 7 (August–September 1941): 370.
Chapter 42
1. “Washington, D.C. February 20, 1942, Typescript of stenographer’s transcription of FBI interview with Alain Leroy Locke,” FBI files. All further references to this interview are from this same source.
2. Maurice V. Russell (MVR) to Alain Locke (AL), February 10, 1942. ALP.
3. AL to MVR, February 24, 1942. ALP.
4. MVR to AL, February 10, 1942. ALP.
5. MVR to AL, August 25, 1942. ALP.
7. AL to MVR, June 14, 1942. ALP.
9. Alain Locke, “The Unfinished Business of Democracy,”
Survey Graphic 31, no. 11 (November 1942): 455.
10. Locke, “The Unfinished Business,” 454.
11. Sterling Brown, “Out of Their Mouths,” loc. cit., 482.
12. D. Hercules Armstrong, “Boy in the Ghetto” loc. cit., 542.
13. Alain Locke, “Harlem: Mecca of the New Negro,”
Survey Graphic 6, no. 6 (March 1925): 629–634.
14. “Six Ways to Invade U.S.,”
Life Magazine 12, no. 9 (March 2, 1942).
15. Alain Locke, “The Negro in the Two Americas,” typescript. ALP.
17. CM to AL, September 23 1943. ALP.
18. AL to Maurice V. Russell (MVR), n.d. [1943]. ALP.
20. Max L. Hudicourt,
Haiti Faces Tomorrow’s Peace, trans. Anita Weinstein (New York: L’Association Democratique Haitienne, 1945).
21. AL to CM, September 13, 1943. ALP.
23. Alain Locke, “The Negro in the Three Americas,”
Journal of Negro Education (Winter 1944): 7–8.
Chapter 43
1. Letter from Department of Philosophy, University of Wisconsin, to author, 1977.
2. Alain Locke (AL) to Horace Kallen (HK), March 8, 1946. ALP.
3. AL to HK, February 12, 1946. ALP.
4. See Jeffrey C. Stewart, “Beyond Category: Before Afro-Futurism There Was Norman Lewis,” in
Procession: The Art of Norman Lewis (Philadelphia: Pennsylvania Academy of Fine Arts, 2015), 161–191.
5. Alain Locke, introduction to
The Negro Artist Comes of Age: A National Survey of Contemporary American Artists (Albany, N.Y.: Albany Institute of History and Art, 1945).
6. Horace Kallen (HK) to AL, March 5, 1946. ALP.
8. Purchase of 12 Grove Street, Greenwich Village.
9. Interview with Arthur Fauset, December 27, 1980, Philadelphia, Pa.
12. Interview with Robert Fennell, April 11, 1987, Washington, D.C.
15. Interview with Robert Fennell.
16. AL to Lionel de Fonseka (LdF), n.d. ALP.
17. Robert E. Claybrooks to AL, December 19, 1952, ALP.
19. Alain Locke, “Self-Criticism: The Third Dimension in Culture,” Phylon 11 (4th Quarter, 1950): 391–394.
22. Alain Locke, “Horace Pippin.” In Horace Pippin Memorial Exhibition, The Art Alliance, April 8–May 4, 1947. Philadelphia, Pa.
24. Alain Locke, “Santayana,”
The Key Reporter 16, no. 4 (Autumn 1951): 4.
25. Rayford W. Logan,
Howard University: The First Hundred Years, 1867–1967 (New York: New York University Press, 2004), 434.
26. Margaret Butcher (MB) to AL, January 27, 1953. ALP.
27. MB to AL, January 30, 1953. ALP.
28. Transcript of interview with FBI. FBI.
30. AL to Mrs. Biddle, January 4, 1954. ALP.
31. Douglas Stafford to AL, n.d. [1954]. ALP.
32. Interview with Arthur Fauset, December 27, 1980, Philadelphia, Pa.
Chapter 44
1. Interview with Arthur Fauset, December 27, 1980, Philadelphia, Pa.
2. Thomas Dyett (TD) to George E. C. Hayes (GECH), June 17, 1954. ALP.
3. TD to GECH, January 24, 1956. ALP.
4. TD to J. B. Clarke (JBC), January 28, 1957; Arthur Huff Fauset to JBC, February 7, 1957; JBC to TD, February 5, 1957; JBC to TD, March 20, 1958; JBC to GECH, January 6, 1959; Earl H. Davis to Luther W. Youngdahl, May 7, 1959. ALP.
5. See David Roediger,
The Wages of Whiteness: Race and the Making of the American Working Class (New York: Verso, 2007) for a powerful explication of this sense of entitlement. Clearly, Ms. Dougherty was victimized by Fauset’s negligence. But the way she hung in and ballooned her requests to $50,000 shows her greediness to try and exploit the accidental fact that the house was now owned by a Black university subsidized by the federal government and reveals her sense of entitlement. That Locke announced even in jest that Whites were better tenants than Blacks becomes ironic and revealing of the limits of his Black consciousness.
6. Interview with Robert Fennell. April 11, 1987. Washington, D.C.
7. Interview with Arthur Fauset.
10. Interview with Robert Fennell.
Epilogue