Alain Locke

Alain Locke was an African American philosopher and educator, best known as “the Dean of the Harlem Renaissance” for his book The New Negro, an anthology of poetry, essays, plays, music, and images by writers and artists who initiated the Harlem Renaissance. He was the first African American Rhodes Scholar.

Educated at Harvard University (A.B., 1907; Ph.D., 1918), Oxford University (B.A., 1910), and the University of Berlin (1910–1911), Locke spent his entire teaching career at Howard University (1912–1953), and formed one of the first philosophy departments at an HBCU. As a philosopher of race and culture, he contributed to the development of “ethnic race,” holding that race was primarily a matter of social and cultural, rather than biological, heredity. He also developed theories of value pluralism and cultural relativism that informed and were reinforced by his work on aesthetics. He edited the March 1925 issue of Survey Graphic entitled “Harlem, Mecca of the New Negro,” and then expanded it into The New Negro, inspiring a new Black American aesthetic. In the 1930s, Locke edited the “Bronze Booklet” series, published by Associates in Negro Folk Education.

Locke sought to advance the recognition–both within the art world and the broader public–of the artistic excellence of African and African American artists. Though it was never realized, Locke was also involved in the planning of a proposed Harlem Museum of African Art. He published several books on modern art by Black Americans, including Negro Art: Past and Present (1936) and The Negro in Art: A Pictorial Record of the Negro Artist and of the Negro Theme in Art (1940). In 1941, Locke organized American Negro Art, the first commercial exhibition of works by African American artists in New York City.