Alain Locke, a leading black intellectual during the early twentieth century and an important elder of the Harlem Renaissance, was born in Philadelphia in 1886, to middle-class parents, both of whom were educators. He graduated from Harvard in 1907 and proceeded to go to Oxford as the first African American Rhodes Scholar. He received a B.A. from Oxford in 1910 and elected to stay in Europe and study philosophy at the University of Berlin.

Locke returned to the United States in 1912 to assume an assistant professorship at Howard University.  In 1916 he continued his education at Harvard University where he completed a Ph.D., and later resumed his career at Howard. His anthology The New Negro, dedicated to "The Younger Generation," was published in 1925. The resourceful Locke was especially close and helpful to the young writers Langston Hughes, Countee Cullen, Jean Toomer, and Rudolph Fisher. Somewhat paradoxically, he subscribed to Du Bois's Talented Tenth idea but also sought to remain connected to the "masses." He believed that the cultivation of more refined cultural tastes and production would bring black people the socioeconomic parity they sought. He died in New York City in 1954.

Sources:
William Banks, Black Intellectuals: Race and Responsibility in American Life (1996).

Contributor(s):
Banks, William
University of California, Berkeley

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