Alain Locke 1885–1954
Alain Locke 1885–1954 ALAIN LEROY LOCKE—philosopher, race leader, benefits everyone and that democracy itself is at art critic, adult educator, essayist, and antholo- stake. The essence of Locke’s philosophy of gist—was the leading African American intel- democracy is captured in the title “Cultural lectual of his day after W. E. B. Du Bois (1868– Pluralism: A New Americanism,” a public 1963). A social genius, Locke was the lecture he gave at Howard University on mastermind behind the Harlem Renaissance, November 8, 1950. In raising democracy to a that explosion in the 1920s and 1930s of “New new level of consciousness, Locke international- Negro” literature, drama, music, and art that ized the race issue, making the crucial connec- bolstered black pride and earned reciprocal tion between American race relations and white respect on a national scale never before international relations. Racial justice, he pre- achieved. The December 1925 publication of dicted, would serve as a social catalyst of world Locke’s anthology, The New Negro, was a stel- peace. Thus there are two major streams of lar event in American cultural history. A volume thought in Locke’s work—the African American that spoke volumes, The New Negro: An Inter- historical, cultural, and intellectual tradition, pretation was art as manifesto—a secular libera- and a cosmopolitan, global outlook intensified tion theology. For this and other reasons by the Bahá’í principles he embraced. Locke is Columbus Salley, in The Black 100 (1999), both a “race man” (cultural racialist) and a ranks Locke as the thirty-sixth most influential philosopher (cultural pluralist).
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