Alain+Locke

 **Alain Locke "In the last decade something beyond the watch and guard of statistics has happened in the life of the American Negro..." ** toc



How did Alain Locke’s life experience contribute to his role as the stellar voice for the “New Negro Movement” or “Harlem Renaissance?” The Northern Migration of African Americans, especially their settlement in upper Manhattan, became a backdrop for Locke’s ideology (Watts 19). In his essay, __The New Negro__, he stated, “The pulse of the Negro world has begun to beat in Harlem" (Mullane 489). The increase of black intellectuals and artists lent a renewed sense of empowerment to Harlem, the African American cultural center of the 1920's. __The New Negro__, reflected his own struggles as he tried to rise above prejudice and defeat. His background influenced his quest for knowledge, and cultural pluralism, where different races have their unique customs and individualism. 

=His Life=  Born in Philadelphia, on September 13, 1885, his father and mother were both school teachers. They made an impact on his pursuit for education. As an only child, he excelled in school. Graduating magna cum laude from Harvard, being the first African American to win a Rhodes Scholarship to Oxford, attending the University of Berlin, and heading the philosophy department at Howard University in Washington D.C., were among his many accomplishments (Harris and Molesworth 1-20). His interests were philosophy, art, music, political theory, sociology, and African studies. In __The New Negro__ he wrote, “racial leaders of twenty years ago spoke of developing race pride…they could not in any accurate degree have anticip ated… the feeling that… now pervades the awakened centers.” Becoming an authority on African American culture, Locke furthered this “awakening” when he edited in 1925, __The New Negro__, a collection of fiction, essays, poetry, and art which brought together important black artists of a new generation which came to be called “The New Negro Movement” ( Mullane 478-480). He wrote “with this renewed self-respect and self-dependence, the life of the Negro community is bound to enter a new dynamic phase.” He also wrote, “The Old Negro had long become more of a myth than a man.” Locke embodied both the Old and New Negro as revealed in his struggle to “[shed] the old chrysalis of the Negro problem” and his pursuit of self-respect and self-understanding (Lauter 1490-1500). Although Locke’s life was filled with intellectual and cultural pursuits where he envisioned a world without prejudice and racism, separation still existed. In his second year at Harvard, he told his mother, “[The black students have] unanimously chosen to occupy a separate table together" (Harris and Molesworth 33). He was denied admission from five Oxford Colleges before being accepted, was socially uncomfortable among his white classmates, and was dismissed from the Howard University faculty because of unfair actions of the white university president (Lauter 1490-1500). Langston Hughes, an African American writer, said, “All of us knew that the…sparkling life of the so-called Negro Renaissance of the 20’s was not so…sparkling beneath the surface.” This philosophy, according to Hughes was limited to a small percentage of black intellectuals and “ordinary Negros hadn’t heard of the Negro Renaissance” (Mullane 479). However, Locke had great hopes and dreams for a new age of cultural expressions within minority races. The necessity of the “Old Negro to metamorphosize into the New Negro” was Locke’s mantra. His eclectic and intellectual pursuits gave energy to African American’s creativeness. He did not want blacks to be intellectually inferior. He was such a respected professor at Howard University that he was reappointed to his position in 1928. He bequeathed approximately three hundred pieces of African sculpture and handicrafts to Howard University, gave speeches at various universities, and even attended the opening of King Tut’s Tomb. He was a cultural critic and mentored many Negro artists (Harris and Molesworth 4-382). He died on June 4, 1954 of heart failure at New York’s Mount Sinai Hospital (Lauter 1490-1500). He was a forerunner and contributor to the civil rights era of the 1950s and 1960s. His desire for minority rights prompted him to write, “When the racial leaders of twenty years ago spoke of developing race-pride …, they could not in any accurate degree have anticipated the abru pt feeling that… now pervades the awakened centers (Lauter 1490-1500.) 



 =**//His Contributions//**=

 Throughout the Harlem Renaissance, there was no greater influence other than Alain Locke. With his book, __The New Negro__, Locke laid the groundwork for many other poets and writers for the entire movement. "The Old Negro, we must remember, was a creature of morale debate and historical controversy." (Locke 1490) The Harlem Renaissance was a movement for the African Americans to become more in-touch with modern culture and to forget the racial and slavery upbringings that many of their ancestors had endured. Locke's book __The New Negro__ also explains how he intended for the "old Negro" to become more modern saying, " With each successive wave of it, the movement of the Negro becomes more and more a mass movement towards the larger and the more democratic chance — in the Negro's case a deliberate flight not only from countryside to city, but from medieval America to modern." (Locke 1493) He wanted the Old Negro to move towards modernization and to leave many of the stereotypical categories that the racist South had given them. Locke’s books and essays relate to the overall theme of the Harlem Renaissance through his use of common English to explain a higher goal for African Americans. Most of the Harlem Renaissance could be summed up in this poem that Locke mentioned in __The New Negro__:

We have tomorrow Bright before us <span style="font-size: 110%; font-family: 'Times New Roman',Times,serif;">Like a flame. Yesterday, a night-gone thing A sun-down name.

And dawn today Broad arch above the road we came We march! (Locke 1491)

This poem explains that though African American’s history was bad, today was a new day and that they shouldn’t give up on what they were working towards.

=** His Technique **= = = Alain Locke’s __The New Negro__ uses powerful imagery combined with examples from the past to get the point of his philosophy across. These conventions make his writing an intelligent work weaved with vibrant images and shadows of a past better forgotten. Locke creates well developed philosophy that is also a journey for the mind’s eye. Alain Locke describes the path into this new philosophy by using descriptive phrases, saying that African Americans “by shedding the old chrysalis of the Negro problem… are achieving something like a spiritual emancipation” (Locke 1493). This creates an image of the Negro population seeing their bright future and taking that first step into it. Locke also compares the new philosophy to a series of waves saying that “the wash and rush of this human tide on the beach line of the northern city centers is to be explained primarily in terms of a new vision of opportunity… with each successive wave of it, the movement of the Negro becomes a deliberate flight… from medieval America to modern” (Locke 1494). The images he uses help to make his philosophy understandable in a visual sense, not just a literary sense. Locke also refers to history, to compare the past Negro experience to the present one. He writes that there are many Negroes whose minds “have thus burrowed in the trenches of the Civil War and Reconstuction” and that “the actual march of development has simply flanked these positions, necessitating a sudden reorientation of view” (Locke 1493). Locke uses examples from the past to illustrate the new philosophy and to encourage the Negro population to continue looking forward, and move ahead from the tragic past they have suffered.

//Works Cited:// <span style="display: block; font-size: 12pt; color: rgb(3,2,2); font-family: 'Times New Roman',Times,serif; background-color: rgb(245,240,240); text-align: left;"> <span style="color: rgb(0,0,0);">“Alain Locke.” __Crossing the Danger Water: Three Hundred Years of African American Writing.__ Ed. Deirdre Mullane. New York: Doubleday, 1993. Harris, Leonard, and Charles Molesworth. __Alain L. Locke: The Biography of a Philosopher__.<span style="font-size: 12pt; color: rgb(0,0,0); font-family: 'Times New Roman',Times,serif; background-color: rgb(255,255,255);">Chicago: University of Chicago Press, 2008. <span style="display: block; color: rgb(3,2,2); font-family: 'Times New Roman',Times,serif; background-color: rgb(242,237,237); text-align: left;"> <span style="font-size: 120%; font-family: 'Times New Roman',Times,serif;"><span style="color: black; font-family: 'Times New Roman',Times,serif;"> <span style="font-size: 120%; color: rgb(0,0,0);"><span style="font-family: 'Times New Roman',Times,serif;"> Watts, Eric. "African American Ethos and Hermeneutical Rhetoric: An Exploration of Alain Locke's __The New Negro__." __Quarterly Journal of Speech__ 88(2002): 19-32.

//Locke, Alain. The New Negro. 1925. The Heath Anthology of American Literature//. Ed. Paul Lauter et al. 5th ed. Vol. D. Boston: Houghton, 2006. 1490-1500. Locke's The New Negro." __Quarterly Journal of Speech__ 88(2002): 19-32.