in three years, won the Bowdoin Prize in English
(1907), was elected to Phi Beta Kappa, and gradu-
ated magna cum laude. Locke became the first Af-
rican-American Rhodes Scholar. Rejected by five
Oxford colleges, he studied Greek, philosophy, and
literature at Hertford College and spent a year at
the University of Berlin.
Although towered over by the more senior
black intellectual of the early 20th century, Dr. W.
E. B. DUBOIS, with whom he shared educational
paths and the sociocultural concerns outlined in
DuBois’s The SOULS OF BLACK FOLK (1905), Locke,
too, was clearly a member of this privileged
group. Locke made his mark as a faculty mem-
ber of Howard College’s Teachers College and
then as dean of the College of Arts and Sciences,
where he taught courses in philosophy, literature,
education, and English. He also infused new life
into African-American drama by cofounding the
Howard Players, one of the earliest black little
theater groups. Equally important was his initial
work with Survey Graphic; a special issue edited
by him in March 1925, “Harlem, Mecca of the
New Negro,” was devoted to describing the emer-
gence of what he called “the New Negro” and the
transformation of Harlem, New York, into an in-
ternational black mecca. Contributors included
CHARLES S. JOHNSON, editor of the Urban League’s
OPPORTUNITY magazine, DuBois, editor of the
NATIONAL ASSOCIATION FOR THE ADVANCEMENT OF
COLORED PEOPLE’s CRISIS magazine, JAMES WELDON
JOHNSON, and Arthur Schomburg. By December
1925, Albert and Charles Boni published The NEW
NEGRO: AN INTERPRETATION, an expanded book-
length work of the original Survey Graphics, now
a handsome anthology with graphics by Winold
Reiss and Aaron Douglas that included poetry, fic-
tion, and scholarly essays by HARLEM RENAISSANCE
luminaries, including LANGSTON HUGHES, CLAUDE
MCKAY, JEAN TOOMER, ZORA NEALE HURSTON, Du-
Bois, Schomburg, and Kelly Miller.
Including five of Locke’s own essays on African-
American art, literature, and music, The New Negro,
an instant success, made Locke a spokesperson for
the “New Negro Movement.” Locke explained in
the foreword: “This volume aims to document the
New Negro culturally and socially,—to register the
transformation of the inner and outer life of the
Negro in America that have so significantly taken
place in the last few years.” In his introductory
essay, “The New Negro,” he boldly announced the
death of the “Old Negro.” “The day of the ‘aunties,’
‘uncles’ and ‘mammies’ is equally gone. Uncle Tom
and Sambo have passed on.... The popular melo-
drama has about played itself out, and it is time
to scrap the fictions, garret the bogeys and settle
down to a realistic facing of facts” (5). Locke reiter-
ates DuBois’s premise from The Souls of Black Folks
that the Negro is a cultural bearer—a contributor
to and definer of American art and literature.
Throughout his life Locke remained in the
vanguard of the best-known scholars of African-
American culture. After his death in 1954, his full-
length work-in-progress, The Negro in American
Culture, was eventually completed by Margaret
Just Butcher.
BIBLIOGRAPHY
Davis, Arthur P. From the Dark Towers: Afro-Ameri-
can Writers, 1900–1960. Washington, D.C.: How-
ard University Press, 1974.
Locke, Alain L., ed. The New Negro: An Interpretation.
New York: Albert and Charles Boni, 1925. Reprint
with preface by Robert Hayden. New York: Ath-
eneum, 1968.
Winston, Michael R. “Alain Locke.” In Dictionary
of American Negro Biography, edited by Rayford
Logan and Michael R. Winston, 398–404. New
York: W. W. Norton & Company, 1982.
Wilfred D. Samuels
Lorde, Audre Geraldine (1934–1992)
Self-described “Black lesbian, mother, warrior,
poet,” Audre Geraldine Lorde was born on Feb-
ruary 18, 1934, in New York City to West Indian
parents Frederic Byron and Linda Belmar Lorde.
A beloved teacher and committed social activ-
ist, Lorde wrote the Carriacou biomythography
ZAMI: A NEW SPELLING OF MY NAME (1982), as
well as 12 volumes of poetry, including The First
Lorde, Audre Geraldine 317