Camden, New Jersey, schools. His paternal grand-
father, Ishmael Locke, studied at Cambridge Uni-
versity and was a teacher and the headmaster of
the Institute for Colored Youth in PHILADELPHIA.
Alain Locke’s father graduated from the Institute
in 1867, before working as a teacher of freedmen
in North Carolina and then obtaining a law de-
gree from HOWARDUNIVERSITYLaw School.
Locke was raised in Philadelphia and attended
schools there and in New York City. Following his
father’s death in 1892, Locke began attending the
newly established Ethical Culture School in New
York City. Locke became ill from rheumatic fever
and relocated to Philadelphia. He completed his
high school education there at the Central High
School.
Locke’s college career began at the Philadel-
phia School of Pedagogy. He entered HARVARD
UNIVERSITYas a transfer student and was elected
to PHIBETAKAPPAduring his second year. He
graduated magna cum laude in 1907. He was one
of the school’s most accomplished students, won
an impressive number of school awards, and even
found time to be a coxswain for one of the school’s
crew teams. He immediately traveled to Oxford
University in England as the first African Ameri-
can to win a RHODESSCHOLARSHIP. Despite his
impressive intellectual record, Locke was rejected
by several Oxford colleges on the basis of his race.
He persevered and finally gained admission to
Hertford College. There, he completed three years
of study in Greek, Latin, literature, and philosophy
and earned a B.Litt. degree. He then traveled to
Europe, where he pursued graduate studies in phi-
losophy and in English at the University of Berlin
and in Vienna and Paris. In 1918 he became the
first African American to earn a Ph.D. in philoso-
phy at Harvard University.
Following his studies abroad, Locke returned
to the United States. He joined the faculty of
Howard University in WASHINGTON, D.C., in
1912 and began a 40-year career at the historic in-
stitution that was founded in 1866. His father had
been a member of the university’s first graduating
law school class. Locke became chair of the Philos-
ophy Department at the school in 1918, a position
he held until his retirement. At Howard, he was
instrumental in the founding of STYLUS,the school’s
literary magazine, and collaborated with T. MONT-
GOMERY GREGORY in the acclaimed HOWARD
UNIVERSITYPLAYERS, one of the nation’s most
highly respected college drama troupes. Locke also
established the first Phi Beta Kappa chapter ever
founded at a historically black institution of higher
learning.
Locke was one of several prominent homosex-
ual Harlem Renaissance figures. Scholar Thomas
Wirth characterizes Locke as a “self-identified gay
man” and notes that Locke made documented ef-
forts to maintain a coterie that included other gay
and bisexual artists, such as RICHMONDBARTHÉ,
CLAUDEMCKAY, and RICHARDBRUCENUGENT.
Locke’s attraction and deliberate overtures to
Langston Hughes have been well documented.
While Hughes, an emerging poet at the time, wel-
comed the opportunity to talk with Locke, he was
not willing to indulge Locke’s interest. Hughes,
who was well known for maintaining his privacy, fi-
nally met Locke while abroad. It remains unclear
whether or not the men had a romantic encounter
before Locke left Hughes to fend for himself and
negotiate his return to America when his passport
was stolen. Locke was forthright in his overtures to
Nugent, who recalled that “Locke offered me his
body” and noted that he was “traumatized” and
“disappointed” by the moment when “A professor
of philosophy and a person old enough to be your
father... lie[s] on a bed in their shorts and say[s],
‘Do anything you want’” (Wirth, 24). The two men
overcame the awkward encounter, and Locke be-
came one of Nugent’s professional mentors. Later,
he even attempted to play the role of matchmaker
when he tried to facilitate an introduction and po-
tential relationship between Nugent and Rich-
mond Barthé (Wirth, 25).
Locke’s academic career also included short
appointments to schools in Haiti, visiting appoint-
ments to the University of Wisconsin at Madison,
City College of New York, and the New School for
Social Research in New York City. He also forged
important intellectual ties in the larger community
of African-American scholars and was a member of
the AMERICANNEGROACADEMYand the Negro
Society for Historical Research. The earliest of
Locke’s publications demonstrated his interest in
history, philosophy, and literature. His scholarly
works included literary studies such as The Negro
in American Literature(1929), sociocultural studies318 Locke, Alain