style and the naivest egotism” and that McKay’s re-
jection of “all possible loyalties amounts to a self-
imposed apostasy” (Cooper, 320). In sharp contrast
to his assessments of Claude McKay were his opin-
ions about COUNTEECULLEN. According to Cullen
biographer Blanche Ferguson, Locke regarded the
young New Yorker as a writer who “blended the
simple with the sophisticated so originally as almost
to put the vineyards themselves into his crystal gob-
lets” (Ferguson, 54).
When Cullen and his father, the Reverend
Frederick Cullen of the SALEMMETHODISTEPIS-
COPALCHURCHin Harlem, sailed to Europe in
1926 as they began an extensive voyage that would
ultimately take them to the Middle East, they did
so in the company of Locke, as well as with
Dorothy Peterson and ARTHUR HUFF FAUSET.
Zora Neale Hurston was outspoken in her evalua-
tions of Locke and tended to take a dim view of
the man whom she characterized in a 1938 letter
to James Weldon Johnson as a “malicious litt[l]e
snot that thinks he ought to be the leading Negro
because of his degrees.” Hurston, who was an-
noyed by Locke’s recent criticism in Opportunityof
her novel THEIR EYES WERE WATCHING GOD
(1937), suggested that Locke “lends out his pa-
tronage and takes in ideas he soon passes off as his
own. And God help you,” she continued, “if you
get on without letting him ‘represent’ you!” (Ka-
plan, 413). Hurston’s interactions with Locke were
complicated by the fact that he had close ties to
CHARLOTTEOSGOODMASON, her white patron.
After consultation with Mason, Locke would act as
a go-between and deliver messages and advice to
the dynamic and forthright anthropologist and
writer. Hurston biographer Valerie Boyd notes that
while Hurston would not “have deigned to explain
herself so thoroughly to the meddling Locke” as
she did following the dismal response to her musi-
cal production entitled Great Day,“she felt com-
pelled to give him the respect his position
demanded” because “he claimed to be speaking
with her on [Mason’s] behalf” (Boyd, 234).
Hurston’s complicated relationship with Locke
was part of a larger tension that he had with
women intellectuals and students. At Howard
University, for instance, he was, according to Boyd,
“notorious... for warning female students on the
first day of class that they would likely receive C’s,
regardless of their ability” (Boyd, 91). Jessie Fauset,
who suffered an awful snub from Charles Johnson
at the Civic Club party that was advertised as a
celebration of her first novel but which became a
fête of Locke and other men of the period instead,
believed that his “failure as a writer” had affected
him deeply and was responsible for the “utmost ar-
rogance and obsequiousness to whites” that so in-
formed his literary criticism (Boyd, 309).
Locke did not publish any primary creative
works of his own, but he was instrumental in pub-
lishing the works of promising artists. He edited
FOURNEGROPOETSin 1927, a collection of works
by Countee Cullen, Langston Hughes, Claude
McKay, and JEANTOOMER. Also in 1927, he col-
laborated with T. Montgomery Gregory, his dy-
namic Howard University colleague, on PLAYS OF
NEGROLIFE:ASOURCEBOOK OFNATIVEAMERI-
CANDRAMA. Harper published the compilation
that included illustrations by AARONDOUGLAS.
Through his affiliation with the Associates in
Negro Folk Education, an organization in which he
served as secretary and editor, Locke also published
The Negro and His Music(1936), Negro Art: Past
and Present(1936), and The Negro in Art: A Picto-
rial Record of the Negro Artist and of the Negro
Theme in Art(1940). He also published widely in
American periodicals including THE CRISIS,
HARLEM:AFORUM OFNEGROLIFE,OPPORTU-
NITY,and Theatre Arts.
Like Zora Neale Hurston and Langston
Hughes, Locke received support for his work from
the philanthropist Charlotte Osgood Mason.
Funds from Mason enabled him to travel and to
begin collecting works by African Americans and
peoples of African descent. He amassed an im-
pressive collection of African art and organized
many exhibitions to showcase the diversity of tal-
ent and cultures. In 1925, at an impressive exhibit
installed by the Harlem Art Committee at the
YWCA on West 138th Street, Locke continued to
protest racial essentialism. Locke addressed the
audience gathered to see works by 64 African-
American artists including the painter HENRYOS-
SAWATANNERand noted that “no art grows in a
cultural vacuum” and insisted that “Negro art
does not restrict the Negro artist to the use of the
racial theme in art exclusively” (NYT,18 March
1935, 24).320 Locke, Alain