Essay About Mrs.Pliny Ishmael Locke And Mary Hawkinns Locke

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“Much of the creative work of the period was guided by the ideal of the Negro which signified
a range of ethical ideals that often emphasize and intensified a higher sense of group and social
cohesiveness The writers literally expected liberation . from their work and were perhaps
the first group of Afro- American writers to believe that art could radically transform the artist and
attitudes of other human beings”.
– Dictionary of Literacy Biography
Alain Leroy Locke was on born on September 13 1886 in Philadelphia ,Pennsylvania to Mr. And
Mrs.Pliny Ishmael Locke and Mary Hawkinns Locke, as the only child he grew up in Philadelphia and
attended Central High School and attended the Philadelphia s School of Pedagogy, and later on in
Locke life he attended Harvard in 1904 where he graduated in 1907 with a outstanding
academic record that he became a member of Phi Beta Kappa. After graduating form Harvard, he
studied for three years from 1907 -1910 at Oxford University in England as the first black
Rhodes Scholar . While graduating from Oxford, he spent a year and the University of Berlin,
Pursuing advanced work in Philosophy. Locke began his career at Howard University in 1912
as an Assistant Professor of English and Philosophy. Locke was soon briefly broken in 1916 to
pursue a Doctorate Degree at Harvard University, eventually getting that degree in 1918 , Locke
returned to Howard as a Professor of Philosophy and remained at the University until he retired
in 1952.
Locke s involvement with the Renaissance touched a number of areas. Not only was he
involved with the visual arts and literature, but he was directly involved with the theater movement
through his association with the Theater Arts Monthly the Howard University Players (one of the
earliest Little Theater Groups among African Americans.)and with his collaboration with
Montgomery Gregory. One Such collaboration with Gregory resulted in the drama anthology,
Plays of Negro Life in 1927.
To varying degrees, Locke encouraged young black writers, scholar, and artists of the
Negro Movement; and he served as a mentor to many of them. His philosophy of the New Negro
was grounded in the concept of race building.
“Alain Locke Believed that the Profound Changes in the American Negro had to do with
the freeing of himself from the fictions of his past and the rediscovery of himself. He had to put
away the protective coloring of the mimicking minstrel and find the himself as he really was. And
thus the new militancy was a self-assertion as well as an assertion of the validity of the race.”
-Nathan Huggins in his book, Harlem Renaissance.
“Locke could not promise that the race would win the long-desired end of the material