The New Negro by Alain LeRoy Locke — Read

Two trains were running in Locke's life, running parallel to his political transformation in the late 1930s. Alongside the public race man, the private Locke was running strong.

Locke had another life, a hidden life of cruising, signaling, and nonverbal communications that constituted a hidden code of communication between him and likely prospects that, more often than not, ended in success, but also disappointment. Locke was always hunting men, but always doing so with a protection system in place to hide his intentions from those not in "the life." Robert Martin, a professor of political science at Howard University, whom Locke recruited as a young man to manage the printing and distribution operation of the Bronze Booklets produced by the Associates of Negro Folk Education, remarked about Locke's "system." Of course, Martin insisted, he was not one of Locke's lovers. But he related how Locke tried to recruit him. "I was working at a local theatre in the 1930s, and we used to be required to wear these bright red uniforms, and after I had gotten to know Locke and was working distributing the Bronze Booklets, he told me that he had seen me working at that theater, and that he had made a signal to me that I would only recognize and react to if I was one of them. Of course, I had no recollection of having seen him."1