The New Negro by Alain LeRoy Locke — Read

"What a day to leave!" wrote his mother, after Locke traveled from Camden to take his new job at Howard University. "Yet I am reminded that you go away in a storm-It rained when you left for Harvard and sinfully poured when you left for Eng[land] the first time[.] Is it ominous of what will happen at Harvard [sic]?" Clearly, the rain had not been a consistent predictor of things to come-he had succeeded beyond her wildest dreams at Harvard and failed in ways she could not have imagined at Oxford. The rain did capture her mood of being left alone again and the curious way that his successes always took him away from her. The compensation this time was that he would be earning money and be a mere three-hour train ride away. Mary Locke may also have sensed in that rain the uncertainty of what lay ahead of him at Howard University, the "capstone of Negro education," and Washington, D.C., the uncrowned capital of Black society. Both were tough, challenging institutions of Black America, and she could not help feeling that her son, whom she still thought of as a little boy, was not ready for that world awaiting him. She expressed those feelings, as she habitually did, in words of motherly concern. "I do wish you had your rubbers-so foolish in this storm not to take them. I am very anxious about you in every way."1

At age twenty-seven, however, Locke was ready to construct an adult identity for himself as a Black professional. Howard was the best place for him to do that, as fatherly Bishop Levi Coppin confirmed: "There is where we want you to be, because it is really our principal school. You are now placed and this gives you a chance to make your way to special work. Your splendid ability coupled with exemplary character will do the rest."2