The New Negro by Alain LeRoy Locke — Read

Harvard, 1916–1917

Locke always loved Harvard, loved its architecture, its Yard, even the smell of the grass at Cambridge's Mt. Auburn Cemetery, where he could wander on his light days of classes and visit the graves of the leaders of the New England Renaissance, the only renaissance America had known. He remained a Boston aesthete despite the many turns in the road his intellect would take afterward and was just a bit giddy as he contemplated that spring of 1916 the possibility of returning to Harvard. With his Race Contacts lectures over, he began to imagine what it would be like to get the doctorate from the place of his most spectacular triumph academically and socially. But a fear lurked in him as he planned for that return. Since his undergraduate years, he had tasted failure. He needed the PhD not only to get a promotion at Howard but also to keep pace with Du Bois and join the coming generation of Black scholars, all of whom would have PhDs. Without a PhD, he would remain a mere prodigy, a bright little boy; with it, he would be a man among the leading scholars of the race, likely a full professor in the College of Arts and Sciences at Howard in a couple of years. A bit of nervousness crept in as he went about preparations to leave for Cambridge-not doubt about his ability, but about the unknown that had derailed in Oxford and Berlin.