The New Negro by Alain LeRoy Locke — Read

Alain Locke rose early on April 23, 1922, a cool, clear Sunday after Easter in Washington, D.C. It was also the Sunday before his mother's sixty-seventh birthday. He woke her, helped her dress, and then served breakfast. Afterward, he read to her from the Sunday edition of the Evening Star. Headlines announced that the secret Russian-German economic pact threatened to break up the Genoa Conference, the Pan-American Conference of Women proposed a League of Nations, and Sir Arthur Conan Doyle, the Sherlock Holmes author, was to speak in Washington as part of his nationwide tour. Only the last caught her interest-she and her son shared an interest in psychic phenomena, and Sir Conan's lecture on spiritualism was sure to be provocative and revealing. She dozed off when Alain launched into the details of his particular interest, the struggle between Germany and the Allies for trading rights with newly Communist Russia. That afternoon she was "stricken," in the words of her son. He laid her down in her bed, where, at 7 p.m., she died, leaving her son of thirty-seven years alone in their home. The next day he taught his philosophy class at Howard University as usual. Only later in that day did students learn that Dr. Locke's mother had died. Others learned of her passing from Tuesday's Evening Star, which carried the death notice, "Locke. Sunday, April 23, 1922 at her residence, 1326 R Street NW, Mary Hawkins, beloved wife of the late Pliny Ishmael Locke and mother of Alain Leroy Locke. Last reception to friends Wednesday evening, from 6 to 8 o'clock, at her residence."2

A student of Locke's, poet Mae Miller Sullivan, recalls that her father, Kelly Miller, a dean at Howard University, hurried her mother that Wednesday evening saying, "Mama, get your things together. We mustn't be late for Dr. Locke's reception for his mother."3 The Millers and other friends of the Lockes climbed the stairs to the second-story apartment on R Street to find the deceased Mary Locke propped up on the parlor couch, as though she might lean and pour tea at any moment. She was dressed exquisitely in her fine gray dress, her hair perfectly arranged. She even had gloves on. Locke invited his guests to "take tea with Mother for the last time."4 After a short visit, most left quickly. On Thursday, Locke had her cremated and, according to his friend Douglas Stafford, he kept "the ashes of his mother reposed in a finely embellished casket" on the White grand piano in his home.