THE NEW NEGRO, ALAIN LEROY LOCKE

"THE NEW NEGRO" Dr. Alain LeRoy Locke , the first African American Rhodes Scholar, wrote an essay in 1925, entitled "The New Negro." I read it for the first time last night in the book he edited: THE NEW NEGRO AN INTERPRETATION (1925, 2015). I had not previously read this essay, although I had attended Howard University, for seven years, where Locke taught for 40 years, and I had taken classes in Locke Hall that was named for him, in his honor. I encourage each of you to read it, the essay, at least, if not the book. My first annotation to the text of his essay came upon reading the following: "And finally, with the Negro rapidly in process of class differentiation, if it ever was warrantable to regard and treat the Negro 'en masse' it is becoming with every day less possible, more unjust and ridiculous. "In the very process of being transplanted, the Negro is becoming transformed. "The tide of Negro migration, northward and city-ward, is not only to be fully explained as a blind flood started by the demands of the war industry coupled with the shutting off of foreign migration, or the pressure of poor crops coupled with increased social terrorism in certain sections of the South and Southwest . Neither labor demand, the boll-weevil nor the Ku Klux Klan is a basic factor, however contributory any or all of them may have been. The wash and the rush of this human tide on the beach line of the northern city centers is to be explained primarily in terms of a new vision of opportunity, of social and economic freedom, of a spirit to seize, even in the face of an extortionate and heavy toll, a chance for improvement of the conditions. With each successive wave of it, the movement of the Negro becomes more and more a mass movement toward the larger and the more democratic chance--in the Negro's case a deliberate flight not only from countryside to city, but from medieval America to modern ." P.5-6. Being myself a beneficiary of that "deliberate flight" from South to North in search of "social and economic freedom," through my parents, who migrated from Mississippi to Missouri in 1955, Locke's explanation comports with my parents' many declarations! Yet, as I continued to read on, I noticed that Locke seemingly was avoiding any mention of Marcus Mosiah Garvey, or of Garvey's great idol and mentor, Dr. Booker T. Washington of Tuskegee , except by indirection and veiled allusions. Consequently, I was fully prepared to dismiss Alain Locke as a useful commentator, until I read the following redemptive conclusions: "The pulse of the Negro world has begun to beat in Harlem. A Negro newspaper carrying news material in English, French and Spanish, gathered from all quarters of America, the West Indies, and Africa has maintained itself in Harlem for over five years. Two important magazines, both edited from New York, maintain their news and circulation consistently on a cosmopolitan scale. Under American auspices, three pan -African congresses have been held abroad for the discussion of common interests, colonial questions and and the future of cooperative development of Africa. In terns of the race question as a world problem, the Negro mind has leapt, so to speak , upon the parapets of prejudice and extended its cramped horizons. In so doing it has linked up with the growing consciousness of the dark-peoples and is gradually learning their common interests... "Garveyism may be a transient , if spectacular, phenomenon, but the possible role of the American Negro in the future development of Africa is one of the most constructive and universality helpful missions that any modern people can lay claim to." P.14-15. I salute Howard's Dr. Alain Locke's perspicacity and faith expressions! https://en.m.wikipedia.org/wiki/Alain_LeRoy_Locke