This book features a comprehensive collection of essays by Alain Locke (1885-1954), the most formidable African American public intellectual of his generation. It is by far the largest collection of his brilliant essays, gathered from a career that spanned forty years. The range of the work covers an impressively broad field of subjects: philosophy, literary criticism, art and music criticism, value theory, race, politics, and multiculturalism. His inquisitive mind, his refined taste and his pragmatic temperament brought him renown as the "godfather" of the Harlem Renaissance. But his contributions to many fields extended well beyond that remarkable period, to the very beginning of the civil rights movement. Locke's standing among today's readers will be secured through this presentation of his skillful writing and impressive thought. By virtue of his learning and his commitment to intellectual excellence, Locke can now be seen in the sweep of American culture. Here he can take his rightful place, as the leading African American thinker between W. E. B. Du Bois and Martin Luther King, Jr. Here, Charles Molesworth gathers Locke's writings to showcase his achievements as a whole, both as a civil rights pioneer and as a writer of significant gifts. With a foreword by Henry Louis Gates, Jr., this collection provides a definitive resource on the works of a towering figure in African American thought.

Table of Contents:
Foreword by Henry Louis Gates Jr. ; Introduction ; Note on the Text and Acknowledgments ; I. Literature ; 1. On Paul Laurence Dunbar (1905) ; 2."The Romantic Movement As Expressed by John Keats" (1907) ; 3. "Emile Verhaeren" (1917) ; 4. "Colonial Literature of France" (1923) ; 5. "The Younger Literary Movement" (1923); co authored with Du Bois ; 6. Review of Countee Cullen's Color (1926) ; 7. Review of Langston Hughes The Weary Blues (1926) ; 8. Review of Langston Hughes' Fine Clothes to the Jew (1927) ; 9. "The Poetry of Negro Life" (Preface to Four Negro Poets, 1926) ; 10. "American Literary Tradition and the Negro"(1926) ; 11. Review of FIRE!!(1927) ; 12. "Message of the Negro Poets"(1927) ; 13. Foreword to Georgia Douglas Johnson's An Autumn Love Cycle (1928) ; 14 ."Both Sides of the Color Line" (Review of W. Thurman and J. Fauset (1929) ; 15. "Negro Minority in American Literature"(1946) ; II. Art, Drama and Music ; 1. "Steps Toward the Negro Theatre" (1922) ; 2. "A Note on African Art" (1924) ; 3. "The Negro Spirituals" (1925) ; 4. "More of the Negro in Art" (1925) ; 5. "The Negro and the American Stage" (1926) ; 6. "Drama of Negro Life" (1926) ; 7. "The Blondiau-Theatre Arts Collection" (1927) ; 8. "The American Negro as Artist" (1931) ; 9. "Toward a Critique of Negro Music"(1934) ; 10. Excerpt from The Negro and His Music (1936) ; 11. Excerpt from Negro Art: Past and Present (1936) ; 12. "Negro Music Goes to Par" (1939) ; 13. "Broadway and Negro Drama" (1941) ; III. Esthetics ; 1. "Impressions of Luxor"(1923) ; 2. "Internationalism: Friend or Foe? (1925) ; 3. "Negro Youth Speaks" (1925) ; 4. "The Legacy of the Ancestral Arts" (1925) ; 5. "African Art: Classic Style" (1935) ; 6. "Negro in American Culture"(1929) ; 7. "Our Little Renaissance" (1927) ; 8. "Beauty Instead of Ashes" (1928) ; 9. "Art or Propaganda?" (1928) ; 10. "Beauty and the Provinces" (1929) ; 11. "Spiritual Truancy" (1928, on Claude McKay) ; 12. "Propaganda - or Poetry?" (1936) ; 13. "The Negro's Contribution to American Culture" (1939) ; IV. Race ; 1."Race Contacts and Inter-Racial Relations" (1915) ; 2. "Apropos of Africa" (1924) ; 3. "The Concept of Race as Applied to Social Culture" (1924) ; 4. "The Problem of Race Classification" (1923) ; 5. "Should the Negro be Encouraged to Cultural Equality" (1927) ; 6. "Contribution of Race to Culture" (1930) ; 7. "Slavery in the Modern Manner"(1931) ; 8. "Harlem: Dark Weather-Vane" (1936) ; 9. Foreword to Frederick Douglass's Life and Times(1940) ; 10. "Whither Race Relations? A Critical Commentary" (1944) ; 11. "The Negro in the Three Americas" (1944) ; A SPECIAL SECTION: ; When Peoples Meet: A Study in Race and Cultural Contacts (1942): Interchapters, written by Locke. ; V. Value and Culture ; 1. "Oxford by A Negro Student" (1909) ; 2."The American Temperament" (1911) ; 3. "The Ethics of Culture" (1923) ; 4. "The New Negro" (1925) ; 5. "Values and Imperatives" (1935) ; 6. "Value" (1935) ; 7. "A Functional View of Value Ultimates"(1945) ; 8. "Self-Criticism: The Third Dimension of Culture" (1950) ; 9. "Frontiers of Culture" (1950) ; 10. "Values That Matter" (Review of Perry, 1954) ; 11. "Freud and Scientific Morality" (n.d.) ; VI. Democracy ; 1. "The Mandate System: A New Code of Empire"(1927) ; 2. "The Negro Vote and the New Deal" (1936) ; 3. "Ballad for Democracy" (1940) ; 4. "Color: Unfinished Business of Democracy" (1942) ; 5. "Democracy Faces a World Order" (1942) ; 6. "Cultural Relativism and Ideological Peace"(1942) ; 7. "Moral Imperatives for World Order" (1944) ; 8. Review of Du Bois's Color and Democracy (1945) ; 9. "Pluralism and Intellectual Democracy" (1946) ; 10. "Pluralism and Ideological Peace"(1947) ; Index