# Alain Locke and Cultural Pluralism

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> Source: Bahá'í Library Online (bahai-library.com), curated by Jonah Winters. Used by permission of the curator. Original citation: Christopher Buck, Alain Locke and Cultural Pluralism, Los Angeles: Kalimat Press, 2004, bahai-library.com.
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> Christopher Buck       Alain Locke and Cultural Pluralism          94
> 
> ALAIN LEROY LOCKE, 1918
> the year he earned a Ph.D. from Harvard University,
> and the year he formally embraced the Bahá’í Faith.
> (Alain Locke Papers, Moorland-Spingarn Research Center,
> Howard University.
> Christopher Buck           Alain Locke and Cultural Pluralism                      95
> 
> Alain Locke and Cultural Pluralism
> 
> By Christopher Buck
> 
> Book chapter, published in: Search for Values: Ethics in Baha’i
> Thought. Edited by Seena Fazel and John Danesh. Los
> Angeles: Kalimat Press, 2004. Pp. 94–158.
> 
> African American philosopher Alain Locke is arguably the most profound
> and important Western Bahá’í philosopher to date. Except for one 1979
> article in a Bahá’í periodical, scholarship on Locke has neither seriously
> taken into account his Bahá’í identity nor the Faith’s influence on his
> work. The present study, based largely on archival sources, contributes to
> research on this “missing” dimension of Locke’s complex life and
> thought. It examines Locke’s worldview as a Bahá’í, his secular
> perspective as a philosopher, and the synergy between his confessional
> and professional essays. This study also argues that Locke had a fluid
> hierarchy of values—of loyalty, tolerance, reciprocity, cultural relativism
> and pluralism (the philosophical equivalent of “unity in diversity”)—and
> that this hierarchy represents a progression and application of
> quintessentially Bahá’í ideals. Locke’s distinction as a “Bahá’í
> philosopher” may therefore be justified on ideological as well as historical
> grounds. Locke “translated” Bahá’í ideals “into more secular terms” so
> that “a greater practical range will be opened up for the application and
> final vindication of the Bahá’í principles” in order to achieve “a positive
> multiplication of spiritual power.” 1
> 
> One can appreciate the deep–seated desire and the ever–recurrent but
> Utopian dream of the idealist that somehow a single faith, a common culture,
> an all–embracing institutional life and its confraternity should some day
> unite man by merging all his loyalties and culture values. But even with
> almost complete intercommunication within practical [96] grasp, that day
> seems distant, especially since we have as great need for cultural pluralism in
> a single unit of society as in a nation as large and as composite as our own.
> […] The pluralist way to unity seems by far the most practicable.
> – Alain Locke,
> “Pluralism and Ideological Peace” (1947).2
> Christopher Buck       Alain Locke and Cultural Pluralism               96
> 
> Bahá’í philosopher?
> 
> Recent scholarship on the African American philosopher and aesthete,
> Alain LeRoy Locke (d. 1954), has brought his work “back to influential
> life.”3 Locke is arguably the most profound and important Western Bahá’í
> philosopher to date. Gayle Morrison rightly calls him “the outstanding
> black intellectual” 4 among the early Bahá’ís. He embraced the Bahá’í Faith
> in 1918, the year he received his doctorate in philosophy from Harvard
> University. In what sense, then, is Locke a “Bahá’í philosopher”?
> Although there is no formal discipline of Bahá’í philosophy as such,
> Bahá’í philosophy is expected to evolve over time. A close comparison of
> Locke’s Bahá’í essays with his philosophical ones discloses some striking
> resonances between the two, from shared vocabulary to parallel concepts.
> The present study will attempt to fill a lacuna in the literature on Locke,
> in which his worldview as a Bahá’í is given passing mention at best, or, at
> worst, is ignored altogether. By further developing Ernest Mason’s initial
> work on Locke’s Bahá’í identity and its presumed interaction with his
> thinking as a philosopher,5 this study hopes to fill in this “missing”
> dimension of Locke that has all too often been glossed over in the
> literature. While we will never know if Locke himself would have been
> comfortable with that label, certainly he would have acknowledged the
> impact of his Bahá’í experience on his life in general and probably on his
> philosophy in particular. As will be shown, the converse holds true as
> well, in that much of Locke’s formal philosophical thinking informed his
> Bahá’í perspective.
> 
> In a popular publication, The Black 100, Alain Locke ranks as the 36th
> most influential African American ever, past or pre- [97] sent. 6
> Distinguished as the first African American Rhodes Scholar, Locke was
> the philosophical architect—indeed, the “Dean”7 —of the Harlem
> Renaissance, a period of cultural efflorescence connected with the “New
> Negro” movement of the mid-1920s to mid-1930s (not to be confused
> with the “American Renaissance” just preceding the Civil War). This was
> a watershed period in African American history for psychological
> revalorisation and race vindication. “Arguably Locke was the first black
> American,” writes Winston Napier, “seeking to challenge European
> cultural imperialism through the formal articulation of a black
> Christopher Buck        Alain Locke and Cultural Pluralism                 97
> 
> aesthetics.”8 Among his other roles, Locke was the first African American
> president of the American Association for Adult Education, a
> predominantly white, national education association.9 He helped found
> the prestigious Conference on Science, Philosophy and Religion, which he
> chaired in 1945. Locke served on the editorial board of the American
> Scholar and was a regular contributor to national journals and
> magazines.10 By universal acclamation, Locke has achieved immortality as
> a great African American. Yet by comparison his identity and
> contributions as a Bahá’í remain relatively obscure.
> 
> Augmented by his fame and prestige in wider American society, his role
> as a contributor to the first five volumes of the Bahá’í World invites a
> closer examination of Locke’s significance as a Bahá’í writer during the
> early years of the American Bahá’í community. Except for Ernest Mason’s
> article,11 which exists in splendid isolation, there is a dearth of literature
> on the topic. As interest in Locke intensifies and new documents come to
> light, this essay will complement prior scholarship by taking a closer look
> at the Bahá’í dimension of Locke’s life and thought, and exploring how
> the synergy between Locke’s Bahá’í essays and philosophical essays
> permit one to speak of an inchoate “Bahá’í philosophy” in embryonic
> form.
> 
> The present study is based, in part, on Locke’s autobiographical note that
> prefaced his first formal philosophical essay, “Values and Imperatives,”12
> published when he was fifty years old (1935). Locke refers to this self–
> narrative as his “psychograph.” In it, Locke does not directly mention the
> fact that he was a Bahá’í. But he does allude to it, calling himself a
> “universalist in religion.”13 As a [98] methodological control and anchor
> of authenticity, periodic references to Locke’s psychograph will be made
> throughout this essay.
> 
> Locke begins his psychograph so: “I should like to claim as life-motto the
> good Greek principle,—‘Nothing in excess,’ but I have probably worn
> instead as the badge of circumstance,—‘All things with a reservation.’”14
> While a Bahá’í for most of his adult life, Locke had some reservations
> about ways in which the Bahá’í Faith was understood and applied by
> Christopher Buck       Alain Locke and Cultural Pluralism                98
> 
> some of his fellow Bahá’ís. His reservations may contribute to a richer
> understanding of Bahá’í principles as he interpreted them through his
> unique perspective as both a race leader (“perforce an advocate of cultural
> racialism”) as well as a “cultural cosmopolitan” steeped in the
> “philosophy of value,” allied with “cultural pluralism and value
> relativism.”15 This study will thus situate Locke within the context of
> those intellectual formations—value theory, pragmatism, Boasian
> anthropology, and cultural pluralism, as well as Bahá’í principles—that
> deeply influenced him.
> 
> Early life
> 
> An African American (“Negro”) child of Northern Reconstruction with an
> enlightened upbringing, Locke was the only son of Pliny Locke and Mary
> (Hawkins) Locke, who had been engaged for sixteen years before they
> married.16 Alain LeRoy Locke was born on 13 September 1885 in
> Philadelphia, Pennsylvania, not in 1886, as is commonly thought.17 For
> reasons that have eluded historians, Locke always represented the year of
> his birth as 1886—not 1885.18 At birth, although his name was recorded
> as “Arthur,” his parents may have actually named him “Alan.” From the
> age of sixteen, Locke later adopted the French spelling, “Alain” (close to
> the American pronunciation of “Allen”) and added the middle name
> “LeRoy” (probably because he was called “Roy” as a child).19
> 
> In his psychograph, Locke reflects on his childhood: “Philadelphia, with
> her birthright of provincialism flavoured by urbanity and her petty
> bourgeois psyche with the Tory slant, at the start set the key of paradox;
> circumstance compounded it by decreeing me as a [99] Negro, a dubious
> and doubting sort of American and by reason of racial inheritance making
> me more of a pagan than a Puritan, more of a humanist than a
> pragmatist.”20 While Locke himself did not explain what he meant by the
> “key of paradox,” “paradox” appears to be a reference to twists of fate and
> to tensions as well as the harmony between his cultural nationalism and
> integrationist universalism—perhaps never fully resolving the ideological
> paradox. In Philadelphia, Locke led a sheltered and somewhat privileged
> life (relative to the lives of the vast majority of other black Americans at
> Christopher Buck       Alain Locke and Cultural Pluralism               99
> 
> the turn of the last century).21 A biographer notes that Locke was a “child
> of privilege in a black household whose ancestors on both sides had been
> free before 1865.”22
> 
> Locke’s family background shows how nature and nurture combined to
> provide him with rare educational advantages. Locke’s paternal
> grandfather, Ishmael Locke (1820–1852), attended University of
> Cambridge with support from the Society of Friends. Ishmael was
> employed as a teacher in Salem, New Jersey, and, over four years,
> established schools in Liberia, where he met and married Alain Locke’s
> paternal grandmother, Sarah Shorter Hawkins, who was from Kentucky.
> Ishmael Locke later served as principal of the Institute for Colored Youth
> in Philadelphia, following his tenure as headmaster of a school in
> Providence, Rhode Island.23
> 
> Locke’s father, Pliny Locke, graduated from the Institute in 1867, and
> taught mathematics there for two years, after which he taught freedmen
> in North Carolina during the early years of Reconstruction. He also held a
> position as an accountant in the Freedman’s Bureau and the Freedman’s
> Bank, and was private secretary to General O. O. Howard. He was
> accepted to the Howard University Law Department (later called the
> School of Law), and graduated in 1874. That year, Pliny returned to
> Philadelphia as a clerk in the US Post Office. He died in 1891.24
> 
> Locke’s mother, Mary (Hawkins) Locke, was from a family of free blacks,
> among whom were soldiers who had fought with valor during the Civil
> War and missionaries to Africa under the Society of Friends. Mary
> Hawkins was a descendant of Charles Shorter, a free Negro who had
> fought in the War of 1812.25 She was educated at the [100] Institute for
> Colored Youth in Philadelphia. Mary Locke supported herself and her
> family as a teacher in Camden and Camden County. She was a disciple of
> the humanist and rabbi, Felix Adler (d. 1933), who believed that all
> religions had a common ethical basis, and who proposed the First
> Universal Races Congress held in 1911, to the American section of which
> he and W. E. B. Du Bois were elected co–secretaries.26 She joined the
> Society for Ethical Culture, which Adler founded in 1876. It was liberal
> Christopher Buck       Alain Locke and Cultural Pluralism              100
> 
> on racial matters. Adler invited Booker T. Washington and W. E. B. Du
> Bois to lecture at the Society, and encouraged black students to enrol in
> his own school.27 His mother’s role as both a teacher and a humanist
> probably left its imprint on Locke, who, in his psychograph, described
> himself as “more of a humanist than a pragmatist.”28
> 
> Locke had an Episcopal upbringing. During his youth, he was enamoured
> of Greek philosophy.29 Later he found, as Leonard Harris puts it, a
> “spiritual home” in the Bahá’í Faith.30 Mary Locke died on 23 April
> 1922.31 In a letter dated 28 June 1922 to Agnes Parsons, Locke disclosed
> that his mother had been favourably disposed to the Bahá’í Faith:
> “Mother’s feeling toward the cause [the Bahá’í Faith], and the friends
> [Bahá’ís] who exemplify it, was unusually receptive and cordial for one
> who had reached conservative years,—it was her wish that I identify
> myself more closely with it.” At the end of the letter, Locke speaks of the
> Bahá’í Faith as “this movement for human brotherhood.”32 Given the
> extraordinary demands placed upon him as an academic, lecturer, cultural
> critic, and educator, Locke lived up fairly well to his mother’s wish over
> the next two decades.
> 
> University education
> 
> Locke had a black middle class upbringing, but with an unusual
> education. In his infancy, Locke was stricken with rheumatic fever, which
> permanently damaged his heart (an inhibitive factor in Locke’s later
> activities as a Bahá’í). After the episode of rheumatic fever, Locke dealt
> with his “rheumatic heart” by seeking “compensatory satisfactions” in
> books, piano, and violin.33 Only six years old [101] when his father died,
> Locke was sent by his mother to one of the Ethical Culture schools,
> which was a pioneer, experimental program of Froebelian pedagogy (after
> Friedrich Froebel [d. 1852], who opened the first kindergarten). By the
> time he enrolled in Central High School of Philadelphia (1898–1902),
> Locke was already an accomplished pianist and violinist. From 1902 to
> 1904, Locke attended the Philadelphia School of Pedagogy.34 Locke
> graduated second in his class in 1904. That year, Locke entered Harvard
> Christopher Buck       Alain Locke and Cultural Pluralism              101
> 
> College as an honor student, where he was one of only a few African
> American undergraduates.
> 
> As a philosophy major, Locke studied under George Herbert Palmer, Jos-
> iah Royce, Hugo Münsterberg, and Ralph Barton Perry.35 Remarkably,
> Locke completed his four–year program in only three years. During this
> time, he was elected to Phi Beta Kappa. In 1907, Locke won the Bowdoin
> Prize—Harvard’s most prestigious academic award—for an essay that he
> wrote. Locke also passed a qualifying examination in Latin, Greek, and
> mathematics for the Rhodes scholarship, which had just been established
> in 1904. 36 Locke made history and headlines in May 1907 as America’s
> first—and astonishingly, until 1960, the only—African American Rhodes
> scholar. He graduated magna cum laude with his bachelor’s degree in
> philosophy that same year.37 On his Rhodes Scholarship, Locke studied at
> the University of Oxford from 1907 to 1910. “At Oxford,” Locke found
> himself “once more intrigued by the twilight of aestheticism.”38 An
> account of Locke’s experiences at Oxford is given by Jeffrey Stewart.39
> Rejected by five Oxford colleges, Locke was finally admitted to Hertford
> College.
> 
> As a Harvard senior in 1905, Locke had met Horace Kallen, a German–
> born Jew who was a graduate teaching assistant in a course on Greek
> philosophy—taught by George Santayana—in which Locke had enrolled.40
> This was the beginning of an association that lasted for many years.
> Kallen recorded some personal observations about Locke as a young man.
> Locke was “very sensitive, very easily hurt.” Recalling a conversation at
> Harvard, Kallen writes that Locke would strenuously insist that, “I am a
> human being,” that, “We are all alike Americans,” and that his “color
> ought not to make [102] any difference.”41 This is corroborated by a
> letter Locke wrote to his mother, Mary Locke, shortly after having been
> awarded his Rhodes scholarship, in which he insists: “I am not a race
> problem. I am Alain LeRoy Locke.”42 Unfortunately, in that era, colour
> made all the difference. Two years later, on a Sheldon traveling fellowship,
> Kallen ended up at Oxford at the same time as Locke.
> Christopher Buck       Alain Locke and Cultural Pluralism               102
> 
> At Oxford, recommencing their earlier conversation at Harvard, Locke
> asked Kallen, “[W]hat difference does the difference [of race] make?” “In
> arguing out those questions,” Kallen recounts, “the phrase ‘cultural
> pluralism’ was born.”43 While the term itself was thus coined by Kallen in
> this historic conversation with Locke,44 it was really Locke who developed
> the concept into a full–blown philosophical framework for the
> melioration of African Americans. Although distancing himself from
> Kallen’s purist and separatist conception of it, Locke was part of the
> cultural pluralist movement that flourished between the 1920s and the
> 1940s.
> 
> Kallen describes a racial incident over a Thanksgiving Day dinner hosted
> at the American Club at Oxford. Locke was not invited, because of
> “gentlemen from Dixie who could not possibly associate with Negroes.”45
> Elsewhere, Kallen is more blunt: “[W]e had a race problem because the
> Rhodes scholars from the South were bastards. So they had a
> Thanksgiving dinner which I refused to attend because they refused to
> have Locke.”46 In fact, even before they left for Oxford, these Southern
> Rhodes scholars had “formally appealed to the Rhodes trustees to
> overturn Locke’s award”47—but to no avail. “What got Kallen particularly
> upset, however,” according to Louis Menand, “was the insult to
> Harvard.”48
> 
> In support of this, Menand cites a letter to Harvard English professor
> Barrett Wendell, in which Kallen speaks of overcoming his admitted
> aversion to blacks through his loyalty to Harvard and by virtue of his
> personal respect for Locke. After having invited Locke, as his guest, to tea
> in lieu of the Thanksgiving dinner, Kallen writes that, “tho’ it is
> personally repugnant to me to eat with him [...] but then, Locke is a
> Harvard man and as such he has a definite claim on me.” 49 The irony is
> that Kallen harbored some of the very same prejudices as the Southern
> Rhodes scholars who shunned Locke, but not [103] to the same degree.
> “As you know, I have neither respect nor liking for his race,” Kallen
> writes, “—but individually they have to be taken, each on his own merits
> and value, and if ever a Negro was worthy, this boy is.”50 Locke was
> deeply wounded: “Now, the impact of that kind of experience left scars,”
> Christopher Buck       Alain Locke and Cultural Pluralism               103
> 
> remarks Kallen.51 And it wasn’t just the prejudice of his fellow American
> peers that so disaffected Locke, for he was almost as critical of British
> condescension as he was of American racism. In 1909, Locke published a
> critique of Oxford (“Oxford Contrasts”),52 particularly of its aristocratic
> pretensions. 53
> 
> He found social acceptance elsewhere. He belonged to the “Oxford
> Cosmopolitan Club,” which attracted a number of international students
> (“colonials”). According to Posnock, “This group soon became Locke’s
> intimate circle.” 54 For years to come, Locke nurtured these contacts
> through extensive correspondence. While “socially Anglophile” as he says
> in his psychograph, Locke found himself increasingly drawn to his sense
> of “race loyalty.”55 As evidence of this, Locke helped establish the African
> Union Society, and served as its secretary. Its constitution stated the
> society’s purpose was to cultivate “thought and social intercourse
> between its members as prospective leaders of the African Race.”56
> Indeed, it was at Oxford that a crucial transformation took place: At
> entrance, Locke saw himself as a cultural cosmopolitan; on exit, Locke
> resolved to be a race leader.57 Hence, in his psychograph, Locke describes
> himself as “a cultural cosmopolitan, but perforce an advocate of cultural
> racialism as a defensive countermove for the American Negro.”58 In a
> letter to his mother while he was at Oxford, Locke reflected: “Oxford is a
> training–school for the governing classes, and has taught your son its
> lesson.” 59 The Oxford experience steeled Locke’s sense of destiny as a
> non-chauvinistic “advocate of cultural racialism.”60
> 
> So acutely did the Thanksgiving Day dinner incident traumatize Locke
> that he left Oxford without taking a degree, and spent the next two years
> studying Kant at the University of Berlin and touring Eastern Europe.61
> Locke mentions in his psychograph that, while at Oxford, he became “but
> dimly aware of the new realism of the Austrian philosophy of value.”62
> During his study at the University of Berlin in 1910–1911, where he
> earned a B.Litt., Locke became conversant with the “Aus- [104] trian
> school” of anthropology, known as philosophical anthropology, under the
> tutelage of Franz Brentano, Alexius von Meinong, Christian Freiherr von
> Ehrenfels, Paul Natorp and others. In Paris, he studied under Bergson and
> Christopher Buck       Alain Locke and Cultural Pluralism              104
> 
> others. Locke preferred Europe to America. There were moments when
> Locke resolved never to return to the United States. Reluctantly, he did so
> in 1911. In 1912, with the help of Booker T. Washington, Locke joined the
> faculty of Howard University as a professor of English.63
> 
> In 1916–1917, Locke took a sabbatical as an Austin Teaching Fellow for
> one year at Harvard. During his graduate year there, Locke explored the
> ideas of such great thinkers as Hugo Münsterberg and von Ehrenfels, as
> well as Kant and Hegel.64 In his psychograph, Locke writes: “Verily
> paradox has followed me the rest of my days: at Harvard [as an
> undergraduate], clinging to the genteel tradition of Palmer, Royce and
> Münsterberg, yet attracted by the disillusion of Santayana and the radical
> protest of James: again I returned [as a graduate student] to work under
> Royce but was destined to take my doctorate in value theory under
> Perry.”65 Here, Locke discloses important links in his intellectual
> pedigree, which included the value theorists of Europe and the
> pragmatists of America.66
> 
> Locke’s dissertation, “The Problem of Classification in Theory of Value,”
> was an extension of a lengthy essay he had written at Oxford. It was
> Harvard mentor Josiah Royce who inspired Locke’s interest in the
> philosophy of value.67 Indeed, the underlying basis for Locke’s philosophy
> was values theory. Values theory constituted the “pivot of Locke’s
> thinking,” which was “his belief that human values are central in
> determining the course of social life.”68 For Locke, there are five value–
> types, each with corresponding “feeling–modes” which are, respectively:
> [105]
> Christopher Buck           Alain Locke and Cultural Pluralism                  105
> 
> Modal             Value          Value             Value         Value
> Quality           Type           Predicates        Polarity      Polarity
> 
> Positive      Negative
> 
> EXALTATION                       Holy–Unholy       Holiness      Sin
> (Awe–Worship)     Religious      Good–Evil         Salvation     Damnation
> 
> TENSION
> (Conflict–        Ethical/       Good–Bad          Conscience    Temptation
> Choice)           Moral          Right–Wrong       Right         Crime
> 
> Correct–
> ACCEPTANCE        Logical        Incorrect         Consistency   Contradiction
> 
> AGREEMENT         Scientific     True–False        Certainty     Error
> 
> Beautiful–Ugly
> REPOSE/           Aesthetic/     Fine–          Satisfaction     Disgust
> EQUILIBRIUM       Artistic       Unsatisfactory Joy              Distress
> 
> These value genres constitute Locke’s typology of values. The five “value
> provinces”69 are the battlefields of cultural conflicts and the common
> ground of mutual respect through value transposition. Values are “rooted
> in attitudes, not in reality and pertain to ourselves, not to the world.”70
> Moreover, Locke favored a “historical–comparative approach” as “the only
> proper […] way of understanding values, including particularly those of
> one’s own culture and way of life.” 71
> 
> In 1918, Locke was awarded his PhD in philosophy from Harvard. That
> same year, Locke became a Bahá’í. Locke was “perhaps the most deeply
> and exquisitely educated African American of his generation.” 72 This
> assessment is brought into even sharper relief in the sobering knowledge
> that, as late as 1935—a full generation after Locke—three–fourths of all
> blacks had not gone beyond a fourth–grade education.73 His “exquisite”
> education had prepared Locke for his historic role, which was—to cite his
> psychograph—to become “a philosophical mid–wife to a generation of
> younger Negro poets, writers, artists.”74
> Christopher Buck       Alain Locke and Cultural Pluralism              106
> 
> Academic career
> 
> As previously mentioned, in 1912 Locke joined the faculty of the Teachers
> College at Howard University as Assistant Professor of the [106]
> Teaching of English and Instructor in Philosophy and Education. There
> Locke taught literature, English, education, and ethics and, following
> president Lewis B. Moore’s retirement in 1912, ethics and logic at
> Howard University itself. In the spring of 1915, Locke proposed a course
> on the scientific study of race and race relations. But the white ministers
> on Howard University’s Board of Trustees rejected his petition. They
> opposed him because they felt that controversial subjects such as race had
> no place at a school whose mission was to educate black professionals.
> However, the Howard chapter of the National Association for the
> Advancement of Colored People (NAACP) and the Social Science Club
> sponsored a two–year extension course of public lectures, which Locke
> called, “Race Contacts and Inter-Racial Relations: A Study in the Theory
> and Practice of Race.”75 As the focus of his lectures, Locke’s social
> conception of race represented a further development of the thought of
> cultural anthropologist Franz Boas. Locke viewed Boas as a “major
> prophet of democracy.”76
> 
> Boas, who had significant contacts with Bahá’ís, effectively deconstructed
> the so–called “scientific racism” so prevalent at that time. He was widely
> regarded by intellectual historians as one who “did more to combat race
> prejudice than any other person in history.”77 Boas convincingly exploded
> the myth that race had any real basis in scientific fact. Racism was
> biological nonsense. Cultural anthropology sought to establish “culture”
> —as opposed to pseudo–scientific fictions of race—as a “central social
> science paradigm.”78 Locke began his lectures by asserting Boas’s
> distinction between racial difference and racial inequality. Racial differ-
> ence is biological; racial inequality is social.79
> 
> Locke himself had a three–tiered conception of race: (1) theoretical; (2)
> practical; (3) social.80 Like Boas, Locke held that race has no biological
> significance. At best, it is a social construct that can serve to enhance
> group identity. At worst, race can be used as a tool of oppression. Indeed,
> Locke foresaw the “ultimate biological destiny of the human stock” as
> Christopher Buck       Alain Locke and Cultural Pluralism             107
> 
> mulatto, or mixed, “like rum in the punch.”81 Sadly, Locke’s lectures had
> no influence on his philosophical contemporaries.82
> 
> [107] In June 1925, Locke was fired from Howard University by its white
> president, J. Stanley Durkee, for Locke’s support of an equitable faculty
> pay scale and for student demands to end mandatory chapel and ROTC.
> Following his dismissal, since he was no longer gainfully employed, Locke
> needed to find a patron for support of his intellectual work. He found his
> patron in Charlotte Mason, a wealthy white woman, with whom Locke
> faithfully corresponded until her death in 1940. He did not return to
> Howard University until 1928, when its first black president, Mordecai
> Johnson, reinstated him.83 Locke was subsequently promoted to the chair
> of the philosophy department. He is credited with having first introduced
> the study of anthropology, along with philosophy and aesthetics, into the
> curriculum at Howard. 84
> 
> In 1943, Locke was on leave as Inter–American exchange Professor to
> Haiti under the joint auspices of the American Committee for Inter–
> American Artistic and Intellectual Relations and the Haitian Ministry of
> Education. Towards the end of his stay there, Haitian President Lescot
> personally decorated Locke with the National Order of Honor and Merit,
> grade of Commandeur. 85 During the 1945–1946 academic year, Locke was
> Visiting Professor at the University of Wisconsin and in 1947 as Visiting
> Professor at the New School for Social Research. One of Locke’s former
> students at Wisconsin, Beth Singer, described her professor as follows:
> “Locke was a quiet, extremely scholarly, and well organized lecturer; I do
> not recall his speaking from notes.”86 After mentioning the fact that
> Locke was a Bahá’í, Singer recalls that “Dr. Locke seemed somehow aloof,
> and my friends and I were pretty much in awe of him.”87
> 
> On 28 May 1946, Locke gave a commencement address at University of
> Wisconsin High School. Beth Singer notes the subsequent newspaper
> story, “Dr. Locke Pleads for World Culture,” having quoted Locke as
> saying: “[W]e are fast approaching a stage in which culture will have to
> be international. This culture must have courtesy and reciprocity and
> must be aided by religious tolerance. […] And in order to have tolerance,
> Christopher Buck        Alain Locke and Cultural Pluralism               108
> 
> we must have every person intelligently aware of the common
> denominators of basic ideas and basic moral issues. That is necessary for
> basic unity.” 88 Interpreted through a [108] journalist’s ear, this report of
> Locke’s lecture is a way to understand Locke in more practical, mundane
> terms.89
> 
> From 1948–1952, Locke taught at City College of New York as well as
> continuing to teach at Howard University. In June 1953, Locke retired,
> and was awarded an Honorary Degree of Doctor of Humane Letters. He
> moved to New York in July.
> 
> The Harlem Renaissance
> 
> As “philosophical mid–wife to a generation of younger Negro poets,
> writers, [and] artists,”90 Alain Locke was the ideological mastermind
> behind the Harlem Renaissance, “an artistic explosion in the decade
> following World War I.”91 In its mythic and utopian sense, Harlem was
> the “race capital” and the largest “Negro American” community in the
> world. The Harlem Renaissance, consequently, presented itself as a
> microcosm or “self-portraiture” of black culture to America and to the
> world. The movement was an effusion of art borne of the experience of
> “even ordinary living” that has “epic depth and lyric intensity.”92 As
> editor of the anthology known as The New Negro, published in December
> 1925,93 Locke contributed the title essay, which served as a manifesto. In
> the new Preface to the reissue of The New Negro anthology in 1968,
> Robert Hayden (a well known Bahá’í and America’s first black poet–
> laureate) echoes Locke’s vision of the Harlem Renaissance as rooted in
> the transracial experience of America: “The Negro Renaissance was
> clearly an expression of the Zeitgeist, and its writers and artists were
> open to the same influences that their white counterparts were. What
> differentiated the New Negroes from other American intellectuals was
> their race consciousness, their group awareness, their sense of sharing a
> common purpose.” For Locke, art ought to contribute to the
> improvement of life—a pragmatist aesthetic principle Richard
> Shusterman calls “meliorism.”94
> Christopher Buck       Alain Locke and Cultural Pluralism             109
> 
> The Harlem Renaissance—known also as the “New Negro Movement”—
> sought to advance freedom and equality for blacks through art. It was
> “not just a great creative outburst in the stimulating atmosphere of the
> 1920s,” it was “actually a highly self–con- [109] scious modern artistic
> movement.”95 Locke himself spoke of a “race pride,” “race genius” and
> the “race–gift.”96 This “race pride” was to be cultivated through
> developing a distinctive culture, a hybrid of African and African American
> elements. 97 Locke had hoped the Harlem Renaissance would provide “an
> emancipating vision to America” and would advance “a new democracy in
> American culture.”98 But the Harlem Renaissance was more of an
> “aristocratic” than democratic approach to culture. 99 In principle, Locke
> was an avowed supporter of W. E. B. Du Bois’ idea of a cultural elite (the
> “Talented Tenth”100), but differed from Du Bois’s insistence that art serve
> as propaganda.101
> 
> Much criticized by other African Americans, Locke himself came to regret
> the Harlem Renaissance’s excesses of exhibitionism, after it had dissolved
> just a few years later.102 While the dazzling success of the movement was
> short–lived, it is said to have had a more subtle, yet enduring influence.
> According to Johnny Washington, the civil rights movement actually had
> its roots, in a subterranean way, in the Harlem Renaissance: “Locke was
> to the Harlem Renaissance what Martin Luther King, Jr., was to the civil
> rights movement of the 1960s.”103 In the end, however, the efflorescence
> of black culture failed to lead to civil and political rights for African
> Americans. It would take a Martin Luther King, Jr. to spearhead a
> movement that would achieve that goal.104
> 
> Eventually, as Posnock points out, “Locke enunciated his theory of
> cosmopolitanism post facto, after the Harlem Renaissance, his principal
> site of engagement, had largely run its course.”105 As Locke matured in
> his philosophical thinking, he favoured open identities over closed social
> ones.
> Christopher Buck       Alain Locke and Cultural Pluralism              110
> 
> Locke as a Bahá’í
> 
> Prior to the Harlem Renaissance, Locke had become a Bahá’í. As stated
> earlier, Locke embraced the Bahá’í Faith in 1918, the same year that he
> received his doctorate from Harvard. There is thus a certain synchronicity
> between Locke’s religion and his philosophy and, as I shall argue, a
> synergy between the two acted as a dynamic intensifier. Indeed, around
> the same time as he launched [110] the Harlem Renaissance, Locke made
> a pilgrimage to the Bahá’í world centre in Haifa, Israel (then Palestine),
> and travelled throughout the American South on a Bahá’í-sponsored
> lecture tour.
> 
> In his psychograph, Locke described himself as a “universalist in
> religion.”106 In a private communication, one leading authority on Locke
> recently expressed doubts as to his formal affiliation with the Bahá’í
> Faith. So, the question has to be asked: What direct proof, beyond
> circumstantial evidence, establishes Locke’s actual status as a Bahá’í?
> While he certainly associated with Bahá’ís and participated in Bahá’í
> events—over a number of years, in fact—was Locke ever formally on
> record as a declared Bahá’í? Moreover, did Locke’s involvement in the
> Bahá’í Faith influence his vocation as a philosopher? To address these
> questions, I will discuss Locke’s involvement in the Bahá’í Faith on the
> basis of archival as well as published documents.
> 
> [111] Since formal enrollment procedures did not exist at that time, no
> archival record of the exact date of Locke’s conversion has yet been found.
> The academic and religious literature on Locke could, at best, speculate as
> to the date of his conversion, which had, in itself, been the source of
> some doubt (outside of Bahá’í circles). In the course of my research and
> at my request, archivist Roger Dahl, searching the National Bahá’í
> Archives for documents relating to Locke, discovered the evidence
> scholars had been looking for: Dahl found a “Bahá’í Historical Record”107
> card that Locke had filled out in 1935, at the request of the National
> Spiritual Assembly, which, in conducting its Bahá’í census, had mailed
> the forms in triplicate to all Bahá’ís through their local spiritual
> assemblies and other channels.108 Locke was one of seven black
> respondents from the Washington, DC, Bahá’í community to complete
> Christopher Buck       Alain Locke and Cultural Pluralism              111
> 
> the card.109 In “Place of acceptance of Bahá’í Faith” is entered
> “Washington, DC.” Locke personally completed and signed the card,
> “Alain Leroy Locke” (in the space designated, “19. Signature”). Under
> item #13, “Date of acceptance of the Bahá’í Faith,” Locke entered the year
> “1918.”110 This date is significant in that it predates previous estimates
> that placed Locke’s conversion in the early 1920s.111
> 
> The discovery of Locke’s Bahá’í Historical Record card confirms what was
> already evident from a host of other sources. (Those sources, however,
> failed to pinpoint the date of Locke’s conversion.) The card does not,
> however, shed any light on the precise circumstances surrounding his
> conversion. It is quite possible that Locke came into contact with the
> Faith through W. E. B. Du Bois, who had personally met ‘Abdu’l-Bahá and
> had lectured at Green Acre (a Bahá’í school in southern Maine). It is just
> as likely that Locke encountered the Faith through Louis Gregory, or
> through one of the other Bahá’ís or friends of the Faith from among the
> circle of educated African Americans in Washington, DC. After all, 1918
> was just six years after ‘Abdu’l-Bahá had lectured at Howard University
> and at the NAACP convention in Chicago. In short, the Faith was widely
> known among the black intelligentsia, and Locke could have been
> introduced to it by any number of people.112
> 
> [112] Curiously, Locke’s name does not appear on an October 1920 list
> of the Washington, DC, Bahá’ís. But his name does appear in at least
> twenty subsequent lists,113 from March 1922 to 1951, showing a Bahá’í
> affiliation of at least thirty consecutive years, or thirty–four years dating
> back to 1918, and probably thirty–seven years, assuming Locke
> maintained his affiliation until his death in 1954. But the nature of his
> relationship to the Bahá’í Faith at the end of his life is also unknown,
> since in July 1953 Locke moved to New York, where there is no record of
> his contact with the Bahá’í community there. Locke died on 9 June 1954,
> in Washington, DC. On June 11th at Benta’s Chapel, Brooklyn, Locke’s
> memorial was presided over by Dr. Channing Tobias, with cremation
> following at Fresh Pond Crematory in Little Village, Long Island.114 The
> brief notice that appeared in the Bahá’í News in 1954 (No. 282, p. 11)
> Christopher Buck          Alain Locke and Cultural Pluralism                    112
> 
> states that: “Quotations from the Bahá’í Writings and Bahá’í Prayers were
> read at Dr. Locke’s funeral.”
> 
> To date, no systematic effort has been undertaken to reconstruct Locke’s
> life as a Bahá’í. A provisional chronology of Alain Locke’s Bahá’í activities
> may be outlined as follows:
> 
> 1915 Locke attends his first Bahá’í fireside (Washington, DC). 115
> 
> 1918 Locke accepts the Bahá’í Faith (Washington, DC).116
> 1921 Session Chair on Friday evening, 20 May 1921 (Washington, DC).
> Convention for Amity Between the Colored and White Races. 117
> 1922 Visits Bahá’ís of England.118
> 
> 1923 Pilgrimage to Haifa (Israel), 119 late Nov./early Dec. Service to
> youth (Washington, DC).120
> 
> 1924 Speaker at Third Racial Amity Convention, 28–30 March 1924
> (New York), along with Franz Boas, James Weldon Johnson, and
> Jane Addams, among others.121 Appointment by NSA to
> Interracial Amity Committee, 19 May 1924.122 Speaker at Fourth
> Racial Amity Convention, 22–23 October 1924. Second session,
> Locke presented, “Negro Art and Culture” (Philadelphia).123
> 
> 1925 Reappointment by NSA to Interracial Amity Committee. 124 [113]
> Speaker, “Universal Peace,” 5 July 1925, Bahá’í Congress, Green
> Acre (New York).125
> 1925–1926
> 
> Lecture tour throughout the American South.126 “Impressions of
> Haifa” published in the Bahá’í Year Book. 127 Special consultation
> with NSA on race relations (November, Chicago).128
> 1927 Speaker, “Cultural Reciprocity,” World Unity Conference, 27
> March 1927 (New Haven). 129 Lends name as contributing editor,
> World Unity: A Monthly Magazine Interpreting the Spirit of the New Age
> (New York). 130 Appointed to first National Inter-Racial Amity
> Committee (8 January 1927).131
> 
> Progress report on interracial work (December).132
> 1927–1928
> 
> Appointed to second National Inter-Racial Amity Committee.133
> Christopher Buck          Alain Locke and Cultural Pluralism                113
> 
> 1928–1929
> 
> Appointed to third National Inter-Racial Amity Committee.
> 1929 “Impressions of Haifa” reprinted in the Bahá’í World 1926–
> 1928.134
> 1929–1930
> 
> Appointed to fourth National Inter-Racial Amity Committee.135
> 1930 “Impressions of Haifa” reprinted in the Bahá’í World 1928–
> 1930.136
> Annual progress report on interracial work, 1929–1930.137 Invited
> by Shoghi Effendi to comment on working translation of Kitáb-i–
> Íqán. 138
> 
> 1931–1932
> Accepts appointment by NSA to fifth National Inter-Racial Amity
> Committee.139
> 1932 Speaker, Racial Amity Convention, 10 December 1932 (New
> York). Planned in cooperation with the National Urban League.140
> 1933 “Unity through Diversity: A Bahá’í Principle” published in Bahá’í
> World 1930–1932.141
> 1935 Appointed to Teaching Committee (Washington, DC).142 Reports
> on “stagnation” in the racial amity work (18 April 1935).143
> Speaker, “Abdul–Baha on World Peace,” 26 November 1935
> (Washington, DC).144 Resigns from Teaching Committee, 10
> December 1935 (Washington, DC).145
> 
> 1936 “The Orientation of Hope” published in Bahá’í World 1932–
> 1934.146 [114]
> 
> 1943 Speaker, 24 October 1943, Bahá’í Center/Youth Rally
> (Washington, DC). 147
> 
> 1944 Speaker, Thirty–Sixth Racial Amity Convention (New York).148
> Sends message to 20th anniversary of the passing of Woodrow
> Wilson (New York).149
> 1945 “Lessons in World Crisis” published in Bahá’í World 1940–1944.150
> 
> 1946 Speaker, “Democracy in Human Relations,” Rhode Island School
> of Design. (Jointly sponsored by Negro College Club and
> Providence, Rhode Island Bahá’ís.)151
> Christopher Buck         Alain Locke and Cultural Pluralism                     114
> 
> 1949 Name appears on list of Bahá’í eligible voters, 6 April 1949.152
> 
> 1949 Louis Gregory appeals to Locke to identify more fully with
> Faith.153
> 
> 1951 Louis Gregory again appeals to Locke to identify more fully with
> Faith.154
> 
> 1952 Locke invited to submit ideas for the “Centenary of Universal
> Religion.”155 Picture appears in article on the Bahá’í Faith in
> October 1952 issue of Ebony.
> 1954 Bahá’í writings and prayers read at his funeral.
> 
> From various indications in his unpublished correspondence, it seems
> that Locke’s Bahá’í activities were intense but sporadic. This is not to say
> that Locke’s engagement with the Faith was in any way superficial. His
> most profound experience as a Bahá’í was probably the event of his
> pilgrimage. Locke undertook two pilgrimages to Haifa. The Research
> Department at the Bahá’í World Centre has written that they occurred in
> 1923 and then again in 1934:
> 
> Dr. Locke visited the Bahá’í World Centre on at least two
> occasions. We have not, however, been able to find a record of the
> exact dates of his pilgrimages. Dr. Locke’s first visit appears to
> have taken place in November or early December 1923. As to the
> duration of his stay, we note that Dr. Locke, in a letter dated 5
> December 1923 written from Egypt, informs Shoghi Effendi of his
> arrival in Cairo. The letter also refers to “the memory of the past
> week at Haifa [which] is one of the happiest things I have to
> cherish—the experience itself being one of the most significant and
> beneficial experiences of my life.”156
> 
> [115] In a subsequent reference to the contents of Locke’s letter of 5
> December 1923, the Research Department relates:
> 
> As stated in the earlier summary, he shares his view that the best
> way for him to thank Shoghi Effendi is “to devote my best efforts
> to the Cause.” He also asks to be remembered with thanks to the
> friends until he has had a chance to write them individually.157
> Christopher Buck        Alain Locke and Cultural Pluralism             115
> 
> Locke’s second pilgrimage was incomplete, lasting just one day. For
> reasons not yet clear, Shoghi Effendi was unavailable at that time. In
> determining the date of his second pilgrimage to Haifa, key evidence
> comes from a letter Locke wrote to Shoghi Effendi on 1 August 1934,
> who received it on 18 August 1934. From the Research Department’s
> summary of it, we are told:
> 
> The letter is written on board the ship “Roma”, following Dr.
> Locke’s brief visit to Haifa and the Bahá’í Shrines. He spent “a
> beautiful day” and visited “all three shrines” in the company of
> Ruhi Afnan, and as was the case on his first visit some 10 years
> ago, he was “deeply inspired, and spiritually refreshed.” Dr. Locke
> expresses pleasure at seeing the beauty and care with which
> Shoghi Effendi has developed the Bahá’í properties on Mount
> Carmel and in ‘Akká, and he comments that the Guardian’s
> “nurture of the principles in concrete symbols is a great
> contribution.” He states that he plans to share his impressions
> with the friends.158
> 
> Those impressions, if written, were never published. But his
> “Impressions of Haifa” (1924, 1926, 1929, 1930), approved by Shoghi
> Effendi as “very good and sufficient”159 and first published in Star of the
> West 15.1 (1924): 13–14, immortalized his first pilgrimage. Locke
> continues his letter, expressing his regrets over having missed the
> opportunity to see Shoghi Effendi:
> 
> Dr. Locke laments not having had the opportunity of seeing Shoghi
> Effendi. However, the “deciding factor” was “the chance of another
> visit, even though a glimpse.” He hopes to return for a lengthier
> visit “as soon as practically possible.”160
> 
> [116] Obviously, his contemplated return for a lengthier visit never
> materialized. The next part of Locke’s letter clearly indicates what was on
> his mind:
> Christopher Buck        Alain Locke and Cultural Pluralism            116
> 
> He indicates that he would have welcomed the chance to talk to
> Shoghi Effendi about some of the difficulties under which he had
> been working during the last several years. He mentions the
> impact on him of the “factionalism of race.” He explains that as a
> teacher, he has tried to be “a modifying influence to radical
> sectionalism and to increasing materialistic trends—and in this
> indirect way to serve the Cause and help forward the universal
> principles,” which he supports without reservation. He
> foreshadows seeking guidance from the Guardian on this matter in
> the future.161
> 
> In his reminiscences of that experience, published as “Impressions of
> Haifa” (1926, 1929, 1930),162 Locke stressed the importance of being able
> to see a religion in its human incarnation, “without the mediation of
> symbols.”163 In Locke’s eyes, Shoghi Effendi was the living embodiment
> of all Bahá’í virtues: “For after all the only enlightened symbol of a
> religious or moral principle is the figure of a personality endowed to
> perfection with its qualities and necessary attributes.”164 Describing
> Shoghi Effendi as a “gifted personality,” Locke was privileged to see his
> “[r]efreshingly human”165 side as well. The two enjoyed a long walk and
> conversation in the Bahá’í gardens. For Locke, his “Impressions of Haifa”
> were deep and lasting.
> 
> Interracial unity activities
> 
> Locke’s universalism included social demonstrations of interracial unity,
> as exemplified by his participation in a “Convention for Amity Between
> the Colored and White Races” which took place in Washington, DC, 19–
> 21 May 1921. This gathering was organized by Agnes S. Parsons (a white
> woman prominent in Washington high society) at the instruction of
> ‘Abdu’l-Bahá who, during her second pilgrimage to Haifa (1920), said to
> her: “I want you to arrange in Washington a convention for unity between
> the [117] white and colored people.”166 ‘Abdul–Bahá considered this
> meeting to have had paramount symbolic and social importance.167
> Christopher Buck        Alain Locke and Cultural Pluralism              117
> 
> The conference was a spectacular success. As Leonard Harris notes: “The
> Bahá’í belief in the unity of humanity was expressed in practical terms by
> inter-racial meetings (then a fairly unusual situation in Christian
> America).” 168 Retrospectively, in its 1929–1930 annual report, the nine–
> member Interracial Amity Committee, of which Locke was an active
> participant, assessed the significance of the first Amity Convention in
> 1921, Washington, DC: “The convention of the colored and white was in
> reality a great work, because if the question of the colored and white
> should not be resolved[,] it will be productive of great dangers in [the]
> future for America. Therefore the Confirmations [sic] of the Kingdom of
> Abha shall continually reach any person who strives after the conciliation
> of the colored and the white.” 169 ‘Abdu’l-Bahá subsequently praised Agnes
> Parsons as “the first person to raise the banner of the unity of the white
> and the colored.”170
> 
> Locke saw considerable value in these race amity conferences. Despite his
> delicate heart and the considerable demands on him as a lecturer, the
> committee work and participation in these gatherings was worth his time
> and effort. According to archivist Roger Dahl, “Locke was a member of
> the national Race amity committee for at least five years between 1925
> and 1932.”171 In 1931, Locke expressed his “hope next year to be called
> upon to participate more actively in the Amity conferences and
> consultations” and registered confidence that “the work is gradually
> reaching wider and wider circles.”172
> 
> On a sombre note, it appears that Locke became somewhat pessimistic
> about the future prospects of interracial unity in the Washington, DC,
> Bahá’í community. In a letter dated 18 April 1935 to Horace Holley,
> secretary–general of the National Spiritual Assembly of the Bahá’ís of the
> United States and Canada, Locke wrote:
> 
> Since I last saw you, I have had two occasions to meet with the
> local friends, and have very effectively renewed my contacts with
> them. This has also given me occasion to make some comparisons
> between [118] the work as I knew it rather intimately before and
> as it seems to be going now. I regret to have to call your attention
> Christopher Buck        Alain Locke and Cultural Pluralism              118
> 
> to what seems to me to be something approaching stagnation in
> the inter-racial work at Washington. This but confirms a feeling
> that I have had all along for several years that unfortunate
> personality influences have crept into the situation and decidedly
> hampered the development of this very important practical phase
> of the Cause. For a considerable while I thought this was my own
> personal bias concerning Mrs. Haney and Mrs. Cook who have
> pioneered so much in this field and have now for a long while
> exerted a control in it which threatens to become a monopolistic
> and hampering one.173
> 
> Mariam Haney (Mary Ida Haney [Parkhurst]) was mother of future Hand
> of the Cause Paul Haney. She adopted “Mariam” as her name when
> ‘Abdu’l-Bahá addressed her so in a tablet. Active for many years in the
> Washington, DC, Bahá’í community, she served on various national
> committees and was an editor of The Bahá’í World.174 There are indications
> that Locke’s estimate of Mariam Haney was initially positive. In a letter to
> Agnes Parsons, Locke writes: “I learned with great satisfaction from Mrs.
> Haney of the plans for the Amity Conference in New York. I shall most
> certainly attend, and if I can in any way be of further assistance, please
> feel free to call upon me.”175 Assuming that Haney was centrally involved
> in planning the event, Locke’s enthusiasm may be construed as an
> oblique endorsement of her role. Coralie F. Cook was an African–
> American Washingtonian Bahá’í who was a professor at Howard
> University like her husband.176 In November 1926, the National Spiritual
> Assembly invited a group of black and white Bahá’ís for a special
> consultation on race. Mariam Haney and Coralie F. Cook and were both in
> that group, as was Alain Locke himself. How and why Locke became
> disaffected with these two mainstays of the race amity movement is not
> clear.
> 
> Locke was critical of other leading Washingtonian Bahá’í figures as well.
> By 1931, Locke had complained of “the deceptive platitudes of some of
> our friends, including even Dr. Leslie P. Hill.”177 This is a particularly
> stunning statement, as “Professor” Leslie Pickney Hill, who was the black
> principal of the Cheyney Institute (a teacher training school) had spoken
> Christopher Buck         Alain Locke and Cultural Pluralism                119
> 
> at the Philadelphia convention of 22–23 October 1924 and was among
> those invited by the National Spiritual Assembly in November 1926 to a
> special consultation on race.178
> 
> [119] Another dismaying development for Locke may have been the
> appointment of a predominantly white amity committee for the 1933–
> 1934 Bahá’í year—an appointment that, evidently, excluded Locke
> himself.179 It was around this time that the race amity initiatives went
> into decline, as chronicled by Gayle Morrison.180 The last race amity
> committee was appointed in 1935–1936. In July 1936, the committee, in
> the words of Morrison, “unknowingly wrote its own epitaph” in stating:
> “The National Assembly has appointed no race amity committee this
> year. Its view is that race unity activities have sometimes resulted in
> emphasizing race differences rather than their unity and reconciliation
> within the Cause.”181 With the demise of the race amity committees, it
> would seem that Locke’s special services were no longer needed. Finally,
> in 1941, Locke requested that the local spiritual assembly should
> henceforth regard him as an “isolated believer,” explaining:
> 
> I naturally am reluctant to sever a spiritual bond with the Bahai
> [sic] community, for I still hold to a firm belief in the truth of the
> Bahai principles. However, I am not in a position, and haven[‘]t
> been for years, to participate very practically or even with the
> fullest enthusiasm, in the collective activities of the local friends.
> One of my reservations is, of course, the seeming impossibility of
> any really crusading attack on the practises of racial prejudice in
> spite of the good will and fair principles of the local believers. They
> are not to blame perhaps for their ineffectualness any more than
> we, who are in more practical movements[,] are for our absorption
> of time and energy in what we regard as more immediately
> important.182
> 
> Further contributions to the Bahá’í community
> 
> The brightest moments in Alain Locke’s public Bahá’í life were three: (1)
> the first Race Amity Conference, in which Locke presided [120] as a
> Christopher Buck        Alain Locke and Cultural Pluralism               120
> 
> session chair on 20 May 1921; (2) his presentation at the Racial Amity
> Convention in Harlem, 10 December 1932; and (3) his lecture,
> “Democracy in Human Relations” at the Rhode Island School of Design
> in 1946. In his 1933 report on behalf of the National Bahá’í Committee
> for Racial Amity, Louis Gregory was delighted with Locke’s public
> declaration of his Bahá’í identity and his open endorsement of its
> principles:
> 
> For a number of years, in fact since the first amity convention in
> Washington, Dr. Alain Locke has during the years been a
> contributor to the work of the Cause, without formally identifying
> himself with it. Perhaps the most significant feature of this
> conference was his strong, eloquent and beautiful address, in
> which he took a decided and definite stand within the ranks of the
> Cause. This attitude we believe will increasingly with the years
> influence people of capacity to investigate the mines of spiritual
> wealth to be found in the Revelation of Bahá’u’lláh. It will also
> make what has long been a grandly useful life more glorious,
> serviceable and influential than ever before. It is to be hoped that
> the friends both locally and nationally, will largely make use of the
> great powers of Dr. Locke both in the teaching and administrative
> fields of the Cause. He has made the pilgrimage to Haifa. The
> Master in a Tablet praised him highly and it is known that the
> Guardian shares his love for our able brother.183
> 
> Louis Gregory’s disclosure that the illustrious philosopher had received a
> “tablet” (letter) from ‘Abdu’l-Bahá—presumably in response to a letter
> that Locke had sent—is yet another important piece of the puzzle in
> reconstructing this lesser known dimension of Locke’s life. During the
> ministry of ‘Abdu’l-Bahá, it was customary for new converts to write
> directly to “the Master” as a testimony of faith. This was more of a
> precedent than a protocol, yet the practice was widespread enough to
> warrant the probability that Locke wrote to ‘Abdu’l-Bahá in 1918, the year
> Locke indicated that he had become a Bahá’í. Another bright moment in
> Locke’s public life as a Bahá’í took place in 1946 during a visit to Rhode
> Island, reported in Bahá’í news:
> Christopher Buck        Alain Locke and Cultural Pluralism               121
> 
> When Dr. Alain Locke was scheduled as a speaker for the Rhode
> Island School of Design’s exhibition of Negro art, the Negro
> College [121] Club and the Providence Bahá’ís held a joint
> meeting for which Dr. Locke talked on “Democracy in Human
> Relations” and spoke of being a Bahá’í. There were twenty non–
> Bahá’ís present in spite of bad weather. His talk was reported and
> the next Sunday’s program was announced in both the Urban
> League Bulletin and the Providence Chronicle.184
> 
> Of Locke’s travel teaching tour in the southern USA, we know relatively
> little. This lecture tour took place at some point between October 1925
> and spring 1926. This can be inferred from a statement that appeared in
> the Bahá’í News Letter: “Dr. Alain Locke of Washington, DC, who delivered
> one of the notable addresses at the 1925 Convention in Green Acre, is
> now making an extensive teaching journey into the Southern States
> which will bring him in touch with the most influential audiences and
> individuals. Reports of this journey will be published from time to
> time.”185 The description of Locke’s address at the seventeenth annual
> convention and Bahá’í Congress deserves notice:
> 
> Dr. Alain LeRoy Locke of Washington, DC, delivered a polished
> address, portraying the great part which America can play in the
> establishment of world peace, if alive to its opportunity. The
> working out of social democracy can be accomplished here. To this
> end we should not think in little arcs of experience, but in the big,
> comprehensive way. Let our country reform its own heart and life.
> Needed reforms cannot be worked out by the action of any one
> group, but a fine sense of cooperation must secure universal
> fellowship. He praised Green Acre, which he declared to be an
> oasis in the desert of materiality. He urged all who were favored by
> this glorious experience to carry forth its glorious message and
> thus awaken humanity. In final analysis, peace cannot exist
> anywhere without existing everywhere.186
> Christopher Buck       Alain Locke and Cultural Pluralism              122
> 
> Whether due to Locke’s disinclination to have such publicity or for some
> other reason, only one other report of Locke’s trip appear to have been
> published in the Bahá’í News Letter. After referring to the publication of
> The New Negro “by Dr. Alain Locke, our brilliant Bahá’í brother of
> Washington, DC and New York City,” the article simply states:
> “Altogether inadequate has been the mention in previous issues of the
> News Letter of the remarkable work carried on [122] throughout the
> South during the winter by Mr. Louis Gregory, Mr. Howard MacNutt, Dr.
> Locke and Mrs. Louise Boyle. These teachers, in cooperation with the
> Spiritual Assembly of Miami and many Bahá’í groups and isolated
> believers, held an astounding number of meetings from autumn to spring,
> in churches, schools clubs [sic] and private homes, with the result that a
> powerful concentration of spiritual forces was focussed on this great and
> important territory.” 187
> 
> According to Gayle Morrison, this travel teaching trip began in October
> 1925. There were seven Bahá’í groups in Florida at that time. Morrison
> notes that “successful meetings” were held in Miami, Jacksonville and St.
> Augustine. Evidently, a new spiritual assembly was formed in Miami as
> one of the signal outcomes of this teaching trip, through the combined
> efforts of white Bahá’í “homefront pioneers” and the itinerant teachers.
> While it is possible that Alain Locke may have been instrumental in
> helping to establish the Miami Bahá’í council, which may have well been
> the first spiritual assembly in the South, fresh evidence suggests that the
> Miami assembly formed in November 1925.188 How far into the spring of
> 1926 the trip lasted is not certain. The published accounts of this
> teaching trip are too general. These leave us with very little idea as to
> what actually happened.
> 
> However, in the transcript for the 1926 Convention, in a report from El
> Fleda Spaulding, chairperson of the National Teaching Committee, on
> recent Bahá’í efforts in the South, there is reference to Locke that
> indicates what his primary role may well have been: “[T]he delicate
> problems here are being ably handled by Mrs. Boyle, Mr. Gregory and Mr.
> MacNutt. Dr. Locke also expects to speak before a number of the
> Universities.”189 Some other details on Locke appear in the Southern
> Christopher Buck        Alain Locke and Cultural Pluralism              123
> 
> Regional Teaching Committee Report, which was read into the
> transcript.190 These details, which have recently been brought to light, are
> as follows:
> 
> An important contribution to the teaching service has been
> rendered during the past few months by Dr. Alain Locke of
> Washington, who is regarded by many as the outstanding scholar
> of the Negro race in America. Having been invited to address many
> universities and col- [123] leges in various parts of the country[,]
> Dr. Locke consented to present the Bahai Message to educators and
> student groups, and has been able to touch the best Negro
> institutions in the Middle South and Northern Florida. Before
> proceeding South he was called to the middle West and was thus
> enabled to give the message at the Dunbar Forum of Oberlin, at
> Wilberforce University and at Indianapolis, Cleveland and
> Cincinnati.
> 
> Dr. Locke has been everywhere received with marked distinction.
> He writes of the deep spiritual refreshment experienced through
> his labours for the Blessed Cause. Through special arrangement
> with the President, Mrs. Mary Bethune[,] he will make a return
> visit to the Daytona Industrial Institute in May, and at that time
> will visit Mr. Dorsey of Miami as his guest to confer on educational
> plans for the new city. He will also visit the Hungerford School
> near Orlando in which Mr. Irving Bachellor and other distinguished
> people are actively interested. 191
> 
> Reference here to “Mr. Dorsey” deserves comment. According to the
> report, D. A. Dorsey was the owner of the Dorsey Hotel, where weekly
> Bahá’í meetings were held. The report states:
> 
> Its owner, Mr. D. A. Dorsey, is a colored financier, highly regarded
> by all the promoters of Greater Miami. Having accumulated more
> than five million dollars, he is now actively engaged in founding a
> Model Negro City near Miami, in which he has donated a site for a
> Mashrak el Askar [Bahá’í House of Worship].
> Christopher Buck         Alain Locke and Cultural Pluralism               124
> 
> It is the desire of Mr. Dorsey to use his wealth for the advancement
> of his race and he will build schools, a university for the arts and
> sciences, a hospital, modern administration buildings and other
> institutions for the practical and cultural progress of his people. He
> is a man of the highest moral character, simple and unassuming,
> and respected by all—a noble-hearted[,] God-directed man.192
> 
> The report also confirms that Dorsey enrolled as a Bahá’í, having
> “accepted the teachings whole–heartedly through the labors of Mr. Louis
> Gregory and Mr. [Howard] MacNutt and are constantly bringing people of
> all races to hear the Glad Tidings.” 193 The fate of this model city, and the
> status of the land he endowed for a Bahá’í temple, as well as solid
> information on Dorsey himself, require further investigation.
> 
> [124] One of the most surprising and rewarding outcomes of my archival
> research was the discovery of yet another contribution Locke had made to
> the Faith—one that, in fact, had no connection with race relations
> whatever. Among the Alain Locke Papers, preserved in the Moorland–
> Spingarn Research Center at Howard University, were found two letters
> to Locke, written on behalf of Shoghi Effendi by his secretary at that time,
> Ruhi Afnan. These letters are dated 15 February and 5 July 1930. The first
> begins: “Dear Dr. Locke: Shoghi Effendi has been lately spending his
> leisure hours translating the Book of Iqan for he considers it to be the key
> to a true understanding of the Holy Scriptures, and can easily rank as one
> of the most, if not the most, important thing that Bahá’u’lláh revealed
> explaining the basic beliefs of the Cause. He who fully grasps the purport
> of that Book can claim to have understood the Cause.”
> 
> The “Book of Iqan” is better known in English as the Book of Certitude
> (Kitáb-i Íqán), and has achieved distinction as Bahá’u’lláh’s preeminent
> doctrinal text.194 In efforts to perfect his working translation of the Íqán
> from Persian to English, the Guardian called upon Locke as the person
> “best fitted to render him [Shoghi Effendi] an assistance” in giving
> critical feedback on the translation itself. Shoghi Effendi requested that
> Locke “go over it [the translation] carefully, studying every sentence—its
> Christopher Buck        Alain Locke and Cultural Pluralism               125
> 
> structure as well as choice of words—and giving him your [Locke’s]
> criticism as well as constructive suggestions that would make it more
> lucid, English [sic] and forceful.” He adds, “Shoghi Effendi is fully aware
> of the many duties you have and how pressing your time is, and had he
> known of an equally fitting person he would surely have saved you the
> trouble. Yet he finds himself to be compelled.” The first letter
> accompanied the first half of the translation which Shoghi Effendi decided
> to send to Locke. The second half was mailed later.
> 
> Locke did as Shoghi Effendi requested. The second letter (5 July 1930)
> was sent to Locke to acknowledge his editorial assistance: “Though they
> were not so many, he [Shoghi Effendi] found the suggestions you gave
> most helpful.” Moreover, Ruhi Afnan reported that: “Shoghi Effendi has
> already incorporated your suggestions and sent his manuscript to the
> National Spiritual Assembly [of the [125] United States and Canada] for
> publication.” A most interesting comment follows: “It naturally depends
> upon that body and the reviewing and publishing committees to decide
> whether it should come out immediately or not.” The potential value of
> reaching the Western intelligentsia was noted as well: “The most
> important service that can now be rendered to the Cause is to put the
> writings of Bahá’u’lláh in a form that would be presentable to the
> intellectual minds of the West. Shoghi Effendi’s hope in this work has
> been to encourage others along this line.” At the end of the letter, Shoghi
> Effendi wrote, in his own hand, the following:
> 
> My dear co–worker:
> 
> I wish to add a few words expressing my deep appreciation of your
> valued suggestions in connexion with the translation of the Iqan. I
> wish also to express the hope that you may be able to lend
> increasing assistance to the work of the Cause, as I have always
> greatly admired your exceptional abilities and capacity to render
> distinguished services to the Faith. I grieve to hear of the weakness
> of your heart which I trust may through treatment be completely
> restored. I often remember you in my prayers and ever cherish the
> hope of welcoming you again in the Master’s home.
> Christopher Buck        Alain Locke and Cultural Pluralism                126
> 
> Your true brother,
> 
> Shoghi.
> 
> Locke wrote four essays published in six volumes of The Bahá’í World,
> which was not only a record of the development of the Faith
> internationally, but was its official international voice as well (prior to the
> establishment of the Bahá’í International Community). Leonard Harris is
> currently the world’s leading authority on Alain Locke. In his collection of
> Locke’s philosophical writings, two of Locke’s Bahá’í World essays are
> anthologized: “The Orientation of Hope” (1936)195 and “Unity through
> Diversity: A Bahá’í Principle” (1933).196 “‘The Orientation of Hope’,”
> according to Harris, “is a definitive expression of Locke’s belief in the
> Bahá’í Faith and its focus on the universal principles definitive of spiritual
> faiths.”197 Locke’s other two Bahá’í World essays were: “Impressions
> [126] of Haifa” (1926, 1929, 1930) and “Lessons in World
> Crisis” (1945).
> 
> These essays profile Locke’s perspective as a Bahá’í, even though we have
> such sketchy details about his Bahá’í activities. How he came to write
> these essays, which evidently were invited, is an important consideration.
> Although Shoghi Effendi certainly supervised its publication and
> approved its contents, normally the editors of The Bahá’í World issued
> invitations to write articles. However, Shoghi Effendi personally contacted
> Locke by cable, inviting him to contribute his final Bahá’í World essay:
> “WOULD GREATLY APPRECIATE ARTICLE FROM YOUR PEN ON
> ANY ASPECT FAITH FOR CENTENARY ISSUE BAHÁ’Í WORLD
> VOLUME NINE LOVING GREETINGS SHOGHI RABBANI.”198
> 
> In his essay, “The Orientation of Hope,” Locke gives some fraternal advice
> to Bahá’ís. This statement serves as eloquent testimony to the strength of
> his own convictions as a Bahá’í:
> 
> Must we not as true Bahá’í believers in these times embrace our
> principles more positively, more realistically, and point everywhere
> possible our assertion of the teachings with a direct challenge?
> […] Especially does it seem to me to be the opportunity to bring
> Christopher Buck        Alain Locke and Cultural Pluralism              127
> 
> the Bahá’í principles again forcefully to the attention of statesmen
> and men of practical affairs […]. Is it not reasonably clear to us
> that now is the time for a world–wide, confident and determined
> offensive of peaceful propaganda for the basic principles of the
> Cause of brotherhood, peace and social justice? […] And to do that
> powerfully, effectively, the Bahá’í teaching needs an inspired
> extension of the potent realism of ‘Abdu’l-Bahá by which he
> crowned and fulfilled the basic idealism of Bahá’u’lláh. 199
> 
> A proper understanding of Locke’s Bahá’í World essays—especially “The
> Orientation of Hope” and “Unity through Diversity: A Bahá’í Principle”—
> requires a background in Locke’s philosophical thought, which is outlined
> briefly in the next section.
> 
> Locke as philosopher
> 
> While his formal training in philosophy was followed by a long and
> distinguished teaching career as an academic, with numerous publi-
> [127] cations to his credit, Locke did not publish a single article on
> philosophy until he was fifty years old, 200 seventeen years after he had
> become a Bahá’í. This significant fact accords with Locke’s psychograph in
> which he disclaims having ever been “a professional philosopher.”201
> Notwithstanding, his work during this later period articulates his mature
> thinking as both a professor of philosophy as well as a philosopher by
> training. Locke’s first formal philosophical essay, “Values and
> Imperatives,” appeared in 1935. This marked the year that saw his
> “reentry into the doing of philosophy directly”202 and thus back into the
> world of grand theory.
> 
> What role did philosophy play in Locke’s life? What was its purpose?
> What had Locke hoped to accomplish through the vehicle of philosophy?
> In a retrospective look at his career in Howard University, Locke wrote
> that his “main objectives” had been “to use philosophy as an agent for
> stimulating critical mindedness in Negro youth, to help transform
> segregated educational missions into centers of cultural and social
> leadership, and to organize an advance guard of creative talent for cultural
> Christopher Buck        Alain Locke and Cultural Pluralism               128
> 
> inspiration and prestige.” Moreover, he wanted to link “the discussion of
> colonial problems with the American race situation, toward the
> internationalization of American Negro thought and action.”203 Indeed, as
> Michael Winston observes: “With the dramatic rise of racial
> consciousness in the former European colonies, Locke’s influence became
> internationalized.”204
> 
> Locke was deeply influenced by pragmatism, a contemporary
> philosophical movement that countered both idealism and realism.
> “Pragmatism is an account of the way people think,” according to
> Menand, “the way they come up with ideas, form beliefs, and reach
> decisions.”205 It correlates truth and experience, self and world.
> Experience is real, and not a mere mental phenomenon; a dynamic
> interaction between self and world. Knowledge derives from experience
> and truth is transformed by experience. Pragmatism is process. It
> advocates a method. Ideas are relative to time and place. It purports that
> the truth of a proposition depends on its practical value, not on any
> intrinsic meaning. Like the scientific method, knowledge can be tested by
> experience. This has profound cultural [128] implications. If truth is
> judged by its consequences, it cannot be divorced from the practical and
> moral. America, it follows, is accountable to itself.
> 
> The originators of pragmatism include the trinity of Charles Sanders
> Peirce (d. 1914), who claimed to have “invented” pragmatism and
> expounded its theory of meaning, William James (d. 1910) who
> developed pragmatism’s theory of truth, and John Dewey (d. 1952), who
> contributed his notion of “instrumentalism” to the movement.206 W. E. B.
> Du Bois had been a student of James.207 Locke had a passion for William
> James,208 although he rejected James’ radical empiricism. Both Du Bois
> and Locke read James’ Oxford lectures, A Pluralistic Universe (1909), as a
> philosophical allegory for making a “vital connection between pluralism
> and democracy.” 209
> 
> Pragmatists put a premium on “experience.” They sought to test the truth
> of ideas in actual experience as a “pragmatic” indicator. They also felt that
> their philosophical ideas had ethical and political consequences.210
> Christopher Buck        Alain Locke and Cultural Pluralism                129
> 
> Moreover, John Dewey felt that pragmatism provided a philosophical
> basis for democracy, which he viewed as an ethical principle that
> extended beyond politics to economics and social interactions as well.211
> Despite his influences, Locke pursued an independent course by
> deforming the master code of symbols that dominated the world of
> American pragmatism and reforming them by means of what Houston
> Baker, Jr. called a “radical marronage” 212 or reorientation, in order that
> philosophy might have something meaningful to say about race relations.
> 
> Pragmatism gave birth to cultural pluralism, which Locke espoused with
> almost religious zeal. “Cultural pluralism” (coined by Horace Kallen in
> conversation with Locke and known now as multiculturalism) was
> Locke’s philosophical faith, “a new Americanism,” as he called it.213
> Compensating for liberalism’s fixation on freedom, cultural pluralism
> provides a philosophical foundation for unity in diversity by extending the
> idea of democracy beyond individuals and individual rights to the equal
> recognition of cultural, racial and other group rights. During the 1920s,
> the question as to what constitutes American identity was “a national
> preoccupation.” 214 Posnock states that “pragmatism’s answer” was
> “cultural pluralism,” as [129] opposed to the coercions of assimilation—
> the pressure to conform—in the American paradigm of the “melting
> pot.”215 “American democracy for Locke,” writes Leonard Harris, “was
> hardly a finished social experiment, especially since it excluded most of
> the population from participation.”216 For Locke, cultural pluralism
> provided the social philosophy most needed by democracy,217 not just in
> America, but across the world. Cultural pluralism was thus “the
> philosophic faith that Alain Locke became a notable spokesman for.”218
> As his primary philosophical framework, cultural pluralism would make
> possible a general theory of “unity in diversity.”219
> 
> Locke’s philosophy is really a fusion of pluralism and relativism, as seen
> in the synonyms he uses for it. “Cultural pluralism” is variously referred
> to in Locke’s writings as “cultural relativism,” “critical relativism” as well
> as “value relativism.”220 Locke’s use of technical terms is not, however,
> always consistent. As Winston Napier points out, Locke’s “semantic
> inconsistency clouds his argument.”221 Strictly speaking, pluralism is a
> Christopher Buck        Alain Locke and Cultural Pluralism               130
> 
> distinctive concept, while relativism is a normative one.222 As Mason
> observes: “It is precisely the separation between pluralism and relativism
> that explains much of America’s intolerance. For a plurality of ethnic
> groups simply cannot exist within a society that refuses to recognize the
> relative and functional nature of values and institutions. Locke’s critique
> of democracy centers around democracy’s need to develop a relativistic
> perspective to fit its pluralistic society.”223 Cultural pluralism has since
> evolved into what is now known as “multiculturalism.”224 Recently, Locke
> has been acknowledged as “the father of multiculturalism.”225
> 
> It is clear that Locke wanted to make a contribution to world peace as
> well. If intellectuals were inspired with the same vision and could agree
> on a common paradigm, their leadership had the potential to further that
> aim. In his essay, “Cultural Relativism and Ideological Peace,”226 Locke
> states: “Cultural relativism may become an important source for
> ideological peace” and, indeed, may serve “as a possible ideological
> peacemaker.”227 “Cultural relativism” Locke believed, “can become a very
> constructive philosophy by way of integrating values and value
> systems.” 228 “In looking for cultural [130] agreements on a world scale,”
> Locke further explained, “we shall probably have to content ourselves
> with agreement of the common–denominator type and with ‘unity in
> diversity’ discovered in the search for unities of a functional rather than a
> content character, and therefore of a pragmatic rather than an ideological
> sort.”229 In other words, Locke has proposed a formula for promoting
> cultural relativism as a “realistic instrument of social reorientation and
> cultural enlightenment.”230
> 
> Locke gave specific reasons as to why this program might work. For
> Locke, cultural relativism had “constructive potentialities”231 and offered
> new hope for ideological peace. For relativism to work, it first had to be
> implemented. Just how would one begin to carry out a program of
> cultural relativity? Locke had such a plan. Its rationale is developed
> alongside its strategy. There were three stages in his plan, each of which
> was intended to have a calculated, cumulative result. The three stages
> were: (1) cultural equivalence; (2) reciprocity; and (3) limited cultural
> convertibility. An explanation of these three stages is as follows:
> Christopher Buck         Alain Locke and Cultural Pluralism               131
> 
> “Equivalence”: In his efforts to universalize philosophy, Locke sought to
> promote intercultural understanding, and thought that scholars
> (especially “cultural anthropologists”) ought to lead the way—through a
> systematic process of conceptual translation based on formal comparison:
> 
> The principle of cultural equivalence, under which we would more
> widely press the search for functional similarities in our analyses
> and comparisons of human cultures; thus offsetting our traditional
> and excessive emphasis upon cultural difference. Such functional
> equivalences, which we might term ‘culture–cognates’ or ‘culture–
> correlates,’ discovered underneath deceptive but superficial
> institutional divergence, would provide objective but soundly
> neutral common denominators for intercultural understanding and
> cooperation.232
> 
> The search for cultural counterparts is, for Locke, a sound way of trying
> to make sense of the bewildering diversity of societal norms and mores
> that, upon investigation, reveal a recognizable logic. “Functional
> equivalence” for Locke, seems to be synonymous with “real basic
> similarity” in values.233 Similarities are seen in function rather than form.
> 
> [131] “Reciprocity”: Beyond tolerance, but assuming notions of
> equivalence based on “loyalty to loyalty,” is a second concept: reciprocity.
> Reciprocity approaches cross–cultural dialogue and cooperation. “Social
> reciprocity for value loyalties,” writes Locke, “is but a new name for the
> old virtue of tolerance, yet it does bring the question of tolerance down
> from the lofty thin air of idealism and chivalry to the plane of enlightened
> self–interest and the practical possibilities of value–sharing.”234 This is an
> understatement, for reciprocity is something much more than mere
> toleration for the purpose of reducing inter-communal conflict:
> 
> The principle of cultural reciprocity, which, by a general recognition
> of the reciprocal character of all contacts between cultures and the
> fact that all modern cultures are highly composite ones, would
> invalidate the lump estimating of cultures in terms of generalized,
> Christopher Buck         Alain Locke and Cultural Pluralism               132
> 
> en bloc assumptions of superiority and inferiority, substituting
> scientific, point–by–point comparisons with their correspondingly
> limited, specific, and objectively verifiable superiorities or
> inferiorities.235
> 
> This is both a historical as well as procedural statement. Cultures are
> syncretistic. A simple realization of this fact should suffice to dispel
> pretensions of cultural superiority. This new virtue—reciprocity—is
> tolerance transformed into a real exchange of values. As Moses observes:
> “Locke’s principle of reciprocity first emerges as a historical law that may
> be discerned through careful consideration of what has contributed to
> civilized progress in many an age.”236 Locke translates this historical law
> into a present-day ethic. In this part of Locke’s plan, comparisons would
> become very specific. The “culture-correlates” would then be weighed,
> and even judged as to their relative superiority or inferiority. There would
> be particular cultural values that could be exported and taken up within
> other modern cultures, which are themselves composite anyway.
> 
> “Cultural convertibility”: As a student of history, Locke foresaw the strong
> possibility that culture might selectively adopt a foreign cultural value. In
> assimilating that value to itself, the transplanted value would take root
> and become part of the new cultural landscape. An example of this might
> be seen in the import, populariza [132] tion and eventual westernization
> of the eastern practice of meditation. Locke sees a third concept coming
> into play:
> 
> The principle of limited cultural convertibility, that, since culture
> elements, though widely interchangeable, are so separable, the
> institutional forms from their values and the values from their
> institutional forms, the organic selectivity and assimilative capacity
> of a borrowing culture becomes a limiting criterion for cultural
> exchange. Conversely, pressure acculturation and the mass
> transplanting of culture, the stock procedure of groups with
> traditions of culture “superiority” and dominance, are counter–
> indicated as against both the interests of cultural efficiency and the
> natural trends of cultural selectivity.237
> Christopher Buck        Alain Locke and Cultural Pluralism                133
> 
> Locke claims that these “three objectively grounded principles of culture
> relations” might, if properly implemented, “correct some of our basic
> culture dogmatism and progressively cure many of our most intolerant
> and prejudicial cultural attitudes and practices.”238 How? Discovery of
> cultural equivalences was supposed to result in an agenda for
> intercultural understanding, which would, in turn, provide a common
> foundation for intercultural cooperation.
> 
> Whom did Locke expect or hope to carry out this plan? Quite possibly his
> peers. He states: “There has never been a new age without a new
> scholarship or, to put it more accurately, without a profound realignment
> of scholarship.”239 “It is for this reason that one can so heartily concur in
> the suggestions of Professor Northrop’s paper that a value analysis of our
> basic cultures in broadscale comparison is the philosophical, or rather the
> scholarly, task of the hour.”240
> 
> Locke as Bahá’í thinker
> 
> In general terms, Locke regarded the Bahá’í Faith as a “movement for
> human brotherhood.”241 This is not to say that he reduced the religion to
> an amorphous universalism, for, in “The Orientation of Hope,” Locke
> calls the Bahá’í Faith “a virile and truly prophetic spiritual revelation.”242
> 
> What relationship, if any, exists between Locke’s religion and his
> philosophy? Philosophy has traditionally served as the great sys- [133]
> tematiser of religious thinking. Locke’s religious works (his Bahá’í World
> essays) were certainly informed by his philosophy, which served—as
> philosophy was supposed to in medieval times—as the “handmaid of
> theology.” Indeed, the presence of key philosophical concepts in Locke’s
> Bahá’í World essays accentuates the religio-philosophical (Bahá’í–cultural
> relativist) synergy. “What we need to learn most,” writes Locke, “is how
> to discover unity and spiritual equivalence underneath the differences
> which at present so disunite and sunder us, and how to establish some
> basic spiritual reciprocity on the principle of unity in diversity.”243 “The
> purity of Bahá’í principles,” Locke argues, “must be gauged by their
> Christopher Buck        Alain Locke and Cultural Pluralism               134
> 
> universality on this practical plane.”244 Locke then poses a challenge in
> the form of a test of authenticity: “Do they [Bahá’í principles] fraternize
> and fuse with all their kindred expressions? Are they happy in their
> collaborations that advocate other sanctions but advance toward the same
> spiritual goal? Can they reduce themselves to the vital common
> denominators necessary to mediate between other partisan loyalties?”245
> This is classic Lockean philosophy, transposed within a Bahá’í value
> system.
> 
> The reverse also held true, in that religion served as Locke’s handmaid of
> philosophy. Bahá’í values suffuse Locke’s philosophical thought. Judith
> Green observes that “Locke’s work shows the influence of serious
> engagements with Marxism, with diverse religious and spiritual traditions
> including, among others, Christianity, Buddhism, and Bahá’í.”246 This
> appears to underestimate the relative importance of the Bahá’í influence
> on Locke. As Johnny Washington notes: “During the latter part of his
> career, he accepted the Bahá’í faith and attempted to integrate it into his
> own philosophy of values.”247 This statement suggests that Locke himself
> transposed Bahá’í principles of unity into his philosophy.
> 
> Locke stressed Bahá’í universality as its primary mission for the present:
> “But it is not the time for insisting on this side of the claim; the
> intelligent, loyal Bahá’í should stress not the source, but the importance
> of the idea, and rejoice not in the originality and uniqueness of the
> principle but rather in its prevalence and practicality.”248 Locke continues:
> “The idea has to be translated into every [134] important province of
> modern life and thought, and in many of these must seem to be
> independently derived and justified.”249 This statement signals Locke’s
> intention and method: namely, that he would apply Bahá’í principles to
> his own “province of modern life and thought”—philosophy.
> 
> A closer comparison of Locke’s essays reveals a synergy between the two.
> “For Locke, cultural pluralism and cultural relativism,” Ernest Mason
> claims, “both have their foundation in the Bahá’í principle of unity in
> diversity.”250 In demonstrating a thematic simultaneity in Locke’s
> religious and philosophical writings, Mason declares: “In the following
> Christopher Buck         Alain Locke and Cultural Pluralism               135
> 
> examination of Locke’s social philosophy I hope to demonstrate fully that
> Locke was, theoretically and practically, concerned with the very social
> issues stressed in the Bahá’í Faith: justice, equality, nonviolence,
> tolerance, and racial and ideological peace.” 251 Mason was not alone in
> making this assertion. Kenneth Stikkers observes:
> 
> The Bahá’í religion provided Locke the concrete experience of unity
> in diversity, for a central teaching of that faith is that the Word of
> God is essentially one but is spoken differently through the
> prophets of the various religions of the world, in ways relative to
> unique sociohistorical conditions. Locke expressed the Bahá’í
> principle with this metaphor: “think of reality as a central fact and
> a white light broken up by the prism of human nature into a
> spectrum of values.”252
> 
> This has implications for future Lockean studies in particular, and for
> African American and for mainstream American philosophy in general.
> 
> Unity in diversity is a Bahá’í principle that Locke transposed into his
> philosophy: “It is just at this juncture that the idea of unity in diversity
> seems to me to become relevant, and to offer a spiritual common
> denominator of both ideal and practical efficacy.”253 Locke wanted to
> replace absolutes with universalisms: “Even though it is not yet accepted
> as a general principle, as a general desire and an ideal goal, the demand
> for universality is beyond doubt the most characteristic modern thing in
> the realm of spiritual [135] values, and in the world of the mind that
> reflects this realm.”254 Through the vehicle of philosophy, Locke replaced
> “identity” with “equivalence” and “difference” with “unity in diversity.”
> In so doing, Locke offered “a solution reconciling nationalism with
> internationalism, racialism with universalism.”255
> 
> Both as a philosopher and as a Bahá’í, Locke, as a matter of principle,
> envisioned a series of “progressive integrations” that would take place “in
> due course” and “step by step, from an initial stage of cultural tolerance,
> mutual respect, reciprocal exchange, some specific communities of
> agreement and, finally, commonality of purpose and action.” But since he
> Christopher Buck       Alain Locke and Cultural Pluralism              136
> 
> was not a thoroughly systematic thinker, we cannot read this statement
> with full confidence in its sequence. Green calls this a “peacemaking
> democratic transformation […] by stage-wise progression.”256
> 
> In my own reading, there is a progression in Locke’s social philosophy in
> which tolerance leads to reciprocity which, in turn, culminates in “unity
> in diversity.” Locke describes his own universalism as a “fluid and
> functional unity that begins in a basic progression of value pluralism,
> converts itself to value relativism, and then passes over into a ready and
> willing admission of both cultural relativism and pluralism.” 257 Locke’s
> hierarchy of loyalty, tolerance, reciprocity, and cultural relativism and
> pluralism (the philosophical equivalent of “unity in diversity”) was a
> pragmatic application of quintessentially Bahá’í values. In its practical
> application, this hierarchy is formulaic:
> 
> Loyalty expresses group solidarity. Loyalty is related to the idea of
> tolerance. Loyalty is love of one’s own race, ethnicity, culture. The
> concept of loyalty is connected with the notion of community. “Indeed,”
> as Stikkers corroborates, “it was Royce’s theories of loyalty and
> community and Locke’s experience in the Bahá’í faith […] that provided
> the main intellectual influences on Locke’s pluralism.” 258 As mentioned,
> Josiah Royce was one of Locke’s professors in Harvard’s philosophy
> department.259 Locke’s attraction to Royce’s ideas owes a great deal to the
> fact that Royce was “the only major American philosopher during the
> early 1900s to publish a book condemning racism.”260 Locke’s cultural
> relativism was grounded in Royce’s social ethic of “loyalty [136] to
> loyalty,” which values a people’s loyalty to their own particular culture
> and value system, so long as respect is maintained for broadly humane
> values as well.261
> 
> Tolerance has both individual and social dimensions. Locke’s concept of
> “tolerance” has its roots in the philosophy of John Locke (individualism),
> but goes far beyond. In his essay, “Two Lockes, Two Keys, Tolerance and
> Reciprocity in a Culture of Democracy,” Greg Moses compares the
> philosophies of Alain Locke and John Locke. If not in theory then in
> practice, John Locke’s ethic of toleration has been “poorly applied by
> Christopher Buck        Alain Locke and Cultural Pluralism                137
> 
> liberal civilizations.”262 While John Locke stressed mutual tolerance in an
> exchange of ideas between individuals, Alain Locke advocated such
> tolerance between groups.263 All too often, however, tolerance has proven
> to be little more than a thin veneer of acceptance, with an air of
> condescension and paternalism by the dominant group.
> 
> Reciprocity—as mentioned in the previous section—is really an extension
> of democracy in that it constrains group dominance through promoting
> the equality of groups, each having a place at the table, so to speak.
> Moses sums this up eloquently when he concludes his essay by saying:
> “Reciprocity—to shift figures in function and form—would be key to the
> new Locke [Alain Locke], as tolerance had been key to the old [the
> philosopher John Locke].”264
> 
> Cultural relativism and pluralism are Locke’s philosophical equivalents of the
> Bahá’í principle of “unity in diversity.” The most recent and sophisticated
> treatment of Locke’s philosophy of unity in diversity is that of Judith M.
> Green. In her book, Deep Democracy: Community, Diversity, and Transformation
> (1999), Green devotes an entire chapter to Locke.265 Green observes that
> a great deal of Locke’s work remains unpublished, and that his
> contribution has been largely forgotten until recently. Due to the sudden
> and vigorous explosion of scholarly interest in Locke, his philosophical
> thought will no longer suffer a death by silence.
> 
> Green identifies two streams of thought and experience in Locke’s life
> and work. One stream is an African American historical, cultural, and
> intellectual tradition—the specific loyalty that “links Locke with forebears
> in struggle like Frederick Douglass and Sojourner Truth, with older
> contemporaries like Booker T. Washington and W. E. B. Du Bois (who
> assisted his early career), with younger contemporaries like Martin Luther
> King, Jr., and Malcolm (X) Shabazz, and with our living generations of
> African American public intellectuals.” 266 Speaking of America, Locke
> stated that “this ominous rainbow […] shows a wide diffusion of bias and
> prejudice in our social atmosphere and, unfortunately, presages not the
> passing, but the coming of a storm […] and unless America solves these
> minority issues constructively and achieves minority peace or minority
> Christopher Buck       Alain Locke and Cultural Pluralism             138
> 
> tolerance, in less than half a generation she will be in the flaming
> predicament of Europe.”267
> 
> The other stream is his cosmopolitan outlook, particularly his
> commitment to “cultural pluralism” (now known as multiculturalism).
> Locke’s pluralism compensated for some of the deficiencies of liberalism.
> As Segun Gbadegesin rhetorically asks: “How, if at all, does liberalism
> differ from pluralism? Liberalism’s emphasis is freedom: freedom is its
> battle cry. But there are other values, including justice […] and
> community.”268 Locke’s cosmopolitan paradigm of unity is a “theoretical
> and praxical transformation of classical American pragmatism.” 269
> According to Green, Locke had precociously conceptualized “deep
> democracy” as “cosmopolitan unity amidst valued diversity.”270
> 
> Education would play a transformative role in helping to bring about this
> world culture—one characterized by a “race-transcending” 271
> consciousness. Locke also spoke of the role of education in cultivating
> “international-mindedness.”272 Art, education, as well as philosophy were
> venues through which Locke sought to move the world.
> 
> Conclusion
> 
> If interracial unity, beyond racial justice, was Martin Luther King, Jr.’s
> “dream” for America, it was Alain LeRoy Locke’s vision for the world.
> Locke prized unity. He had a disdain for black “self–segregation”273 as
> well as for Jim Crow segregation.274 In an unpublished essay that Johnny
> Washington titled, “The Paradox of Race,” Locke [138] not only
> advocated racial integration but encouraged interracial marriage as
> well.275 It is quite clear that Locke’s vision of interracial unity was
> inspired by his experience as a member of the early American Bahá’í
> community. Interracial unity, in Bahá’í parlance, is often described as
> “unity in diversity”—a term that encompasses the entire range of human
> differences.276 This term appears in both Locke’s philosophical as well as
> religious essays.
> Christopher Buck        Alain Locke and Cultural Pluralism                  139
> 
> One can tentatively say that the Bahá’í principle of “unity in diversity”
> has indirectly influenced African American philosophy by way of Locke.
> This essay has also suggested that Locke’s religious works were informed
> by his philosophy, which served as the “handmaid of theology” while the
> Bahá’í Faith served as Locke’s handmaid of philosophy. Not only was
> there a synergy between the two, but there was also a creative connection
> between Locke’s Bahá’í values and philosophical commitments. For
> instance, in his essay, “Unity through Diversity: A Bahá’í Principle,”
> Locke praises Royce: “Josiah Royce, one of the greatest American
> philosophers[,] saw this problem more clearly than any other western
> thinker, which is nothing more or less than a vindication of the principle
> of unity and diversity carried out to a practical degree of spiritual
> reciprocity.” Here, Locke directly correlates religious and philosophical
> principles. Locke’s philosophy may be seen as an unique synthesis of the
> following thinkers:
> 
> VALUE THEORY                         IDEAS
> Christian Freiherr von Ehrenfel      values as intrinsic to cognition
> Alexius Meinong                      values as feelings
> Wilbur Urban                         value types/qualities
> 
> PRAGMATISM                           IDEAS
> Charles Sanders Peirce               theory of meaning
> William James                        theory of truth
> John Dewey                           pluralism and democracy
> 
> PHILOSOPHY OF LOYALTY                IDEAS
> Josiah Royce                         philosophy of loyalty
> 
> CULTURAL PLURALISM                   IDEAS
> Franz Boas                           race and culture
> Melville J. Herskovits               race and culture
> 
> CULTURAL NATIONALISM                 IDEAS
> W. E. B. Du Bois                     the Talented Tenth
> Christopher Buck       Alain Locke and Cultural Pluralism               140
> 
> [139]
> NATURALISM                          IDEAS
> George Santayana                    pragmatist aesthetics277
> 
> BAHÁ’Í PRINCIPLES                   IDEAS
> Bahá’u’lláh                         world unity
> ‘Abdu’l-Bahá                        interracial unity
> Shoghi Effendi                       unity in diversity
> 
> This list is by no means exhaustive. It should also be borne is mind that,
> despite his intense commitment to Bahá’í principles, Locke did not
> directly cite Bahá’í writings. Although he acknowledged that “there is no
> escaping the historical evidences of its [unity through diversity’s] early
> advocacy and its uncompromising adoption by the Bahá’í prophets and
> teachers,” Locke followed his own advice to Bahá’ís in that “the intelli-
> gent, loyal Bahá’í should stress not the source, but the importance of the
> idea, and rejoice not in the originality and uniqueness of the principle but
> rather in its prevalence and practicality.” 278
> 
> The salience of race remains a social fact. Locke adroitly linked race
> progress with world peace. In one of his Bahá’í essays, Locke states:
> “Each period of a faith imposes a special new problem.”279 In a
> philosophical essay, “Cultural Relativism and Ideological Peace,” Locke
> expresses a similar conviction, hinting at what would today be called a
> paradigm shift: “There has never been a new age without a new
> scholarship, or, to put it more accurately, without a profound realignment
> of scholarship.”280 Locke’s realignment of scholarship was to detoxify
> “race” of its biologism, to transform “race” into culture, to “convert
> parochial thinking into global thinking”281 and to promote “progressive
> vistas of the new intercultural internationalism” with “passports of world
> citizenship good for safe ideological conduct anywhere.”282 “The
> intellectual core of the problems of peace,” Locke maintains, “[...] will be
> the discovery of the necessary common denominators and the basic
> equivalences involved in a democratic world order or democracy on a
> world scale.”283
> Christopher Buck        Alain Locke and Cultural Pluralism              141
> 
> As a religious personality, throughout his adult life, Locke vacillated and
> oscillated between Christianity and the Bahá’í Faith. [140] Locke was
> always listed in biographies as an Episcopalian, the denomination in
> which he was raised. While his mother at first urged him to become a
> Methodist, 284 she later encouraged him to become a more fully
> committed Bahá’í.285 In an unpublished and undated autobiographical
> statement, Locke wrote: “I am really a Xtian [sic] without believing any of
> its dogma, because I am incapable of feeling hatred, revenge or jealously
> [...] I have always hoped to be big enough to have to justify myself not to
> my contemporaries but to posterity. Small men apologize to their
> neighbors, big men to posterity.” 286 In an untitled and undated
> manuscript in the Alain Locke papers, Locke expresses his appreciation of
> the Bahá’í Faith in these words:
> 
> The gospel for the Twentieth Century rises out of the heart of its
> greatest problems—and few who are spiritually enlightened doubt
> the nature of that problem. [...] The redemption of society—social
> salvation, should have been sought after first [...] The fundamental
> problems of current America are materiality and prejudice. [...]
> And so we must say[,] with the acute actualities of America’s race
> problem and the acute potentialities of her economic problem,
> [that] the land that is nearest to material democracy is furthest
> away from spiritual democracy [...]
> 
> And we must begin heroically with the greatest apparent
> irreconcilables: the East and the west, the black man and the self–
> arrogating Anglo–Saxon, for unless these are reconciled, the
> salvation of society cannot be. If the world had believingly
> understood the full significance of Him [Jesus Christ] who taught
> it to pray and hope[,] “Thy kingdom come on earth as it is in
> Heaven[,]” who also said[,] “In my Father’s house are many
> mansions,” already we should be further toward the realization of
> this great millen[n]ial vision. The word of God is still insistent,
> and more emphatic as the human redemption delays and becomes
> more crucial, and we have what Dr. Elsemont [Esslemont] rightly
> calls Baha’u’llah’s “one great trumpet–call to humanity”:
> Christopher Buck        Alain Locke and Cultural Pluralism              142
> 
> “That all nations shall become one in faith, and all men as
> brothers; that the bonds of affection and unity between the
> sons of men should be strengthened; that diversity of
> religion should cease, and differences of race be annulled...
> These strifes and this bloodshed and discord must cease,
> and all men be as one kindred and family.[”]287
> 
> In that same essay, Locke speaks of the “Old South” as well as [141] the
> “New Negro,” of “a New South” in a “new era.” Locke’s vision was
> world–embracing, as he was equally as concerned for “suppressed
> minorities the world over today.” Moreover, he believed that any real
> solution to these problems would have to come about through “a
> revolution within the soul.” Indeed, there were moments when, for
> various personal reasons,288 Locke later withdrew from active
> involvement in the Washington, DC, Bahá’í community. But there were
> moments of courage and grandeur, when Locke publicly identified himself
> as a Bahá’í. As late in his life as 1952, Locke gave a Bahá’í “fireside”—his
> last known Bahá’í speaking engagement. One of those present states that,
> “He certainly clearly identified himself — indeed was introduced — as a
> Bahá’í to all of us there, Bahá’ís and seekers.”289
> 
> The important point to bear in mind is that, as late as 1952, we have
> evidence that Locke continued to identify himself as a Bahá’í. Almost all
> of Locke’s previous Bahá’í speaking engagements were highly visible,
> public events. In the instant case, Locke spoke at a private fireside—one
> that was by invitation only and, most likely, not publicized. This episode
> shows that Locke was willing to participate in private and well as public
> Bahá’í events. It shows a dimension of Locke’s life as a Bahá’í that was
> hitherto unknown to us.
> 
> Perhaps the greatest significance this new information holds is that it
> dispels the notion, held was some authorities, that, late in life, Locke was
> a “freethinker,” uncommitted to any religion. It can now be argued, based
> on this fresh evidence, that Locke remained a committed Bahá’í until the
> end of his life. Also in 1952, it must have been with Locke’s permission
> Christopher Buck            Alain Locke and Cultural Pluralism                         143
> 
> that his photograph appeared (alongside a picture of a fellow Bahá’í,
> Robert S. Abbott, founder of the Chicago Defender) in an Ebony magazine
> article entitled, “Baha’i Faith: Only church in world that does not
> discriminate.”290 Of Locke, Shoghi Effendi reportedly said that: “People as
> you, Mr Gregory, Dr Esslemont and some other dear souls are as rare as
> diamond.”291
> 
> Just as one cannot understand Locke without reference to his intellectual
> pedigree, the Bahá’í Faith was part and parcel of his spiritual pedigree. It
> was the dominant spiritual influence on Locke.
> 
> [142] Note: Christopher Buck, author of Symbol and Secret (Kalimát,
> 1995) and Paradise and Paradigm (State University of New York, 1999)
> teaches at Michigan State University.
> 
> 1.   Alain Locke, “Unity through Diversity: A Bahá’í Principle,” in The Bahá’í World: A
> Biennial International Record, Volume IV, April 1930–April 1932, comp. National
> Spiritual Assembly of the Bahá’ís of the United States and Canada (New York:
> Bahá’í Publishing Committee, 1933; reprint, Wilmette: Bahá’í Publishing Trust,
> 1980) 372–74. Reprint in Leonard Harris (ed.) The Philosophy of Alain Locke
> (Philadelphia: Temple University Press, 1989) 133–38 [above quote from 137].
> Harris’ reference (133 n.) should be emended to read, Volume IV, 1930–1932 (not “V,
> 1932–1934”).
> 
> Use was made of archival sources in the Moorland–Spingarn Research Center
> (MSRC), Howard University, courtesy of Ms. Ida Jones, manuscript librarian, who
> assistance is gratefully acknowledged; and the National Bahá’í Archives (NBA), US
> Bahá’í National Center, courtesy of Roger M. Dahl, archivist, whose assistance is
> also gratefully acknowledged. My research trip to the Moorland–Spingarn Research
> Center at Howard University (6–9 August 2001) and to the Washington, D.C.
> Bahá’í Center (10 August 2001) was made possible through the generous support
> of Kalimát Press, and also with the assistance of the Department of American
> Thought and Language, Michigan State University. I am also indebted to Gayle
> Morrison for her careful reading and critical comments on a previous version of this
> manuscript, which is part of a work–in–progress, Alain Locke: Faith and Philosophy
> (Los Angeles: Kalimát Press, forthcoming).
> 2.   Alain Locke, “Pluralism and Ideological Peace,” in Sidney Hook and Milton R.
> Konvitz, eds. Freedom and Experience: Essays Presented to Horace M. Kallen (Ithaca:
> Cornell University Press, 1947) 67.
> 3.   Judith Green, “Cosmopolitan Unity Amidst Valued Diversity: Alain Locke’s Vision
> of Deeply Democratic Transformation,” in Deep Democracy: Community, Diversity, and
> Transformation (Lanham, MD: Rowman & Littlefield, 1999) 132.
> 4.   Gayle Morrison, To Move the World: Louis G. Gregory and the Advancement of Racial Unity
> in America (Wilmette: Bahá’í Publishing Trust, 1982) 4, note.
> Christopher Buck             Alain Locke and Cultural Pluralism                          144
> 
> 5.    Ernest Mason, “Alain Locke’s Social Philosophy,” World Order 13.2 (1979): 25–34.
> See also idem, “Alain Locke on Race and Race Relations,” Phylon 40.4 (1979): 342–
> 50. Cf. Yvonne Ochillo, “The Race–Consciousness of Alain Locke,” Phylon 47.3
> (1986): 173–81.
> 6.    Columbus Salley, The Black 100: A Ranking of the Most Influential African–Americans,
> Past and Present. Revised and Updated (Secaucus, NJ: Citadel Press, 1999 [1993])
> 137.
> 7.    George Hutchison, The Harlem Renaissance in Black and White (Cambridge, MA and
> London: Harvard University Press, 1995) 390.
> 8.    Winston Napier, “Affirming Critical Conceptualism: Harlem Renaissance Aesthetics
> and the Formation of Alain Locke’s Social Philosophy,” The Massachusetts Review 39.1
> (1998): 94.
> 9.    Rudolph A. Cain, “Alain Leroy Locke: Crusader and Advocate for the Education of
> African American Adults,” Journal of Negro Education 64.1 (1995): 87; Michael R.
> Winston, “Locke, Alain LeRoy,” in Rayford W. Logan and Michael R. Winston, eds.
> Dictionary of American Negro Biography (New York and London: W. W. Norton, 1982)
> 403. See also Tommy Lee Lott, “Alain LeRoy Locke,” in Michael P. Kelly (ed.)
> Encyclopedia of Aesthetics (Oxford: Oxford University Press, 1998) 160–65; and
> Sandra L. Quinn–Musgrove, “Lost in Blackness: Alain LeRoy Locke,” Ethnic Forum
> 12.2 (1992): 48–68. The present writer has not yet accessed Jeffrey Stewart, A
> Biography of Alain Locke, Philosopher of the Harlem Renaissance, 1886–1930 (PhD
> dissertation, Yale University, 1979). Abstracted in Dissertation Abstracts International
> (1981) 42.4: 1696–1697–A.
> 10.   Winston, op. cit., 403.
> 11.   Mason, “Alain Locke’s Social Philosophy.”
> 12.   Alain Locke, “Values and Imperatives” in Sidney Hook and Horace M. Kallen, eds.
> American Philosophy, Today and Tomorrow (New York: Lee Furman, 1935) 313–33.
> 13.   Locke, ibid.
> 14.   Cited by Horace M. Kallen, “Alain Locke and Cultural Pluralism,” Journal of
> Philosophy 54.5 (28 February 1957): 121.
> 15    Kallen, op. cit., 122.
> 16    Winston, op. cit., 398.
> 17    For verification of Locke’s birthdate, I obtained a document issued by the
> “Department of Public Health and Charities, Bureau of Health” (City Hall,
> Philadelphia), Alain Locke Papers, Box 164–1, Folder 1, Manuscript Division,
> Moorland–Spingarn Research Center, Howard University. See note by Leonard
> Harris, “Rendering the Text,” in idem (ed.) The Philosophy of Alain Locke: Harlem
> Renaissance and Beyond (Philadelphia: Temple University Press, 1989)
> 18    As was the case when Locke filled out his “Bahá’í Historical Record” card. Under
> “Birthdate,” Locke had entered “September 13, 1886.” Bahá’í Historical Record
> Cards Collection, and Biographical Information Collection, NBA.
> 19.   Alain Locke Papers, MSRC, Box 164–1, Folder 2 (Autobiographical statements).
> Although his middle name was formally spelled “LeRoy,” in full signature he would
> write “Leroy,” as evident on his “Bahá’í Historical Record” card signature. Bahá’í
> Historical Record Cards Collection, and Biographical Information Collection, NBA.
> 20.   Kallen, op. cit., 122.
> Christopher Buck            Alain Locke and Cultural Pluralism                         145
> 
> 21. Late in life, Locke reminisced about some of his childhood experiences. See
> Douglas K. Stafford, “Alain Locke: The Child, the Man, and the People,” Journal of
> Negro Education 30.1 (1961): 25–34.
> 22. Anthony Fitchue, “Locke and Du Bois: Two Major Black Voices Muzzled by
> Philanthropic Organizations,” Journal of Blacks in Higher Education, Issue 14 (1996–
> 1997): 111.
> 23. Winston, op. cit., 398.
> 24. Winston, ibid.
> 25. Winston, ibid.
> 26. Hutchison, op. cit., 40.
> 27. Hutchison, op. cit., 39–40.
> 28. Kallen, op. cit., 122.
> 29. Harris, Philosophy of Alain Locke, 5.
> 30. Harris, Philosophy of Alain Locke, 3–5.
> 31. Harris, Philosophy of Alain Locke, 4 and 293.
> 32. Locke to Parsons, 28 June 1922, Agnes Parsons Papers, NBA.
> 33. Winston, op. cit., 398.
> 34. Mason, “Locke’s Social Philosophy,” 25.
> 35. Harris, Philosophy of Alain Locke, 4.
> 36. Winston, op. cit., 398.
> 37. Nancy Fraser, “Another Pragmatism: Alain Locke, Critical ‘Race’ Theory, and the
> Politics of Culture,” in Leonard Harris (ed.) The Critical Pragmatism of Alain Locke: A
> Reader on Value Theory, Aesthetics, Community, Culture, Race, and Education (Lanham,
> MD: Rowman & Littlefield, 1999) 6.
> 38. Kallen, op. cit., 121.
> 39. Jeffrey C. Stewart, “A Black Aesthete at Oxford.” Massachusetts Review 34.3 (1993):
> 411–28.
> 40. Kallen, op. cit., 119.
> 41. Hutchison, op. cit., 85. See also Ross Posnock, Color and Culture: Black Writers and the
> Making of the Modern Intellectual (Cambridge, MA: Harvard University Press, 1998)
> 191.
> 42. Menand, op. cit., 391.
> 43. Posnock, op. cit., 192.
> 44. Kallen, op. cit., 119.
> 45. Kallen, op. cit., 122.
> 46. Hutchison, op. cit., 85.
> 47. Louis Menand, The Metaphysical Club: A Story of Ideas in America (New York: Farrar,
> Straus and Giroux, 2001) 390.
> [145]
> 48. Menand, ibid.
> 49. Menand, op. cit., 391.
> 50. Menand, op. cit., 391.
> 51. Kallen, op. cit., 122.
> 52. Alain Locke, “Oxford Contrasts,” Independent 67 (July 1909): 139–42. See also idem,
> “The American Temperament,” North American Review 194 (August 1911): 262–70.
> Christopher Buck             Alain Locke and Cultural Pluralism                          146
> 
> 53.   Harris, Philosophy of Alain Locke, 294.
> 54.   Posnock, op. cit., 194.
> 55.   Kallen, op. cit., 122.
> 56.   Winston, op. cit., 399.
> 57.   Stewart, op. cit.
> 58.   Kallen, op. cit., 122.
> 59.   M. G. Brock and M. C. Curthoys, eds. The History of the University of Oxford, Vol. VII.
> Nineteenth–Century Oxford, Part 2 (Oxford: Oxford University Press, 2000) 804, citing
> Jeffrey Green, Black Edwardians (1998) 154.
> 60.   Kallen, op. cit., 122.
> 61.   Menand, op. cit., 390.
> 62.   Kallen, op. cit., 121–22.
> 63.   Menand, op. cit., 390.
> 64.   William B. Harvey, “The Philosophical Anthropology of Alain Locke,” in Russell J.
> Linnemann (ed.) Alain Locke: Reflections on a Modern Renaissance Man (Baton Rouge
> and London: Louisiana State University, 1982) 18.
> 65.   Kallen, “Alain Locke and Cultural Pluralism,” 122. For an analysis of Locke’s
> dissertation on value theory, see Ernest Mason, “Alain Locke’s Philosophy of
> Value,” in Russell J. Linnemann (ed.) Alain Locke: Reflections on a Modern Renaissance
> Man, 1–16. Locke had originally intended to study under Royce as his PhD
> supervisor, but Royce had died by the time Locke returned to Harvard.
> 66.   Harris, Philosophy of Alain Locke, 10.
> 67.   Molesworth, op. cit., 176.
> 68.   Mason, “Alain Locke’s Social Philosophy,” 28.
> 69.   Locke, op. cit., 45.
> 70.   Locke, op. cit., 36.
> 71.   Locke, “The Need for a New Organon in Education,” in Harris, Philosophy of Alain
> Locke, 272.
> 72.   Charles Molesworth, “Alain Locke and Walt Whitman: Manifestos and National
> Identity,” in Leonard Harris (ed.) The Critical Pragmatism of Alain Locke, 175.
> 73.   Fitchue, op. cit., 113.
> 74.   Kallen, op. cit., 122.
> 75.   Menand, op. cit., 396 and Harris, Philosophy of Alain Locke, 205. These lectures were
> later edited and published: Alain Locke, Race Contacts and Interracial Relations, edited
> by Jeffery C. Stewart (Washington: Howard University Press, 1992).
> 76.   See Alain Locke, “Major Prophet of Democracy.” Review of Race and Demo- [146]
> cratic Society by Franz Boas. Journal of Negro Education 15.2 (Spring 1946): 191–92.
> See also Mark Helbling, “Feeling Universality and Thinking Particularistically: Alain
> Locke, Franz Boas, Melville Herkskovits, and the Harlem Renaissance,” Prospects 19
> (1994): 289–314.
> 77.   Cited by Peggy Pascoe, “Miscegenation Law, Court Cases, and Ideologies of ‘Race’
> in Twentieth–Century America,” Journal of American History 83.1 (June 1996): 53, n.
> 23.
> 78.   Pascoe, op. cit., 53.
> 79.   Menand, op. cit., 396–97.
> Christopher Buck             Alain Locke and Cultural Pluralism                          147
> 
> 80. Fraser, op. cit., 7.
> 81. “The Negro’s Contribution to American Culture,” Journal of Negro Education 8
> (July 1939): 521–39, reprinted in Jeffrey C. Stewart (ed.) The Critical Temper of Alain
> Locke: A Selection of His Essays on Art and Culture (New York: Garland, 1983) and
> quoted in Tommy Lee Lott, “Nationalism and Pluralism in Alain Locke’s Social
> Philosophy,” in Lawrence Foster and Patricia Herzog (eds.) Defending Diversity:
> Contemporary Philosophical Perspectives on Pluralism and Multiculturalism (Amherst:
> University of Massachusetts Press, 1994): 106.
> 82. Fraser, op. cit., 17.
> 83. Harris, Philosophy of Alain Locke, 296–97.
> 84. Harvey, op. cit., 21.
> 85. Alain Locke, “The Negro in the Three Americas,” Journal of Negro Education 14
> (Winter 1944): 7 (editorial note).
> 86. Beth J. Singer, “Alain Locke Remembered,” in Leonard Harris (ed.) The Critical
> Pragmatism of Alain Locke, 328.
> 87. Singer, op. cit., 329.
> 88. Singer, op. cit., 329–30.
> 89. The text of that speech is extant, to which the newspaper account may be
> compared. The present writer has requested—but not yet received—the text of this
> speech, archived in the Alain Locke Papers, MSRC, Box 164–123, Folder 8 (“On
> Becoming World Citizens.” Commencement Address at University of Wisconsin
> High School, 28 May 1946. [typescript]).
> 90. Kallen, op. cit., 122.
> 91. See Verner D. Mitchell, “Alain Locke: Philosophical ‘Midwife’ of the Harlem
> Renaissance,” in Leonard Harris (ed.) The Critical Pragmatism of Alain Locke, 192.
> 92. Locke, The New Negro, 6 and 47, quoted in Franke, op. cit., 23 and 26.
> 93. Alain Locke (ed.) The New Negro: An Interpretation (New York: Albert and Charles
> Boni, Inc., 1925). Reprinted, with a new preface by Robert Hayden (New York:
> Atheneum, 1969).
> 94. Shusterman, op. cit., 102 and 109, n. 8.
> 95. Astrid Franke, “Struggling with Stereotypes: The Problems of Representing a
> Collective Identity,” in Leonard Harris (ed.) The Critical Pragmatism of Alain Locke, 22.
> 96. Locke, The New Negro 11, 47, 99, quoted in Shusterman, op. cit., 105.
> 97. Fraser, op. cit., 15–17.
> 98. Alain Locke, The New Negro, 52–3 and 9, quoted in Richard J. Shusterman,
> “Pragmatist Aesthetics: Roots and Radicalism,” in Leonard Harris (ed.) The Critical
> Pragmatism of Alain Locke, 102 and 104.
> [147]
> 99. Molesworth, op. cit., 185.
> 100. Harris, Philosophy of Alain Locke, 6. Locke expressed his enthusiastic support for Du
> Bois’s concept in an essay, “The Talented Tenth,” Howard University Record 12.7
> (December 1918): 15–18, but locked antlers with Du Bois over the latter’s
> insistence that art be propaganda, in a later essay, “Art or Propaganda?” Harlem 1
> (November 1928): 12–13. See discussion in Richard Keaveny, “Aesthetics and the
> Isuue of Identity,” in Harris (ed.) The Critical Pragmatism of Alain Locke, 127–40.
> 101. See Alain Locke, “Art or Propaganda?” Harlem 1 (November 1928): 12–13.
> Christopher Buck            Alain Locke and Cultural Pluralism                        148
> 
> 102. Molesworth, op. cit., 176.
> 103. Johnny Washington, Alain Locke and Philosophy: A Quest for Cultural Pluralism (New
> York: Greenwood Press, 1986) xxv.
> 104. Fraser, op. cit., 16.
> 105 Posnock, op. cit., 198.
> 106 Kallen, op. cit., 121.
> 107 A facsimile of Louis Gregory’s “Bahá’í Historical Record” card is reproduced in
> Morrison, op. cit., between pp. 208 and 209.
> 108 On the Bahá’í Historical Record cards, see Robert Stockman, The Bahá’í Faith in
> America: Early Expansion, 1900–1912 (Oxford: George Ronald, 1995) 412; and
> “Bahá’í Historical Record,” Bahá’í News, No. 94 (August 1935): 2. The Historical
> Record Cards have been available to researchers for some time, but they gave no
> clues about Locke because his card has only recently been discovered.
> 109. Gayle Morrison, op. cit., “Table. Information about 99 black respondents among
> 1,1813 Bahá’ís surveyed, 1935–c. 1937, from Bahá’í Historical Record Cards in the
> National Bahá’í Archives, Wilmette, Illinois,” 204.
> 110. Bahá’í Historical Record Cards Collection, and Biographical Information Collection,
> NBA. The date, “1918,” given in the table compiled by Morrison (ibid.) is certainly
> based on the personal data Locke provided.
> 111. See Charlotte Linfoot, “Alain LeRoy Locke, 1886–1954,” in The Bahá’í World: An
> International Record, Volume XIII, 1954–1963 (Haifa: Universal House of Justice,
> [1970] 1980) 894–5. In this obituary, Linfoot states: “In the early 1920’s Dr. Locke
> came into contact with the Bahá’í Faith in Washington, DC” (895).
> 112. My thanks to Gayle Morrison for suggesting these possibilities.
> 113. Office of the Secretary Records, Bahá’í Membership Lists Files, Bahá’í National
> Center. These lists include: March 1922; September 1925; 1928–1929 (appears to
> be updated by hand and written over the typewritten 1927–1928 list); 14 January
> 1934; 22 January 1936; 1937; January 1938; 11 January 1939; 1940; 1941; 1942; 15
> January 1943; 1944; 1945; 1946; 1947; 1948; 1949; 1950; 1951. Courtesy of Roger
> M. Dahl, Archivist, National Bahá’í Archives.
> 114. Harris, Philosophy of Alain Locke, 300. Locke instructed that his remains be cremated.
> See Alain Locke Papers, MSRC, Box 164–1, Folder 6 (Will and [148] instructions
> in case of death); and Folder 7 (Last will and testament, 1943). In neither of these
> executory documents was there any testament of faith. Along with many other
> Bahá’ís at that time, Locke was probably unaware of the Bahá’í proscription against
> cremation.
> Christopher Buck            Alain Locke and Cultural Pluralism                         149
> 
> 115. This may be deduced from a letter written by Mariam Haney to “My dear Mr.
> Locke,” in which she urges Locke to attend his first Bahá’í fireside (evidently, at the
> home of the Obers) for not only his sake, but for her sake and for the sake of other
> Bahá’ís as well: “My friends write me that you have never been to see them. I really
> was quite surprised, for my first thought about it all was that you would be
> rendering them a service. If you ever go once, I know you will want to go again,
> even if this first time I should ask you to go just to please me! I have your interests
> at heart and theirs as well, so you can gather why I should be anxious for a meeting
> between you. Through Mr. and Mrs. Ober, you would meet— (if you cared to) some
> very lovely people, and I should feel proud to have them know you.” Haney to
> Locke, February 1915, Alain Locke Papers, MSRC, Box 164–33, Folder 49 (Haney,
> Mariam).
> 116. Bahá’í Historical Record Cards Collection, and Biographical Information Collection,
> NBA. Locke received three copies of this form from Joseph F. Harley, III, secretary
> of the Spiritual Assembly of the Bahá’ís of Washington, DC. Harley to Locke, 27
> August 1935, Alain Locke Papers, MSRC, Box 164–176, Folder 13 (Bahá’í Faith).
> 117. Louis Gregory, “Convention for Amity Between the Colored and White Races.” In
> Star of the West 12.6 (24 June 1921): 117–18. Reprinted as vol. 7 (Oxford: George
> Ronald, 1978). See also idem, “Inter-Racial Amity,” in The Bahá’í World: A Biennial
> International Record, Volume Two, 1926–1928, comp. National Spiritual Assembly of
> the Bahá’ís of the United States and Canada (New York: Bahá’í Publishing
> Committee, 1929; reprint, Wilmette: Bahá’í Publishing Trust, 1980) 281; and idem,
> “Racial Amity in America.” In The Bahá’í World: A Biennial International Record, Volume
> VII, 1936–1938 (National Spiritual Assembly of the Bahá’ís of the United States and
> Canada, 1939; reprint, Wilmette: Bahá’í Publishing Trust, 1980) 655; Mariam
> Haney (secretary, The Teaching Committee of Nineteen), “A Compilation of the
> Story of the Convention for Amity,” 31 May 1921, Box 164–176, Folder 13 (Bahá’í
> Faith).
> 118. Of that meeting, Locke writes: “Through a miscarriage of plans, due to necessity of
> taking some [heart] treatment, I could not manage to meet the group of friends in
> Stuttgart. I did, however, have some very appreciated hours with the friends in
> England, especially Miss Rosenberg.” Locke to Parsons, 21 October 1922, Agnes
> Parsons Papers, NBA. See also Remey to Locke, 10 February 1923, Alain Locke
> Papers, MSRC, Box 164–80, Folder 1 (Remey, Charles Mason).
> 119. On his passport issued 26 June 1922, Locke, while in Berlin, was granted a visa,
> dated 25 August 1923, to “Egypt, Palestine & United Kingdom.” Alain Locke
> Papers, MSRC, Box 164–2, Folder 2 (Passports 1922, 1924).
> 120. “It is certain that the youth for whom you are now doing so much will[,] to a
> greater and greater degree, as the years pass, appreciate your service.” Gregory to
> Locke, 12 March 1923, Alain Locke Papers, MSRC, Box 164–32, Folder 50 (Gregory,
> Louis G.)
> [149]
> 121. Morrison, op. cit., 146; Gregory, “Inter-Racial Amity,” 283; idem, “Racial Amity in
> America.,” 657; Locke to Parsons, 21 October 1922, Agnes Parsons Papers, NBA.
> Members of the committee included Agnes Parsons, Elizabeth Greenleaf, Mariam
> Haney, Alain Locke, Mabel Ives, Louise Waite, Louise Boyle, Roy Williams, Philip
> R. Seville, and Mrs. Atwater.
> Christopher Buck           Alain Locke and Cultural Pluralism                       150
> 
> 122. Morrison, op. cit., 147. Locke’s response to his appointment was enthusiastic: “I
> received word today of the appointment on the Inter–Amity Committee, and am
> especially anxious to be able to contribute my share to its conferences and
> findings.” Locke to Parsons, 22 May 1924, Agnes Parsons Papers, NBA.
> 123. Morrison, op. cit., 149; Gregory, “Racial Amity in America.,” 658.
> 124. This committee had “essentially the same membership for the period 1925–26.”
> Morrison, op. cit., 155.
> 125. “The Seventeenth Annual Convention and Bahá’í Congress,” Bahá’í News Letter,
> No. 6 (1925): 3. Holley to Locke, 1 June 1925; Holley to Locke, undated (“Sunday
> P.M.” [sic]); Holley to Locke, 23 June 1925, western Union Cablegram, Alain Locke
> Papers, MSRC, Box 164–36, Folder 47 (Holley, Horace).
> 126. “News of the Cause,” Bahá’í News Letter, No. 10 (Feb. 1926): 6.
> 127. Alaine [sic] Locke, “Impressions of Haifa,” in Bahá’í Year Book, Volume One, April
> 1925–April 1926, comp. National Spiritual Assembly of the Bahá’ís of the United
> States and Canada (New York: Bahá’í Publishing Committee, 1926) 81, 83.
> Morrison, op. cit., 151 and 343, n. 18. Holley to Locke, 29 December 1925; Holley
> to Locke, 28 January 1926, Alain Locke Papers, MSRC, Box 164–36, Folder 47
> (Holley, Horace). “Impressions of Haifa” was first published in Star of the West 15,
> 13–14. In probable reference to this article, Shoghi Effendi wrote: “The article by
> Prof. Locke is very good and sufficient.” (From a letter dated 12 March 1996 written
> on behalf of Shoghi Effendi to the National Spiritual Assembly of the Bahá’ís of the
> United States and Canada Publishing Committee). Courtesy of the Universal House
> of Justice, enclosure to letter dated 16 July 2001 to the present writer.
> 128. Morrison, op. cit., 164.
> 129. Holley to Locke, 17 March 1927; Holley to Locke, 20 March 1927; Holley to Locke,
> 30 March 1927, Alain Locke Papers, MSRC, Box 164–36, Folder 47 (Holley,
> Horace); and Box 164–112, Folder 21 (“Cultural Reciprocity”).
> 130. Holley to Locke, 20 April 1927; Holley to Locke, 16 June 1927; Holley to Locke, 13
> February 1930, Alain Locke Papers, MSRC, Box 164–36, Folder 47 (Holley,
> Horace).
> 131. “National Committee on Race Amity Appointed,” Bahá’í News Letter, No. 16 (March
> 1927): 5. Committee members: Agnes Parsons (“Chairman”), Louis Gregory
> (Executive Secretary), Louise Boyle, Mariam Haney, Coralie Cook, Dr. Zia M.
> Bagdadi, Dr. Alain Locke. Morrison, op. cit., 166 and 344, n. 4.
> 132. Louis Gregory, National Committee on Inter-Racial Unity, Gregory to National
> Spiritual Assembly and all Local Spiritual Assemblies of the United States and
> Canada, 23 February 1927, Alain Locke Papers, MSRC, Box 164–176, Folder 13
> (Bahá’í Faith). This report was praised by Shoghi Effendi as a [150] “splendid
> document [...] so admirable in its conception, so sound and sober in its language”
> and which “has struck a responsive chord in my heart” (Morrison, op. cit., 173 and
> 347, n. 20). Excerpts published in “Inter-Racial Amity Conferences,” Bahá’í News
> Letter, no. 22 (March 1928).
> 133. “Committees of the National Spiritual Assembly 1927–1928,” Bahá’í News Letter,
> No. 19 (August 1927): 4. Members of this new committee: Agnes Parsons, Louis
> Gregory, Coralie Cook, Miss Elizabeth Hopper, Dr. Zia M. Bagdadi, Dr. Alain Locke,
> Miss Isabel Rives.
> Christopher Buck            Alain Locke and Cultural Pluralism                        151
> 
> 134. Alaine [sic] Locke, “Impressions of Haifa,” in The Bahá’í World: A Biennial
> International Record, Volume II, April 1926–April 1928, comp. National Spiritual
> Assembly of the Bahá’ís of the United States and Canada (New York: Bahá’í
> Publishing Committee, 1928; reprint, Wilmette: Bahá’í Publishing Trust, 1980)
> 125, 127. Original manuscript in Alain Locke Papers, MSRC, Box 164–115, Folder
> 29 (“Impressions of Haifa” [typescript]).
> 135. “Committees of the National Spiritual Assembly 1929–1930,” Bahá’í News Letter,
> No. 32 (May 1929): 4. Members: Louis Gregory (Chairman), Shelley Parker
> (Secretary), Agnes Parsons, Louise Boyle, Mariam Haney, Dr. Zia Bagdadi, Dr. Alain
> Locke, Loulie Mathews, Miss Alice Higginbotham.
> 136. Alain Locke, “Impressions of Haifa,” in The Bahá’í World: A Biennial International
> Record, Volume III, April 1928–April 1930, comp. National Spiritual Assembly of the
> Bahá’ís of the United States and Canada (New York: Bahá’í Publishing Committee,
> 1930; reprint, Wilmette: Bahá’í Publishing Trust, 1980) 280, 282.
> 137. Louis Gregory, “Interracial Amity Committee” [1929–1930 Annual Report], Bahá’í
> News Letter, no. 40 (April 1930) 10–12. The committee members were: Louis G.
> Gregory (chairman), Shelley N. Parker (secretary), Agnes Parsons, Mariam Haney,
> Louise D. Boyle, Zia M. Bagdadi, Alain Locke, Alice Higgenbotham, Loulie A.
> Matthews. In reference to a draft letter (requested by the NSA) to Mrs. Herbert
> Hoover, who held a reception for black Congressman Oscar DePriest, the
> committee “pointed out that interracial amity is the basis of universal peace” (ibid.,
> 12).
> 138. Ruhi Afnan (on behalf of Shoghi Effendi) to Locke, 15 February 1930; Afnan (on
> behalf of Shoghi Effendi) to Locke, 5 July 1930; Shoghi Effendi to Locke, 5 July
> 1930, Alain Locke Papers, MSRC, Box 164–10, Folder 2 (Afnan, Ruhi).
> 139. “National Bahá’í Committees 1931–1932,” Bahá’í News Letter, No. 53 (July 1931): 2.
> Members: Loulie Mathews (chairman), Louis G. Gregory (secretary), Dr. Zia M.
> Bagdadi, Mabelle L. Davis, Frances Fales, Sara L. Witt, Alain L. Locke, Shelley N.
> Parker, Annie K. Lewis. Of his acceptance, Locke writes: “Your letter about the
> Interracial committee was welcome and enheartening. I have written Mr. Lunt my
> acceptance, and hope next year to participate more actively in the Amity
> conferences and consultations.” Locke to Gregory, 6 June 1931, Louis Gregory
> Papers, NBA. Louis Gregory, “The Annual Convention,” Bahá’í News, no. 52 (May
> 1931): 3. See Morrison, op. cit., 349, n. 29.
> 140. Locke spoke at the second session. Louis Gregory (on behalf of the National Bahá’í
> Committee for Racial Amity), “Inter-Racial Amity Activities,” Bahá’í News, No. 72
> (April 1933): 6. See also Morrison, op. cit., 194, [151] citing “Committee Reports:
> Committee on Inter-Racial Amity,” Bahá’í News, No. 74 (May 1933): 13 as well.
> 141. See note 1, supra.
> 142. Spiritual Assembly of the Bahá’ís of Washington, DC, untitled report, 1935, Alain
> Locke Papers, MSRC, Box 164–176, Folder 13 (Bahá’í Faith). Members of the
> Teaching Committee: Stanwood Cobb (chairman), Charles Mason Remey (vice–
> chairman), Mrs. John Stewart (secretary), Clarence Baker, Louise Boyle, William
> Gibson, Alain Locke, George Miller, Ethel Murray.
> 143. Locke to Holley, 18 April 1935, Alain Locke Papers, MSRC, Box 164–36, Folder 47
> (Holley, Horace).
> Christopher Buck            Alain Locke and Cultural Pluralism                         152
> 
> 144. Held at the Tea House of the Dodge Hotel. Official program, Alain Locke Papers,
> MSRC, Box 164–176, Folder 13 (Bahá’í Faith). In a note to Locke written on an
> announcement of this event sent out by the local spiritual assembly of the Bahá’ís
> of Washington, DC, Joseph Harley III wrote: “Your Bahá’í record cards have not
> been received– Bring them Monday, please.” (From the Washington, DC, Bahá’í
> Archives.)
> 145. Locke to Cobb, 10 December 1935, Alain Locke Papers, MSRC, Box 164–21, Folder
> 16 (Stanwood Cobb).
> 146. Alain Locke, “The Orientation of Hope,” in The Bahá’í World: A Biennial International
> Record, Volume V, April 1932–April 1934, comp. National Spiritual Assembly of the
> Bahá’ís of the United States and Canada (New York: Bahá’í Publishing Committee,
> 1936; reprint, Wilmette: Bahá’í Publishing Trust, 1980) 527–28. Reprint in Leonard
> Harris (ed.) The Philosophy of Alain Locke, 129–132. Leonard Harris’ reference (129
> n.) should be emended to read, “Volume V, 1932–1934” (not “Volume IV, 1930–
> 1932”). Original manuscript in Alain Locke Papers, MSRC, Box 164–123, Folder 11
> (“The Orientation of Hope.” 1934 [typescript]).
> 147. “I understand from Miss Juliet Thompson that you are going to speak at the Bahá’í
> center on the afternoon of October 24th.” Gulick to Locke, 11 October 1943, Alain
> Locke Papers, MSRC, Box 164–33, Folder 17 (Gulick, Robert L. Jr.).
> 148. Morrison, op. cit., 285.
> 149. Gulick to Locke, 28 January 1944; Gulick to Locke, “25" [February 1944], Alain
> Locke Papers, MSRC, Box 164–33, Folder 17 (Gulick, Robert L. Jr.).
> 150. Alain Locke, “Lessons in World Crisis,” in The Bahá’í World: A Biennial International
> Record, Volume IX, April 1940–April 1944, comp. National Spiritual Assembly of the
> Bahá’ís of the United States and Canada (Wilmette: Bahá’í Publishing Committee,
> 1945; reprint, Wilmette: Bahá’í Publishing Trust, 1981) 745–47.
> 151. “Local Communities,” Bahá’í News, No. 182 (April 1946): 6.
> 152. “Voting Members of the Washington, DC Bahá’í Community, 6 April 1949, Alain
> Locke Papers, MSRC, Box 164–176, Folder 13 (Bahá’í Faith).
> 153. Gregory to Locke, 6 April 1949, Alain Locke Papers, MSRC, Box 164–32, Folder 50
> (Gregory, Louis G.): “Although your Bahá’í spirit has been admirably shown by so
> many traits and activities, yet I have the deepest longing that you will see the
> wisdom of wholly identifying yourself with the Faith, thereby increasing your joys
> and usefulness, perhaps twenty-fold.”
> [152]
> 154. Gregory to Locke, 21 January 1951, Alain Locke Papers, MSRC, Box 164–32, Folder
> 50 (Gregory, Louis G.): “... my longing is, that your identify yourself fully with
> it” [the Bahá’í Faith] ... My most earnest hope is that you will see clearly the way to
> unite with the Bahá’ís in either Washington or New York, in the latter of which, I
> am told, you maintain a residence.”
> 155. Nina Matthisen to Locke, 5 September 1952; and press release (1953), Alain Locke
> Papers, MSRC, Box 164–176, Folder 13 (Bahá’í Faith).
> 156. Research Department, Bahá’í World Centre, Memorandum to The Universal House
> of Justice, 12 June 2002.
> 157. Ibid.
> 158. Research Department, Bahá’í World Centre, Memorandum to The Universal House
> of Justice, 26 December 2001.
> Christopher Buck            Alain Locke and Cultural Pluralism                       153
> 
> 159. From a letter dated 12 March 1926 written on behalf of Shoghi Effendi to the
> National Spiritual Assembly of the Bahá’ís of the United States and Canada
> Publishing Committee, “References to Dr. Alain Locke in Letters Written on Behalf
> of Shoghi Effendi,” Attachment, The Universal House of Justice to Buck, 16 July
> 2001.
> 160. Research Department, Bahá’í World Centre, Memorandum to The Universal House
> of Justice, 26 December 2001.
> 161. Ibid.
> 162. Locke, “Impressions of Haifa” (1926, 1929, 1930).
> 163. Locke, “Impressions” (1930) 280.
> 164. Locke, ibid.
> 165. Locke, ibid.
> 166. Gregory, “Inter–racial Amity,” 281. See Morrison, op. cit., 134–43.
> 167. In a message conveyed by Mountfort Mills (an American Bahá’í recently returned
> from a visit to Palestine), ‘Abdu’l-Bahá was reported to have said: “Say to this
> convention that never since the beginning of time has a convention of more
> importance been held. This convention stands for the oneness of humanity. It will
> become the cause of the removal of hostilities between the races. It will become the
> cause of the enlightenment of America. It will, if wisely managed and continued,
> check the deadly struggle between these races, which otherwise will inevitably
> break out” (Gregory, “Convention for Amity Between the Colored and White
> Races,” 115).
> 168. Harris, Philosophy of Alain Locke, 5.
> 169. Gregory, “Interracial Amity Committee” (1930) 10. (Note that this text differs from
> the translation given in another report: Gregory, “Convention for Amity Between
> the Colored and White Races,” 115), but the gist is the same. In all likelihood, both
> translations were taken from the same Persian original.)
> 170. ‘Abdu’l-Bahá to Parsons, 26 July 1921 and 27 September 1921. See Morrison, op.
> cit., 143 and 342, n. 34.
> 171. Dahl to Buck, 16 February 2001.
> 172. Locke to Gregory, 6 June 1931, Louis Gregory Papers, NBA.
> 173. Locke to Holley, 18 April 1935, Alain Locke Papers, MSRC, Box 164–36, Folder 47
> (Holley, Horace).
> 174. Robert Stockman, The Bahá’í Faith in America: Early Expansion, 1900–1912 (Oxford:
> George Ronald, 1995) 189.
> [153]
> 175. Locke to Parsons, 21 October 1922, Agnes Parsons Papers, NBA.
> 176. Morrison, op. cit., 140. See Alain Locke, “Obituary of George Cook,” Star of the
> West 18, 254. Mariam Haney had solicited this obituary. Haney to Locke, 25
> September 1931, Alain Locke Papers, MSRC, Box 164–33, Folder 49 (“Haney,
> Mariam”).
> 177. Locke to Gregory, 6 June 1931, Louis Gregory Papers, NBA.
> 178. Morrison, op. cit., 148–49, 164 and 182.
> 179. Agnes Parsons, who once again served as the chair of that committee, was struck
> by a car and killed in January 1934. She was seventy-three years old at her death.
> Morrison, op. cit, 198.
> Christopher Buck            Alain Locke and Cultural Pluralism                       154
> 
> 180. Morrison, op. cit., 194–213.
> 181. Morrison, op. cit., 213.
> 182. Locke to Mariam Haney (corresponding secretary of the Washington, DC LSA), 30
> March 1941, MSRC, Box 164–33, Folder 49 (“Haney, Mariam”).
> 183. Louis Gregory (on behalf of the National Bahá’í Committee for Racial Amity),
> “Inter-Racial Amity Activities,” Bahá’í News, No. 72 (April 1933): 6.
> 184. “Local Communities,” Bahá’í News, No. 182 (April 1946): 6.
> 185. “News of the Cause,” Bahá’í News Letter, No. 10 (Feb. 1926): 6. Cf. Morrison, op.
> cit., 151, who states that this tour occurred in 1925. However, Horace Holley
> indicates 1926: “I am delighted that the plans have worked out so well for your
> southern trip. I hope you will keep in touch with me during this trip and send me
> little memorandums of your public talks and any other news that might be of
> interest to the friends in the Bahá’í News Letter. You understand, of course, that I
> will present the story of your trip in an impersonal way and not refer to you as the
> source of the news. Consequently, please do not be so modest that you lean
> backward, because trips of this kind are most inspiring to all the friends and I feel
> that they have a right to know the details of what I am sure is going to be a
> remarkable speaking journey.” Holley to Locke, 28 January 1926, Alain Locke
> Papers, MSRC, Box 164–36, Folder 47 (Holley, Horace). In a later letter, it is clear
> that this trip must have taken place prior to August, as Locke was in Paris at that
> time. Holley to Locke, 17 August 1926, Alain Locke Papers, MSRC, Box 164–36,
> Folder 47 (Holley, Horace).
> 186. “The Seventeenth Annual Convention and Bahá’í Congress,” Bahá’í News Letter, No.
> 6 (1925): 3.
> 187. “News of the Cause,” Bahá’í News Letter, No. 10 (Feb. 1926): 6–7.
> 188. Morrison, op. cit., 124. See entry in index on 387, which says that Louis Gregory
> “helps form first Spiritual Assembly in South.”
> 189. Office of the Secretary Records, National Bahá’í Convention Files, Box 4. Courtesy
> Gayle Morrison. email communication, 11 Oct. 2002.
> 190. Gayle Morrison, email communication, 11 Oct. 2002.
> 191. Southern Regional Teaching Committee (Louise D. Boyle, Agnes Parsons, Louis
> Gregory), “Report of the Southern Regional Teaching Committee” (15 April 1926),
> 73–74. Courtesy of Gayle Morrison, email communication, 17 Oct. 2002.
> 192. Southern Regional Teaching Committee (Louise D. Boyle, Agnes Parsons, Louis
> Gregory), “Report of the Southern Regional Teaching Committee” (15 April 1926),
> 73–74. Courtesy of Gayle Morrison, email communication, 17 Oct. 2002.
> 193. Ibid.
> [154]
> 194. See Christopher Buck, Symbol and Secret: Qur’an Commentary in Bahá’u’lláh’s Kitáb-i
> Íqán. Studies in the Babi and Bahá’í Religions, vol. 7 (Los Angeles: Kalimát Press,
> 1995). Republished online as an electronic book at: http://bahai-library.com/
> buck_symbol_secret_quran.
> 195. Harris, Philosophy of Alain Locke, 129–32.
> 196. Harris, Philosophy of Alain Locke, 133–38.
> 197. Harris, Philosophy of Alain Locke, 129.
> Christopher Buck           Alain Locke and Cultural Pluralism                       155
> 
> 198. Shoghi Effendi to Locke, Western Union cablegram, 17 January 1944; Mabel Paine
> to Locke, 3 February 1944. See also Holley to Locke, 1 February 1944, Alain Locke
> Papers, MSRC, Box 164–36, Folder 47 (Holley, Horace), and Paine to Locke, 4
> March 1944, Alain Locke Papers, MSRC, Box 164–12, Folder 3 (Bahá’í World).
> Original manuscript in Alain Locke Papers, MSRC, Box 164–106, Folder 22 (re:
> Bahá’í revelation of principles)
> 199. Locke, “The Orientation of Hope,” in Harris, Philosophy of Alain Locke, 130, 132.
> 200. Harris, Philosophy of Alain Locke, 8, 10.
> 201. Kallen, op. cit., 122.
> 202. Harris, Philosophy of Alain Locke, 9.
> 203. Private memorandum, Alain Locke Papers (MSRC), cited by Winston, op. cit., 402.
> 204. Winston, op. cit., 404.
> 205. Menand, op. cit., 351.
> 206. James T. Kloppenberg, “Pragmatism: An Old Name for Some New Ways of
> Thinking?” Journal of American History 83.1 (1996): 102, n. 3.
> 207. Posnock, op. cit., 184.
> 208. Harris, Philosophy of Alain Locke, 4.
> 209. Alain Locke, “Pluralism and Intellectual Democracy,” in Conference on Science,
> Philosophy and Religion, Second Symposium (New York: Conference on Science,
> Philosophy and Religion, 1942). Reprinted in Leonard Harris (ed.) The Philosophy of
> Alain Locke, 53.
> 210. Kloppenberg, op. cit., 101.
> 211. Kloppenberg, op. cit., 120.
> 212. Houston Baker, Jr., Modernism and the Harlem Renaissance (Chicago: University of
> Chicago Press, 1987) 75, quoted by Harris, Philosophy of Alain Locke, 12. See
> Ernest Mason, “Deconstruction in the Philosophy of Alain Locke,” Transactions of the
> Charles S. Pierce Society 24 (Winter 1988): 85–106.
> 213. Lecture, 8 Nov. 1950, Howard University.
> 214. Posnock, op. cit., 187.
> 215. Posnock, op. cit., 187.
> [155]
> 216. Leonard Harris, “Preface,” in idem (ed.) The Critical Pragmatism of Alain Locke, xi.
> 217. Mason, “Social Philosophy of Alain Locke,” 26.
> 218. Kallen, op. cit., 127.
> 219. Green, “Alain Locke’s Multicultural Philosophy of Value,” 87.
> 220. Judith Green, “Alain Locke’s Multicultural Philosophy of Value,” in Leonard Harris
> (ed.) The Critical Pragmatism of Alain Locke, 87.
> 221. Napier, op. cit.
> 222. Mason, “Social Philosophy of Alain Locke,” 34.
> 223. Ibid.
> 224. Posnock, op. cit., 192.
> 225. Molesworth, op. cit., 175–76.
> 226. Alain Locke, “Cultural Relativism and Ideological Peace,” in Lyman Bryson, Louis
> Finkelstein, and R. M. MacIver (eds.) Approaches to World Peace (New York: Harper &
> Brothers, 1944) 609–618. Reprinted in Harris, Philosophy of Alain Locke, 67–78.
> Christopher Buck            Alain Locke and Cultural Pluralism                         156
> 
> 227. Locke, op. cit., 70.
> 228. Ibid.
> 229. Locke, op. cit., 75.
> 230. Locke, op. cit., 72.
> 231. Ibid.
> 232. Locke, op. cit., 73.
> 233. Locke, “Pluralism and Intellectual Democracy,” 60.
> 234. Locke, “Values and Imperatives,” in Harris, Philosophy of Alain Locke, 48.
> 235. Locke, “Cultural Relativism and Ideological Peace,” in Harris, Philosophy of Alain
> Locke, 73.
> 236. Moses, op. cit., 166.
> 237. Locke, “Cultural Relativism and Ideological Peace,” in Harris, Philosophy of Alain
> Locke, 73.
> 238. Ibid.
> 239. Locke, op. cit., 70.
> 240. Locke, op. cit., 75.
> 241. Locke to Parsons, 28 June 1922, Agnes Parsons Papers, NBA.
> 242. Locke, “Unity through Diversity: A Bahá’í Principle,” in Harris, Philosophy of Alain
> Locke, 130.
> 243. Locke, op. cit., 135.
> 244. Locke, op. cit., 136.
> 245. Ibid.
> 246. Green, Deep Democracy, 97.
> 247. Washington, Alain Locke and Philosophy, xxv.
> 248. Locke, op. cit., 135.
> 249. Ibid., emphasis added.
> 250. Mason, “Locke’s Social Philosophy,” 26.
> 251. Mason, “Locke’s Social Philosophy,” 28.
> 252. Stikkers, op. cit., 214–15.
> 253. Locke, op. cit., 135.
> 254. Locke, “Unity through Diversity: A Bahá’í Principle,” in Harris, Philosophy of Alain
> Locke, 134.
> 255. Locke, “The Contribution of Race to Culture,” in Harris, Philosophy of Alain Locke,
> 203.
> 256. Green, op. cit., 124.
> 257. Alain Locke, “Pluralism and Ideological Peace,” 65, cited by Harvey, op. cit., 26.
> 258. Kenneth W. Stikkers, “Instrumental Relativism and Cultivated Pluralism: Alain
> Locke and Philosophy’s Quest for a Common World,” in Leonard Harris (ed.) The
> Critical Pragmatism of Alain Locke, 214–15.
> 259. [156] See Josiah Royce, The Philosophy of Loyalty. Republished with an introduction
> by John J. McDermott (Nashville: Vanderbilt University Press, 1995 [1908]).
> 260. Leonard Harris, Philosophy of Alain Locke, 4. See Josiah Royce, Race Questions,
> Provincialism, and Other American Problems (1908; reprint, Freeport: Books of Libraries
> Press 1967).
> Christopher Buck            Alain Locke and Cultural Pluralism                         157
> 
> 261. Green, “Alain Locke’s Multicultural Philosophy of Value,” 88. See also Royce, Race
> Questions.
> 262. Moses, op. cit., 168.
> 263. Greg Moses, “Two Lockes, Two Keys: Tolerance and Reciprocity in a Culture of
> Democracy,” in Leonard Harris (ed.) The Critical Pragmatism of Alain Locke, 165.
> 264. Moses, op. cit., 173.
> 265. Green, “Cosmopolitan Unity Amidst Valued Diversity,” 132.
> 266. Green, op. cit., 97.
> 267. Alain Locke, “Minorities and the Social Mind,” Progressive Education 12 (March
> 1935): 142.
> 268. Segun Gbadegesin, “Values, Imperatives, and the Imperative of Democratic Values,”
> in Leonard Harris (ed.) The Critical Pragmatism of Alain Locke, 288.
> 269. Ibid.
> 270. Green, Deep Democracy, 96.
> 271. Rudolph V. Vanterpool, “Open–Textured Aesthetic Boundaries: Matters of Art,
> Race, and Culture,” in Leonard Harris (ed.) The Critical Pragmatism of Alain Lock, 141.
> 272. Alain Locke, “Lessons in World Crisis,” 746.
> 273. Hutchison, op. cit., 86.
> 274. Named after a pre-Civil War minstrel show character, Jim Crow laws were late
> nineteenth-century statutes passed by Southern states that created an American
> apartheid. In 1883, although slavery had been abolished in 1863, the Supreme
> Court declared the Civil Rights Act of 1875 unconstitutional, reflecting the
> widespread white supremacist attitudes of the day and effectively demolishing the
> foundations of post-Civil War Reconstruction. In 1896, the high court promulgated
> the “separate but equal doctrine” in Plessy v. Ferguson, leading to a profusion of Jim
> Crow laws. By 1914, every Southern state had established two separate societies
> “colored.” Segregation was enforced by the creation of separate facilities in virtually
> every sector of civil [157] society: restaurants, health care institutions, and
> cemeteries. In 1954, this racial caste system was successfully challenged in Brown v.
> Board of Education of Topeka, Kansas, which declared segregation in the public schools
> unconstitutional. The Jim Crow system was finally dismantled by civil rights
> legislation in 1964 68.
> 275. Johnny Washington, A Journey into the Philosophy of Alain Locke (Westport, CT and
> London: Greenwood Press, 1994) 103.
> 276. It should be noted that Shoghi Effendi, in The World Order of Bahá’u’lláh, 2nd rev.
> edn. (Wilmette: Bahá’í Publishing Trust, 1974 [1938]), used this term to refer to
> differences of ethnic origins, climate, history, language, tradition, thought and habit
> (41)—generally, in the sense of a lack of conformity except in essentials—as the
> bedrock of the Bahá’í community. It is therefore misleading to represent “unity in
> diversity” as applying only to race. (I am indebted to Gayle Morrison for this
> important observation.)
> 277. See Jonathan Levin, “The Esthetics of Pragmatism,” American Literary History 6
> (1994): 658–83.
> 278. Locke, “Unity through Diversity: A Bahá’í Principle,” in Harris, Philosophy of Alain
> Locke, 135.
> 279. Locke, op. cit., 137.
> Christopher Buck            Alain Locke and Cultural Pluralism                        158
> 
> 280. Locke, “Cultural Relativism and Ideological Peace,” in Harris, Philosophy of Alain
> Locke, 72.
> 281. Locke, “The Need for a New Organon in Education,” in Harris, Philosophy of Alain
> Locke, 268.
> 282. Locke, “Pluralism and Ideological Peace,” in Harris, Philosophy of Alain Locke, 99.
> 283. Locke, “Pluralism and Intellectual Democracy,” in Harris, Philosophy of Alain Locke,
> 62.
> 284. “You had better make up your mind to become a Methodist—They are certainly
> loyal to you—I heard your praises sung by several of them.” Mary Locke to Alain
> Locke, 14 May 1916), Alain Locke Papers, MSRC, Box 164–65, Folder 21 (page 5).
> 285. Locke to Parsons, 28 June 1922, Agnes Parsons Papers, NBA.
> 286. Alain Locke Papers, MSRC, Box 164–1, Folder 2 (Autobiographical statements).
> 287. Untitled essay, Alain Locke Papers, MSRC, Box 164–143, Folder 3 (Writings by
> Locke—Notes. Christianity, spirituality, religion).
> 288. Locke’s probable homosexual orientation may be relevant to this. See, e.g., Leonard
> Harris, “‘Outing’ Alain Locke: Empowering the Silenced,” in Sexual Identities,
> Queer Politics, ed. Mark Blasius (Princeton University Press, 2001) 321–41. In my
> own research of the Alain Locke Papers at Howard University, I discovered an
> unpublished autobiographical statement in which Locke referred to his “Achilles
> heel of homosexuality” which he “kept in an armoured shell [?] of reserve &
> haughty caution” (Alain Locke Papers, MSRC, Box 164–143, Folder 5
> [Autobiographical writings]).
> 289. Michael Rochester, personal communication, dated 5.2.02. Dr Rochester states:
> “Having been strongly attracted to the Bahá’í teachings in November 1951, as a
> student at the University of Toronto, I vividly remember attending a [158] fireside
> held in January or February 1952, in a home in what was then a suburb of Toronto,
> at which Alain Locke was the speaker. Unfortunately Elizabeth Manser (later my
> wife) who organized that fireside, no longer remembers how Dr. Locke came to be
> in Toronto, to be invited to the fireside or the title of his talk. His persona made a
> great impression on me, not only because what I understood of the Bahá’í stand on
> the oneness of the human race and the importance of efforts to free ourselves from
> racial prejudice was immensely attractive to me, but because his modest
> demeanour, and the wisdom and thoughtfulness with which he expressed himself,
> were so consonant with what I had already come to appreciate in and expect from
> the best Bahá’í speakers. He certainly clearly identified himself — indeed was
> introduced — as a Bahá’í to all of us there, Bahá’ís and seekers.”
> 290. Ebony (October 1952) 39. Locke kept a copy of this article. Alain Locke Papers,
> MSRC, Box 164–147, Folder 12 (Articles, advertisements that mention Locke).
> 291. Bahadur to Locke, 27 February 1924, Alain Locke Papers, MSRC, Box 164–12,
> Folder 2 (Bahadur, Azizullah).
>
> — *Alain Locke and Cultural Pluralism (Used by permission of the curator)*