Alain LeRoy Locke (1885–1954) was a philosopher, writer, and educator born in Philadelphia, Pennsylvania, to a family of educators and distinguished civil servants.
Locke, a sickly but bright child, excelled academically throughout his schooling. He graduated with honors from Harvard University in 1907 and became the first African American to be selected as a Rhodes Scholar. As a Rhodes Scholar we was admitted to Hertford College at Oxford where he studied literature, philosophy, Greek, and Latin. He also studied philosophy at the University of Berlin in Germany.
As work was limited for African American scholars, he joined the faculty of Howard University in 1912,teaching English. After receiving a PhD in philosophy at Harvard in 1918, Locke returned to Howard and formed one of the first philosophy departments at a historically black college.
