The Works of Alain Locke

Charles Molesworth is the coauthor, with Leonard Harris, of Alain L. Locke: The Biography of a Philosopher (University of Chicago Press, 2008).

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

Molesworth has compiled fascinating essays on art, aesthetics, race, and democracy written by Locke well before and after, not just during, his so-called deanship of the New Negro Renaissance in the 1920s. Anyone interested in Locke and his place in American intellectual history should read this book.