"Much of the creative work of the period was guided by the ideal of the Negro which signified a range of ethical ideals that often emphasized and intensified a higher sense of group and social cohesion.. The writers... literally waited for liberation... from their work and were perhaps the first group of African American writers to believe that art could radically transform the artist and the attitudes of other human beings." - Literacy Dictionary BiographyAlain Leroy Locke was born on September 13, 1886 in Philadelphia, Pennsylvania, to Mr. AndMrs.Pliny Ishmael Locke and Mary Hawkinns Locke, as an only child he grew up in Philadelphia and attended Central High School and Philadelphia pedagogy, and later in Locke's life he attended Harvard in 1904 where he graduated in 1907 with an outstanding academic record that he became a member of Phi Beta Kappa. After graduating from Harvard, he studied for three years from 1907 to 1910 at Oxford University in England as the first black Rhodes scholar. While graduating from Oxford, he spent a year at the University of Berlin, pursuing advanced work in philosophy. Locke began his career at Howard University in 1912 as an assistant professor of English and philosophy. Locke was soon interrupted in 1916 to pursue a doctorate at Harvard University, finally obtaining that degree in 1918. Locke returned to Howard as professor of philosophy and remained at the University until his retirement in 1952. Locke's involvement with the Renaissance touched numerous areas. Not only was he involved in the visual arts and literature, but he was directly involved in the theater movement through his association with Theater Arts Monthly, the Howard University Players (one of the first small theater groups among African Americans), and with his collaboration with Montgomery Gregory. One such collaboration with Gregory resulted in the dramatic anthology, Plays of Negro Life in 1927. To varying degrees, Locke encouraged young black writers, scholars, and artists of the