African American author, philosopher, and teacher. A key figure in the development of the Harlem Renaissance, he is remembered for such philosophical and social works as The New Negro: An Interpretation and When Peoples Meet: A Study of Race and Culture Contacts.
He graduated from Harvard University in the early 1900s and subsequently became the first African American to earn a Rhodes Scholarship.
He was a practitioner of the Bahá'í Faith.
He was born in Pennsylvania to Mary Hawkins Locke and Pliny Ishmael Locke.
He was an important mentor to fellow African American author Zora Neale Hurston.