The Resume

(September 13, 1885-June 9, 1954)
Born in Philadelphia, Pennsylvania
Birth name was Arthur Leroy Locke
Philosopher, author, and art patron
Chaired the philosophy department at Howard University (1918-25,1928-53)
Edited and contributed to the anthology ‘The New Negro: An Interpretation’ (1925)
Called ‘the Dean of the Harlem Renaissance’

Why he might be annoying:

He complained about the other black students at Harvard, ‘It’s well enough for them to get an education, but they are not gentlemen.’
His plans for a Harlem Museum of African Art and a Harlem Community Arts Center never got off the ground.
He kept both his homosexuality and his Baha’i faith closeted.
Discovered among his personal effects after he died was a box containing neatly stored semen samples from his lovers.
More than sixty years passed after his death until his cremated remains were buried. (And for over fifty years, the jar with his ashes was kept in a brown paper bag. In 2007, they got transferred to a funerary urn.)

Why he might not be annoying:

He was the first African-American selected as a Rhodes Scholar (1907).
He encouraged black writers, artists, and musicians to draw on their own history and African cultures in their works.
He was fired from Howard University for attempting to get equal pay for black and white faculty members (1925). He was rehired after the appointment of Mordecai Johnson as the university’s first black president.
Martin Luther King, Jr., said, ‘We’re going to let our children know that the only philosophers who lived were not Plato and Aristotle, but W.E.B. Du Bois and Alain Locke came through the universe.’
He was the subject of a Pulitzer Prize-winning biography, ‘The New Negro: The Life of Alain Locke.’ (2019)
It has been proposed that statues of him and Zimbabwean activist Lucy Banda-Sichone replace the statue of Cecil Rhodes at Oriel College, Oxford.

Credit: C. Fishel

Featured in the following Annoying Collections:

• Allegedly Gay Men
• Brothers and Sisters, I Have None
• C. Fishel's Profiles [Series 80]
• Harlem Renaissance
• I am a Baha'i
• I am from Philadelphia
• I am on a U.S. Postage Stamp [H-L]
• I Attended Harvard
• I Attended Oxford
• I Died in 1954 (Ranked: 68)
• I Earned a Doctorate
• I was Cremated
• I'm Buried at Congressional Cemetery [Washington, DC]
• Little People [5'3 and Shorter] - Male
• Look at Me, I'm Postage
• Look at Me, My Picture Is Art
• Phi Beta Kappa Fraternity
• Philosophers: 20th Century [1900-2000]
• Profiles 51056-51250 (Ranked: 51114)
• Rhodes Scholars

Year In Review:

In 2023, Out of 1 Votes: 100% Annoying
In 2022, Out of 5 Votes: 20.0% Annoying
In 2021, Out of 26 Votes: 80.77% Annoying