Alain Leroy Locke (September 13, 1885 – June 9, 1954) was an
American writer,
philosopher, educator, and patron of the arts. Distinguished as the first African American
Rhodes Scholar in 1907, Locke was the philosophical architect —the acknowledged "Dean"— of the
Harlem Renaissance. As a result, popular listings of influential African-Americans have repeatedly included him. On March 19, 1968, the Rev.
Dr. Martin Luther King, Jr. proclaimed: "We're going to let our children know that the only philosophers that lived were not
Plato and
Aristotle, but
W. E. B. Du Bois and Alain Locke came through the universe."