The 60-year journey of the ashes of Alain Locke, father of the Harlem Renaissance

Details
Category: The Subject of Boys
Created: Friday, 12 September 2014 19:01
Published: Friday, 12 September 2014 18:43
Hits: 1495

“Look what I’ve got!”

{josquote}Black, gay and short, Locke hardly fit the stereotype of the strapping Rhodes scholar...{/josquote}

Joellen ElBashir is standing, smiling, in front of filing cabinets with two long, low drawers agape. On a counter, she has laid out her finds: typewritten documents and a stained brown paper bag bearing a few faint lines of handwriting. It’s not the first time ElBashir, curator of Howard University’s Moorland-Spingarn Research Center, has seen the bag. But every time she sees it, she’s struck.

“If Alain Locke had known, he ... ”

The container that held Locke’s ashes for almost 60 years. It was kept in a paper bag. (Astrid Riecken/For The Washington Post)

ElBashir chuckles and shakes her head, but it’s clear what she means: If Locke had known his cremated remains had been inside that grubby paper bag, he’d be rolling in his grave.

Full story...