Alain LeRoy Locke (1885-1954) was a philosopher, writer, and educator. He graduated with honors from Harvard University in 1907 and became the first African American to be selected as a Rhodes Scholar. After receiving a PhD in philosophy at Harvard in 1918, Locke returned to Howard and formed one of the first philosophy departments at a historically black college. Locke is best known as the creator of the philosophical concept New Negro which would initiate the Harlem Renaissance (1925-1939), a period of significant contributions of African American artists, writers, poets, and musicians. In 1925, he edited The New Negro: An Interpretation--an anthology of fiction, poetry, and essays on African and African American art and literature.

Jeffrey C. Stewart is a professor of black studies at the University of California, Santa Barbara. His biography The New Negro: The Life of Alain Locke was the winner of the 2019 Pulitzer Prize for Biography, the 2019 Mark Lynton History Prize, the 2019 James A. Rawley Prize, and the 2018 National Book Award in Nonfiction. He has been a Fulbright Professor of American Studies at the University of Rome III; a W. E. B. Du Bois and a Charles Warren fellow at Harvard University; and a lecturer at the Terra Foundation for American Art in Giverny, France.