Race Contacts and Inter-Racial Relations

Introduction

In 1915–16 Locke gave a series of five public lectures at Howard University, sponsored by the university’s NAACP chapter after the trustees had refused him a course on race. He used recent anthropology, including the work of Franz Boas, to argue that race has no fixed biological meaning and is best understood as a product of historical contact, conquest and conflict between groups. At the same time he held that a “social race”, a shared cultural heritage, can be a basis of solidarity and self-respect. The lectures remained unpublished until Jeffrey C. Stewart edited them in 1992. They are now read as an early contribution to the social constructionist view of race.

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• 1925The New Negro: An Interpretation