In this thesis I propose that Alain Locke’s pluralistic cosmopolitanism can serve as a middle ground between integrationist and separatist measurements of racial progress. Using Gary Peller’s article “Race-Consciousness” as a focal point, I argue that Locke’s philosophy can adequately address concerns held by both integrationists and separatists. In Chapter One, I lay out the historical foundations and subsequent debate between integrationists and separatists, and analyze Peller’s challenge of integrationist ideologies of the sixties and seventies. Using his article to highlight the often-neglected separatist position, Chapter Two then proposes Locke’s pluralistic cosmopolitanism as a potential middle ground for addressing separatists’ concerns with integrationist ideology and vice versa. Locke’s emphasis on unity in diversity, his three working principles—cultural equivalence, cultural reciprocity, and limited cultural convertibility—his critical relativism, and his heavy involvement with the Harlem Renaissance makes his philosophical approach useful in addressing concerns not only of black separatists/nationalists but integrationists as well.

This thesis will examine the direct and indirect impact the Irish National theatre had upon American theatre in general and the African American theatre in particular. It discusses the relationship between the Irish theatrical movement during the Irish Literary Renaissance and the drama that was produced during the Harlem Renaissance. To do this Rorty’s concepts of the ‘strong poet’ and ‘ironist’ will be utilized. The bleeding and cross contamination of culture, it is contended, was due to the American tour that the Irish Players undertook in 1911/12. The tour, although staged in white theatre houses and attended by a mainly white audience, had a sizeable impact on the American theatrical landscape. This thesis will chart the course of this change, from the tour through to the beginnings of the Harlem Renaissance. From the Abbey Theatre to the Little Theatre movement and from there to the African American theatre a continuous thread of de-reification, of cultural awakenings is established. In essence, the source of the African American theatre, both the Artistic stylings and hopes of Alain Locke and the propaganda aspirations of W.E.B. DuBois will be referred back to the Irish tour.