Barry Locke
Barry Locke was born in 1930 to Arthur (Leo) Locke (born 1906) and Lillian (Mahler) Locke (born 1908), and had a single sibling: Alan (born 1936). After graduating from Boston University in 1953, Locke served two years in the United States Army as a public information officer. After the Army he spent five years as a newspaper editor in Michigan before returning to New England as United Press International's Vermont bureau chief.
Alain LeRoy Locke
Locke sustained his religious relationship to Christianity in the public eye and rarely openly supported his affiliation to the Bahá'í movement. Locke was a member of the Bahá'í Faith and declared his belief in Bahá'u'lláh in 1918. Due to the lack of an official enrollment system for the Bahá'í movement, the date in which Locke converted to Bahá'í faith is unverified. However, the National Bahá'í Archives discovered a "Bahá'í Historical Record" card that Locke completed in 1935 at the inquiry of a Bahá'í census from the National Spiritual Assembly. He was one of seven African American individuals from the Washington D.C. Bahá'í movement to complete the card. On the card, Locke wrote the year 1918 as the year he was accepted into Bahá'í religion and wrote Washington D.C. as the place he was accepted. This date suggests that Locke's conversion from Orthodox Christianity to Bahá'í faith was during the early 1920s. It was common to write to 'Abdu'l-Bahá to declare one's new faith, and Locke received a letter, or "tablet", from 'Abdu'l-Bahá in return. When 'Abdu'l-Bahá died in 1921, Locke enjoyed a close relationship with Shoghi Effendi, then head of the Bahá'í Faith. Shoghi Effendi is reported to have said to Locke, "People as you, Mr. Gregory, Dr. Esslemont and some other dear souls are as rare as diamond."