Howard University officials initially considered having Locke's ashes buried in a niche at Locke Hall on the Howard campus, as Langston Hughes's ashes had been interred in 1991 at the Schomburg Center for Research in Black Culture in New York City. But Kurt Schmoke, the university's legal counsel, was concerned about setting a precedent that might lead to too many people trying to gain burials at the university. After reviewing legal issues, university officials decided to bury the remains off-site. They thought to bury Locke beside his mother, Mary Hawkins Locke. But Howard officials quickly discovered a problem: She had been interred at Columbian Harmony Cemetery in Washington, D.C., but that cemetery closed in 1959. Her remains and others from that cemetery were transferred to National Harmony Memorial Park. (She and 37,000 other unclaimed remains from Columbian Harmony were buried in a mass grave, with no markers.)