The ashes were held at Howard University's Moorland–Spingarn Research Center until 2007. That year they were discovered when two former Rhodes scholars were working on the Centennial of Locke's selection as a Rhodes Scholar. Concerned that the human remains were not properly cared for, the university transferred them to its W. Montague Cobb Research Laboratory, which had extensive experience handling human remains (and had worked on those from the African Burying Ground in New York). Locke's ashes, which had been stored in a plain paper bag in a simple round metal container, were transferred to a small funerary urn and locked in a safe.