This is a superb study of a neglected but powerfully influential figure in African-American history. As far as I can judge, Jeffrey B. Perry’s scholarship is formidable, his documentation impeccable, his writing lucid and graceful. If his promised second volume is as admirable and compelling as his first, then we would have to count him, with gratitude, among the finest living biographers of black men and women—indeed, one of our finest biographers, without reservation." — Arnold Rampersad, Professor of English and the Sara Hart Kimball Professor in the Humanities, Stanford University
December
17th is the anniversary of the death of Hubert Harrison in 1927 at age
44. – Please help to spread the word about his important life and work.
Hubert Harrison (1883-1927) is one of the truly important figures of
early twentieth-century America. A brilliant writer, orator, educator,
critic, and political activist, he was described by the historian Joel
A. Rogers, in "World’s Great Men of Color" as “the foremost
Afro-American intellect of his time.” Labor and civil rights leader A.
Philip Randolph described Harrison as “the father of Harlem Radicalism.”
Harrison’s friend and pallbearer, Arthur Schomburg, fully aware of his
popularity, eulogized to the thousands attending Harrison’s Harlem
funeral that he was also “ahead of his time.”
Born in St.
Croix, Danish West Indies, in 1883, to a Bajan mother and a Crucian
father, Harrison arrived in New York as a seventeen-year-old orphan in
1900. He made his mark in the United States by struggling against class
and racial oppression, by helping to create a remarkably rich and
vibrant intellectual life among African Americans, and by working for
the enlightened development of the lives of “the common people.” He
consistently emphasized the need for working class people to develop
class-consciousness; for “Negroes” to develop race consciousness,
self-reliance, and self-respect; and for all those he reached to
challenge white supremacy and develop modern, scientific, critical, and
independent thought as a means toward liberation.
A
self-described “radical internationalist,” Harrison was extremely
well-versed in history and events in Africa, Asia, the Mideast, the
Americas, and Europe. More than any other political leader of his era,
he combined class-consciousness and anti-white supremacist race
consciousness in a coherent political radicalism. He opposed capitalism
and maintained that white supremacy was central to capitalist rule in
the United States. He emphasized that “politically, the Negro is the
touchstone of the modern democratic idea”; that “as long as the Color
Line exists, all the perfumed protestations of Democracy on the part of
the white race” were “downright lying,” that “the cant of ‘Democracy’”
was “intended as dust in the eyes of white voters,” and that true
democracy and equality for “Negroes” implied “a revolution . . .
startling even to think of.”
Working from this theoretical
framework, he was active with a wide variety of movements and
organizations and played signal roles in the development of what were,
up to that time, the largest class radical movement (socialism) and the
largest race radical movement (the “New Negro”/Garvey movement) in U.S.
history. His ideas on the centrality of the struggle against white
supremacy anticipated the profound transformative power of the Civil
Rights/Black Liberation struggles of the 1960s and his thoughts on
“democracy in America” offer penetrating insights on the limitations and
potential of America in the twenty-first century.
Harrison
served as the foremost Black organizer, agitator, and theoretician in
the Socialist Party of New York during its 1912 heyday; he founded the
first organization (the Liberty League) and the first newspaper (The
Voice) of the militant, World War I-era “New Negro” movement; and he
served as the editor of the “Negro World” and principal radical
influence on the Garvey movement during its radical high point in 1920.
His views on race and class profoundly influenced a generation of “New
Negro” militants including the class radical A. Philip Randolph and the
race radical Marcus Garvey. Considered more race conscious than Randolph
and more class conscious than Garvey, Harrison is a key ideological
link between the two great trends of the Black Liberation Movement--the
labor and civil rights trend associated with Martin Luther King, Jr.,
and the race and nationalist trend associated with Malcolm X. (Randolph
and Garvey were, respectively, the direct links to King marching on
Washington, with Randolph at his side, and to Malcolm, whose parents
were involved with the Garvey movement, speaking militantly and proudly
on street corners in Harlem.)
Harrison was not only a political
radical, however. J. A. Rogers described him as an “Intellectual Giant
and Free-Lance Educator,” whose contributions were wide-ranging,
innovative, and influential. He was an immensely skilled and popular
orator and educator who spoke and/or read six languages; a highly
praised journalist, critic, and book reviewer (reportedly the first
regular Black book reviewer in history); a pioneer Black activist in the
freethought and birth control movements; a bibliophile and library
builder and popularizer who helped develop the 135th Street Public
Library into what became known as the internationally famous Schomburg
Center for Research in Black Culture; a pioneer Black lecturer for the
New York City Board of Education and one of its foremost orators). His
biography offers profound insights on race, class, religion,
immigration, war, democracy, and social change in America.
For information on vol. 1 of his biography
see http://www.jeffreybperry.net/
and see http://www.jeffreybperry.net/
For writings by and about Hubert Harrison see http://www.jeffreybperry.net/
Hubert Harrison (1883-1927) is one of the truly important figures of early twentieth-century America. A brilliant writer, orator, educator, critic, and political activist, he was described by the historian Joel A. Rogers, in "World’s Great Men of Color" as “the foremost Afro-American intellect of his time.” Labor and civil rights leader A. Philip Randolph described Harrison as “the father of Harlem Radicalism.” Harrison’s friend and pallbearer, Arthur Schomburg, fully aware of his popularity, eulogized to the thousands attending Harrison’s Harlem funeral that he was also “ahead of his time.”
Born in St. Croix, Danish West Indies, in 1883, to a Bajan mother and a Crucian father, Harrison arrived in New York as a seventeen-year-old orphan in 1900. He made his mark in the United States by struggling against class and racial oppression, by helping to create a remarkably rich and vibrant intellectual life among African Americans, and by working for the enlightened development of the lives of “the common people.” He consistently emphasized the need for working class people to develop class-consciousness; for “Negroes” to develop race consciousness, self-reliance, and self-respect; and for all those he reached to challenge white supremacy and develop modern, scientific, critical, and independent thought as a means toward liberation.
A self-described “radical internationalist,” Harrison was extremely well-versed in history and events in Africa, Asia, the Mideast, the Americas, and Europe. More than any other political leader of his era, he combined class-consciousness and anti-white supremacist race consciousness in a coherent political radicalism. He opposed capitalism and maintained that white supremacy was central to capitalist rule in the United States. He emphasized that “politically, the Negro is the touchstone of the modern democratic idea”; that “as long as the Color Line exists, all the perfumed protestations of Democracy on the part of the white race” were “downright lying,” that “the cant of ‘Democracy’” was “intended as dust in the eyes of white voters,” and that true democracy and equality for “Negroes” implied “a revolution . . . startling even to think of.”
Working from this theoretical framework, he was active with a wide variety of movements and organizations and played signal roles in the development of what were, up to that time, the largest class radical movement (socialism) and the largest race radical movement (the “New Negro”/Garvey movement) in U.S. history. His ideas on the centrality of the struggle against white supremacy anticipated the profound transformative power of the Civil Rights/Black Liberation struggles of the 1960s and his thoughts on “democracy in America” offer penetrating insights on the limitations and potential of America in the twenty-first century.
Harrison served as the foremost Black organizer, agitator, and theoretician in the Socialist Party of New York during its 1912 heyday; he founded the first organization (the Liberty League) and the first newspaper (The Voice) of the militant, World War I-era “New Negro” movement; and he served as the editor of the “Negro World” and principal radical influence on the Garvey movement during its radical high point in 1920. His views on race and class profoundly influenced a generation of “New Negro” militants including the class radical A. Philip Randolph and the race radical Marcus Garvey. Considered more race conscious than Randolph and more class conscious than Garvey, Harrison is a key ideological link between the two great trends of the Black Liberation Movement--the labor and civil rights trend associated with Martin Luther King, Jr., and the race and nationalist trend associated with Malcolm X. (Randolph and Garvey were, respectively, the direct links to King marching on Washington, with Randolph at his side, and to Malcolm, whose parents were involved with the Garvey movement, speaking militantly and proudly on street corners in Harlem.)
Harrison was not only a political radical, however. J. A. Rogers described him as an “Intellectual Giant and Free-Lance Educator,” whose contributions were wide-ranging, innovative, and influential. He was an immensely skilled and popular orator and educator who spoke and/or read six languages; a highly praised journalist, critic, and book reviewer (reportedly the first regular Black book reviewer in history); a pioneer Black activist in the freethought and birth control movements; a bibliophile and library builder and popularizer who helped develop the 135th Street Public Library into what became known as the internationally famous Schomburg Center for Research in Black Culture; a pioneer Black lecturer for the New York City Board of Education and one of its foremost orators). His biography offers profound insights on race, class, religion, immigration, war, democracy, and social change in America.
For information on vol. 1 of his biography
see http://www.jeffreybperry.net/
and see http://www.jeffreybperry.net/
For writings by and about Hubert Harrison see http://www.jeffreybperry.net/
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