Hubert Harrison
Hubert Harrison | |
---|---|
U.S. Virgin Islands ) | |
Died | December 17, 1927 New York City, US | (aged 44)
Spouse | Irene Louise Horton (m. 1909-1927; his death) |
Children | 5 |
Hubert Henry Harrison (April 27, 1883 – December 17, 1927) was a West Indian-American writer, orator, educator, critic, race and class conscious political activist, and radical internationalist based in
An immigrant from
Harrison was a seminal and influential thinker who encouraged the development of
Early life
Hubert was born to Cecilia Elizabeth Haines, a working-class woman, on Estate Concordia,
In later life Harrison worked with many Virgin Islands-born activists, including James C. Canegata, Anselmo Jackson,
Emigration and education
Harrison came to New York in 1900 as a 17-year-old orphan and joined his older sister. He confronted a racial oppression unlike anything he previously knew, as only the United States had such a binary color line. In the Caribbean, social relations were more fluid. Harrison was especially "shocked" by the virulent white-supremacy typified by lynchings, which were reaching a peak in these years in the South. They were a horror that had not existed in St. Croix or other Caribbean islands. In addition, the fact that in most places blacks and people of color far outnumbered whites meant they had more social spaces in which to operate away from the oversight of whites.
In the beginning, Harrison worked low-paying service jobs while attending high school at night. For the rest of his life, Harrison continued to study as an
Marriage and family
In 1909 Harrison married Irene Louise Horton. They had four daughters and one son.
Career
In his first decade in New York, Harrison started writing letters to the editor of The New York Times on topics such as lynching,
In this period, Harrison also became interested in the
Like Huxley, Harrison became a relentless foe of theism and
Harrison was a firm advocate for
In 1907 Harrison obtained a job at the
Harrison was an early supporter of the protest philosophies of
Harrison expressed disapproval of
Socialism
Harrison was an early advocate of the Georgist economic philosophy and later clarified that he had believed Georgism was the same thing as socialism.[10] In 1911, after his postal firing, Harrison began full-time work with the Socialist Party of America and became America's leading Black Socialist. He lectured widely against capitalism, campaigned for the party presidential candidate Eugene V. Debs in 1912, and founded the Colored Socialist Club (the Socialist's first effort at reaching African Americans). He developed two important and pioneering theoretical series on "The Negro and Socialism" for the socialist newspaper the New York Call and for the socialist monthly International Socialist Review. In these articles Harrison outlined a materialist analysis of racism, arguing that it resulted from "the fallacy of economic fear" and economic competition, and that capitalists had an interest in maintaining economic discrimination based on racism, as "they can always use it as a club for the other workers".[11] He maintained that it was the principal "duty" of the Socialists to "champion the cause of the African American and that the Socialists should undertake special efforts to reach African Americans as they had done with foreigners and women." Perhaps most importantly, he emphasized that "Politically, the Negro is the touchstone of the modern democratic idea" and that true democracy and equality implies "a revolution... startling even to think of."[12]
Harrison moved to the left in the Socialist Party. He supported the socialistic, egalitarian, and militantly radical
Despite his efforts, Socialist Party practice and positions included segregated locals in the South and racist positions on Asian immigration. Harrison's position in the Party was also affected by his alignment with its left-wing and the IWW, who were engaged in factional struggle with its right-wing faction: many leftists exited after Haywood (who had been a member of the SPA's executive committee) was expelled from the Party in 1912. The
Race radicalism and the New Negro Movement
In 1914–15, after withdrawing from the Socialist Party, Harrison began work with freethinkers, the freethought/
In 1915–16, after a New York Age editorial by James Weldon Johnson praised his street lectures, Harrison decided to concentrate his work in Harlem's Black community. He wrote reviews on the developing Black Theatre and the pioneering Lafayette Players of the Lafayette Theatre (Harlem). He emphasized how the "Negro Theater" helped express the psychology of the "Negro" and how it called attention to color consciousness within the African-American community.
In response to the "white first" attitude of the organized labor movement and the Socialists, Harrison provided a "race first" political perspective. He founded the "
In 1917, African Americans and others were asked to 'Make the World Safe for Democracy" by fighting during World War I. In the United States, lynchings, racial segregation and discrimination continued. Harrison founded the Liberty League and the Voice: A Newspaper for the New Negro, as a radical alternative to the
In 1918 Harrison briefly served as an organizer for the American Federation of Labor (AFL). He chaired the Negro-American Liberty Congress (co-headed by William Monroe Trotter.) The latter was the major wartime protest effort of African Americans. The Liberty Congress pushed demands against discrimination and racial segregation in the United States. It submitted a petition to the U. S. Congress for federal anti-lynching legislation, which the NAACP did not demand at that time. Harrison commented on domestic and international aspects of the war, writing: "During the war the idea of democracy was widely advertised, especially in the English-speaking world, mainly as a convenient camouflage behind which competing imperialists masked their sordid aims... [however] those who so loudly proclaimed and formulated the new democratic demands never had the slightest intention of extending the limits or the applications of 'democracy.'"[17]
The autonomous Liberty Congress effort was undermined by the U.S. Army's anti-radical Military Intelligence Bureau (MIB) in a campaign that included NAACP leader
In 1919 Harrison edited the monthly
The Garvey Movement
In January 1920 Harrison became principal editor of the
Later years
In the 1920s, after breaking with Garvey, Harrison continued public speaking, writing, and organizing. He lectured on politics history, science, literature, social sciences, international affairs, and the arts for the
In 1924 Harrison founded the International Colored Unity League (ICUL), which was his most broadly unitary effort. The ICUL urged Black people to develop "race consciousness" as a defensive measure—to be aware of their racial oppression and to use that awareness to unite, organize, and respond as a group. The ICUL program sought political rights, economic power, and social justice; urged self-reliance, self-sufficiency, and cooperative efforts; and called for the founding of "a Negro state" in the U.S. (not in Africa, as Garvey advocated). In 1927 Harrison edited the ICUL's Voice of the Negro until shortly before his death that year.
In his last lecture, Harrison told his listeners that he had appendicitis and would be getting surgery. Afterwards, he said he would be giving another lecture. He died on the operating table, at the age of 44.
Intellectual and educational work
Harrison's appeal was both mass and individual. His race-conscious mass appeal utilized newspapers, popular lectures, and street-corner talks. This was in contrast to the approaches of
For many years after his 1927 death, Harrison was much neglected. However, recent scholarship on Harrison's life and the Columbia University Library's acquisition of his papers show renewed interest.[20][21] Columbia published the "Hubert H. Harrison Papers, 1893-1927: Finding Aid",[22] and plans to make Harrison's writings available on the internet. The forthcoming Columbia University Press two-volume Harrison biography also reflects the growing interest in Harrison's life and thought.
Legacy and honors
Biographer Jeffrey B. Perry[23] writes that, among the African-American leaders of his era, Harrison was "the most class conscious of the race radicals and the most race conscious of the class radicals." Perry emphasized that Harrison was a key unifying figure between two major trends of African-American struggle—the labor/civil rights trend (identified with Randolph and Owen, and later with Martin Luther King Jr.) and the race/nationalist trend (identified with Garvey, and later with Malcolm X).[24]
Harrison has been described as "the most distinguished, if not the most well-known, Caribbean radical in the United States in the early twentieth century" by historian Winston James.[25]
As an intellectual, Harrison was an unrivaled
A sampling of his varied work and poetry appears in the edited collection A Hubert Harrison Reader (2001). His collected writings are found in the Hubert H. Harrison Papers (which also contain a detailed Finding Aid) at the Rare Book and Manuscript Library of Columbia University. Other writings appear in his two books The Negro and the Nation (1917) and When Africa Awakes. A two-volume biography by Jeffrey B. Perry is being published by Columbia University Press. The first volume, The Voice of Harlem Radicalism, 1883-1918,[27] was published in November 2008 (an excerpt is available online).[27]
In 2005 Columbia University's Rare Book and Manuscript Library acquired Harrison's papers and the digitalized papers were made available through Columbia's Digital Library Collections website in 2020 .[28][29]
Other reading
Writings by Hubert H. Harrison
- A Hubert Harrison Reader, ed. with introduction and notes by Jeffrey B. Perry (Middletown, CT: Wesleyan University Press, 2001).[30]
- "Hubert H. Harrison Papers, 1893-1927: Finding Aid," Rare Book and Manuscript Library, Columbia University.[22] A list of Harrison's writings available at Columbia. On Columbia's acquisition of the Papers see "Rare Book and Manuscript Library Acquires the Papers of Hubert Harrison."[21] The Father of Harlem Radicalism," Columbia University Library News. Columbia also plans to put Harrison's Writings online.
- Harrison, Hubert H., "A Negro on Chicken Stealing", Letter to the editor, The New York Times, December 11, 1904, p. 6.[31]
- Harrison, Hubert, The Black Man's Burden [1915].[32]
- Harrison, Hubert H., The Negro and Nation (New York: Cosmo-Advocate Publishing Company, 1917).[33]
- Harrison, Hubert, "On A Certain Condescension in White Publishers," Negro World, March 1922.[34]
- Harrison, Hubert H., When Africa Awakes: The "Inside Story" of the Stirrings and Strivings of the New Negro in the Western World (New York: Porro Press, 1920), New Expanded Edition, edited with notes and a new introduction by Jeffrey B. Perry (New York: Diasporic Africa Press, 2015).
- "Transfer Day: Hubert Harrison's Analysis"[permanent dead link], Virgin Islands Daily News, March 31.
Personal biographical sketches
- Jackson, John G., "Hubert Henry Harrison: The Black Socrates", American Atheists, February 1987.
- Moore, Richard B., "Hubert Henry Harrison (1883-1927)", in Rayford W. Loganand Michael R. Winston (eds), Dictionary of American Negro Biography (New York: W. W. Norton, 1982), 292–93.
- Rogers, Joel A., "Hubert Harrison: Intellectual Giant and Free-Lance Educator", in Joel A. Rogers, World's Great Men of Color, ed. John Henrik Clarke, 2 vols (1946–47; New York: Collier Books, 1972), 2:432-42.[35]
Main biographical portraits
- Foner, Philip S., "Local New York, the Colored Socialist Club, Hubert H. Harrison, and W. E. B. Du Bois", in Philip S. Foner, American Socialism and Black Americans: From the Age of Jackson to World War II (Westport, CT: Greenwood Press, 1977), 202–19.
- Innis, Patrick, "Hubert Henry Harrison: Great African American Freethinker", Secular Subjects (St. Louis: Rationalist Society of St. Louis, 1992), rpt. in American Atheists Examiner.[36] See also Inniss, Patrick in AAH Examiner, vol. 4, no. 4, Winter 1994.[36]
- James, Portia, "Hubert H. Harrison and the New Negro Movement", Western Journal of Black Studies, 13, no. 2 (1989): 82–91.
- James, Winston, "Dimensions and Main Currents of Caribbean Radicalism in America: Hubert Harrison, the African Blood Brotherhood, and the UNIA," in Winston James, Holding Aloft the Banner of Ethiopia: Caribbean Radicalism in Early Twentieth-Century America (New York: Verso, 1998), 122–84.
- Perry, Jeffrey B., "The Developing Conjuncture and Some Insights from Hubert Harrison and Theodore W. Allen on the Centrality of the Fight against White Supremacy," Cultural Logic, 2010.
- Perry, Jeffrey, "An Introduction to Hubert Harrison, 'The Father of Harlem Radicalism,'" Souls, 2, no. 1 (Winter 2000), 38–54.
- Perry, Jeffrey B., "Hubert Harrison: Race Consciousness and the Struggle for Socialism", Socialism and Democracy, vol. 17, no. 2 (Summer–Fall 2003), 103–30.[37]
- Perry, Jeffrey B., "Hubert Harrison: The Voice of Early 20th Century Harlem Radicalism," BlackPast.org, October 2008.[38]
- Perry, Jeffrey B., Hubert Harrison: The Voice of Harlem Radicalism, 1883-1918 (New York: Columbia University Press, 2008), ISBN 978-0-231-13910-6
- Perry, Jeffrey B., "Hubert Henry Harrison 'The Father of Harlem Radicalism': The Early Years—1883 Through the Founding of the Liberty League and The Voice in 1917" (Ph.D. diss., Columbia University, 1986), includes an extensive bibliography (pp. 711–809).
- Perry, Jeffrey B., "On Hubert Harrison's Importance"[permanent dead link], Virgin Islands Daily News, February 18, 2003.
- Perry, Jeffrey B.: Hubert Harrison: the struggle for equality, 1918-1927, New York : Columbia University Press, [2021], ISBN 978-0-231-18262-1
- Samuels, Wilfred David, Five Afro-Caribbean Voices in American Culture (Boulder: Belmont Books a Division of Cockburn Publishing, 1977), 27–41.
Further reading
- Black, Blind, & In Charge: A Story of Visionary Leadership and Overcoming Adversity. New York, New York, 2020
- John C. Walker,The Harlem Fox: J. Raymond Jones at Tammany 1920:1970, New York: State University New York Press, 1989.
- David N. Dinkins, A Mayor's Life: Governing New York's Gorgeous Mosaic, PublicAffairs Books, 2013
- Rangel, Charles B.; Wynter, Leon (2007). And I Haven't Had a Bad Day Since: From the Streets of Harlem to the Halls of Congress. New York: St. Martin's Press.
- Baker Motley, Constance Equal Justice Under The Law: An Autobiography, New York: Farrar, Straus, and Giroux, 1998.
- Howell, Ron Boss of Black Brooklyn: The Life and Times of Bertram L. Baker Fordham University Press Bronx, New York 2018
- Jack, Hulan Fifty Years a Democrat:The Autobiography of Hulan Jack New Benjamin Franklin House New York, NY 1983
- Clayton-Powell, Adam Adam by Adam:The Autobiography of Adam Clayton Powell Jr. New York, New York 1972
- Pritchett, Wendell E. Robert Clifton Weaverand the American City: The Life and Times of an Urban Reformer Chicago: University of Chicago Press 2008
- Davis, BenjaminCommunist Councilman from Harlem:Autobiographical Notes Written in a Federal Penitentiary New York, New York 1969
References
- ^ Jervis Anderson, A. Philip Randolph: A Biographical Portrait (New York: Harcourt Brace Jovanovich, Inc., 1973), 79, and Joel. A. Rogers, "Hubert Harrison: Intellectual Giant and Free-Lance Educator (1883–1927)", in World's Great Men of Color, ed. John Henrik Clarke, 2 vols (1947; New York: reprint, Collier Books, 1972), 2:432–42, esp. 432–33.
- ^ John G., Jackson. Hubert Henry Harrison: The Black Socrates. www.atheists.org.
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ignored (help) - ^ A Hubert Harrison Reader, ed. with an introduction by Jeffrey B. Perry (Middletown: Wesleyan University Press, 2001), 1-2. This work (pp. 1–30) is used for general background on Harrison's life.
- ^ Winston James, Holding Aloft the Banner of Ethiopia: Caribbean Radicalism in Early Twentieth-century America Archived 2014-06-29 at the Wayback Machine, New York: Verso, 1998, p. 123.
- ^ Jeffrey B. Perry, Hubert Harrison: The Voice of Harlem Radicalism, 1883-1918, New York: Columbia University Press, 2008, p. 41.
- New York Times, June 28, 1903, p. 8.
- ^ Harrison, Hubert H. "The Negro and the nation". New York, Cosmo-advocate publishing co. Retrieved 5 April 2020.
- ^ Harrison, Hubert (27 April 1980). "Hubert Harrison - Freedom from Religion Foundation".
- ^ Hubert Harrison to the editor, NYS, December 8, 1910, p. 8, and December 19, 1910, p. 8; and Charles William Anderson to Booker T. Washington, September 10, 1911, and October 30, 1911, in Louis R. Harlan and Raymond W. Smock (eds). The Booker T. Washington Papers, 13 vols (Urbana: University of Illinois Press, 1972-1984), 11: pp. 300 Archived 2009-01-07 at the Wayback Machine-301 Archived 2005-01-16 at the Wayback Machine and 351. Archived 2011-05-11 at the Wayback Machine
- ^ ISBN 978-0231139113.
- ^ a b c d Heideman, Paul (29 June 2019). "The Most Important Black Radical You've Never Heard Of". Jacobin. Retrieved 29 June 2019.
- ^ Hubert Harrison, "The Negro and Socialism: 1--The Negro Problem Stated," New York Call, November 28, 1911, p. 6, repr. in A Hubert Harrison Reader, 52-55, quotes p. 54.
- ^ https://industrialworker.org/hubert-harrison-wobbly-socialist-black-socrates/
- ^ Perry, Jeffrey (2009). Hubert Harrison the voice of Harlem radicalism, 1883-1918. New York: Columbia University Press. p. 120.
- ^ Hubert Harrison, "Race First Versus Class First", Negro World, March 27, 1920, repr. in A Hubert Harrison Reader, 107–09, quote p. 109.
- ISBN 9780268103378.
- ^ Hubert H. Harrison, "Introductory", August 15, 1920, in Hubert H. Harrison, When Africa Awakes: The "Inside Story" of the Stirrings and Strivings of the New Negro in the Western World (New York: The Porro Press, 513 Lenox Avenue, 1920), pp. 5–8, quote p. 5.
- ^ Hubert H. Harrison, "The Descent of Dr. Du Bois," August 15, 1920, in Hubert H. Harrison, When Africa Awakes: The "Inside Story" of the Stirrings and Strivings of the New Negro in the Western World (New York: The Porro Press, 513 Lenox Avenue, 1920), pp. 66–70, esp. p. 68.
- ^ Hubert H. Harrison, "Announcement", New Negro, III (August 1919), 3.
- ^ Rare Book and Manuscript Library Archived 2007-12-16 at the Wayback Machine at www.columbia.edu
- ^ a b "Rare Book and Manuscript Library Acquires Papers of Hubert Harrison, Father of Harlem Radicalism". Archived from the original on 2007-08-16. Retrieved 2007-11-18.
- ^ a b "Hubert H. Harrison Papers, 1893-1927: Finding Aid". Archived from the original on 2007-08-16. Retrieved 2007-11-18.
- ^ "www.jeffreybperry.net". Archived from the original on 2010-03-05. Retrieved 2010-02-03.
- ^ A Hubert Harrison Reader, p. 2.
- ^ James, Holding Aloft the Banner of Ethiopia Archived 2011-05-11 at the Wayback Machine, 1998, p. 134.
- ^ Hubert Harrison Papers, Rare Book and Manuscript Library, Columbia University
- ^ a b Jeffrey B. Perry, Jeffrey B. Perry, "Hubert Harrison: The Voice of Harlem Radicalism, 1883-1918" Archived 2008-12-22 at the Wayback Machine, Vol. 1 (New York: Columbia University Press, November, 2008).
- ^ "The Harlem Digital Archive: A Television, Education, and Library Project". Columbia Center for New Media Teaching and Learning (CCNMTL) | Columbia University.
- ^ "Hubert H. Harrison papers". Digital Library Collections | Columbia University. Retrieved 2021-01-12.
- ^ A Hubert Harrison Reader, Hubert Henry Harrison, Book - Barnes & Noble at search.barnesandnoble.com
- ^ A Negro on Chicken Stealing, NYT archive
- ^ The Black Man's Burden (A Reply to Rudyard Kipling) Archived 2007-08-13 at the Wayback Machine at www.expo98.msu.edu
- ^ [1] Archived 2017-10-20 at the Wayback Machine The Negro and the Nation, eBook at https://studenthandouts.com/texts/nonfiction/hubert-harrison-the-negro-and-the-nation.html
- ^ "On A Certain Condescension in White Publishers" Archived 2014-06-28 at the Wayback Machine, in Henry Louis Gates (Jr.) and Gene Andrew Jarret (eds), The New Negro: Readings on Race, Representation, and African American Culture, 1892–1938, Princeton University Press, 2007, pp. 373-4.
- ^ Marcus Garvey – Hubert Henry Harrison – Great People of Color Archived 2007-11-29 at the Wayback Machine at www.marcusgarvey.com
- ^ a b AAH Examiner article Archived 2007-11-06 at the Wayback Machine at www.secularhumanism.org
- ^ Socialism and democracy Archived 2007-10-17 at the Wayback Machine at www.sdonline.org
- ^ "Hubert Harrison" Archived 2013-08-14 at the Wayback Machine, BlackPast.
External links
This article's use of external links may not follow Wikipedia's policies or guidelines. (May 2019) |
- List of recent and future public events related to Hubert Harrison
- Allan, John, "The Socialism of Hubert Harrison", News & Letters, January 2004.
- Anderson, Charles William to Booker T. Washington, September 10, 1911, and October 30, 1911, in Louis R. Harlan and Raymond W. Smock (eds), The Booker T. Washington Papers, 13 vols (Urbana: University of Illinois Press, 1972–1984), 11: 300-01 and 351.
- Brown, Egbert Ethelred, Papers Description Archived 2020-06-08 at the Wayback Machine (discusses Hubert Harrison Memorial Church), Schomburg Center for Research in Black Culture, New York Public Library.
- Boyd, Herb, Review of Hubert Harrison: The Voice of Harlem Radicalism, 1883-1918, Neworld Review, May 19, 2009.
- Fletcher, Bill Jr., "Radicals Known and Unknown", Monthly Review, December 2001.
- "The Hubert Harrison Center", C. L. R. James Institute.
- "Hubert Harrison: Life, Legacy, and Some Writings." Archived 2018-12-29 at the Wayback Machine
- McLemee, Scott, Harrison Redux, Columbia Journalism Review, May 6, 2009.
- McWhorter, John, "Dead End: Hubert Harrison's militant, unproductive racial politics" Archived 2009-02-10 at the Wayback Machine, City Journal online, 2–06–2009.
- Munro, John, "Roots of Whiteness", Labour/Le Travail, Fall 2004.
- Perry, Jeffrey B., "The Developing Conjuncture and Insights from Hubert Harrison and Theodore W. Allen on the Centrality of the Fight Against White Supremacy", Cultural Logic, July 2010.
- Perry, Jeffrey B. Discusses Hubert Harrison in "Rediscovering Hubert Harrison". Interview conducted by Scott McLemeee on December 10, 2008, Inside Higher Ed.
- Perry, Jeffrey B. "Hubert Harrison: Race Consciousness and the Struggle for Socialism", Socialism and Democracy, vol. 17 no. 2 (Summer-Fall 2003), 103–30.
- Perry, Jeffrey B. Hubert Harrison: The Voice of Harlem Radicalism, 1883-1918 (New York: Columbia University Press, 2008).
- Perry, Jeffrey B. 'Hubert Harrison: The Struggle for Equality, 1918-1927[permanent dead link] (New York: Columbia University Press, 2020).
- Perry, Jeffrey B. (ed.), A Hubert Harrison Reader (Middletown, CT: Wesleyan University Press, 2001).
- Phelps, Christopher, "The Rediscovered Brilliance of Hubert Harrison", review of A Hubert Harrison Reader, Science and Society, Vol. 68, no. 2 (Summer 2004), 223–230.
- Ruff, Allen, "The Vital Legacy of Hubert Harrison" Archived 2017-08-28 at the Wayback Machine, Against the Current, January/February 2004, no. 108, and in Solidarity.
Archive
- Hubert H. Harrison Papers, 1893–1927, Rare Book and Manuscript Library, Columbia University
- Finding Aid
- Digitised papers, Digital Library Collection
Audio
- "Jeffrey Perry Discusses Hubert Harrison", Podcast Interview, Inside Higher Ed, December 10, 2008.
Video
- "Hubert Harrison: The Voice of Harlem Radicalism" video of slide presentation/talk by Jeffrey B. Perry
- Jeffrey B. Perry, "On Hubert Harrison", Interview by Stella Winston, TV show "Straight Up!"
- "Book Discussion on Hubert Harrison". C-SPAN. 21 January 2009. Retrieved 26 April 2015.
- "Hubert Harrison: Life, Legacy, and Some Writings."