Jeffrey B. Perry

December 17, 2021, marks the 94th anniversary of the appendicitis-related death in Bellevue Hospital of St. Croix-born, Harlem-based Hubert Harrison (1883-1927), who was described by A. Philip Randolph as "the father of Harlem Radicalism," It is an appropriate occasion to call attention to his extraordinary life and political and intellectual work.

 

Harrison was: the leading Black activist in the Freethought movement (c. 1911) and the Socialist Party (1912); the only Black speaker at the Paterson Silk Strike (1913); the founder of the first organization (the Liberty League) and the first newspaper ("The Voice") of the militant "New Negro Movement" (1917); author of "The Negro and the Nation" (1917);  editor of "The New Negro" ["an organ of the international consciousness of the darker races – especially of the Negro race"] (1919); principal managing editor of Marcus Garvey's globe-sweeping "Negro World" (1920); and author of "When Africa Awakes: The 'Inside Story' of the Stirrings and Strivings of the New Negro in the Western World" (1920). He initiated the first "regular book-review section known to Negro newspaperdom" (beginning in 1920) and he was: a pioneering regular lecturer for the New York City Board of Education (beginning in 1922); a regular columnist for the "Boston Chronicle" (1924); a founding officer of the Committee that established the Department of Negro  History, Literature, and Art of the 135th St. Public Library (1924-1925) [which grew into the internationally famous Schomburg Center for Research in Black Culture in Harlem]; and founder of the International Colored Unity League (1924) and editor of its monthly "The Voice of the Negro" (1927).

 

Among the Black radicals of his day Harrison has been described as "the most class conscious of the race radicals and the most race conscious of the class radicals." He was a major influence on the class-radical Randolph and the race-radical Garvey, and on a generation of activists including Richard B. Moore, W. A. Domingo, Hodge Kirnon, and Cyril Briggs. He also supported artists, social workers, and literary figures such as author and poet Claude McKay, social worker Frances Reynolds Keyser, sculptress Augusta Savage, editor Drusilla Dunjee Houston, pianist Eubie Blake, and poet, composer, and lyricist Andy Razaf.

 

Harrison, a former postal worker who was fired after criticizing Booker T. Washington, opposed capitalism and imperialism and emphasized: that "racism" was not innate; that white supremacy was not in "white" workers class interests; that white supremacy was central to capitalist rule in the United States; and that struggle against white supremacy was central to radical social change efforts in the U.S.  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" and "the cant of 'Democracy'" was "intended as dust in the eyes of white voters"; that true democracy and equality for "Negroes" implied "a revolution . . . startling even to think of," and that "capitalist imperialism which mercilessly exploits the darker races for its own financial purposes is the enemy which we must combine to fight." When he left the Socialist Party, he offered the profound insight that the Socialists, like the labor movement, "put [the white] Race First, and class after" and he soon responded by calling on Black people to put "Race First!"

Described by Joel A. Rogers in "World's Great Men of Color" as an "intellectual giant" who was "perhaps the foremost Aframerican intellect of his time," the "radical internationalist" Harrison wrote and spoke knowledgeably on literary, political, domestic and international topics. Author Henry Miller, a socialist in his youth, remembered Harrison on a soapbox [he spoke before as many as 50,000 people at Union Square in 1912] as his "quondam idol." "There was no one in those days . . . who could hold a candle to Hubert Harrison," explained Miller. "He was a man who electrified by his mere presence."

 

At his 1927 funeral, the outstanding bibliophile, Arthur Schomburg eulogized that Harrison "came ahead of his time." Schomburg was correct! While Harrison was a leading activist of his day, 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 social change efforts in America in the twenty-first century.

When Harrison died, he was buried in an unmarked plot in Woodlawn Cemetery in the Bronx.  Interest in him has increasingly grown in recent years, however, and a beautiful jet-black slant marker with etching was placed on the gravesite. It includes these words derived from the poem "Hubert H. Harrison" written by Andy Razaf, the unofficial poet laureate of the militant "New Negro Movement" –

Speaker

Editor

Sage

"What A Change Thy Work Hath Wrought."

 

Hubert Harrison has much to offer current and future generations!

 

 

Columbia University Press recently completed publication of the second volume of Jeffrey B. Perry's two-volume biography of Harrison, which is believed to be the first, full-life, multi-volume biography of an Afro-Caribbean and only the fourth of an African American after those of Booker T. Washington, W. E. B. DuBois, and Langston Hughes.

 

Jeffrey B. Perry

 

Dr. Jeffrey B. Perry is the author of "Hubert Harrison: The Voice of Harlem Radicalism, 1883-1918" and "Hubert Harrison: The Struggle for Equality, 1918-1927" (which was nominated for a Pulitzer Prize).  He also edited "A Hubert Harrison Reader" (Wesleyan University Press) and placed "The Hubert H. Harrison Papers" at Columbia University's Rare Book and Manuscript Library where a significant number have been placed online.

From Columbia Alumni Bookshelf

100 – Years Ago Today -- A July 4, 1917 rally of Hubert Harrison’s Liberty League at Harlem’s Metropolitan Baptist Church on 138th Street between Lenox and Seventh Avenues drew national attention and saw the first edition of “The Voice: A Newspaper for the New Negro.” Harrison’s Liberty League was the first organization of the militant “New Negro Movement” and his newspaper, “The Voice,” was the first newspaper of the movement and a prime example of the militant new spirit that was developing.

It “really crystallized the radicalism of the Negro in New York and its environs” wrote Hodge Kirnon. Historian Robert A. Hill points out that Harrison’s Voice was “the radical forerunner” of the periodicals that would express the developing political and intellectual ferment in the era of World War I. It was followed in November 1917 by the Hodge Kirnon. Historian Robert A. Hill These four publications, led by “The Voice,” manifested “the principal articulation of the New Negro mood.”

The July 4 meeting came in the wake of the July 1-3 white supremacist pogrom in East St. Louis, Illinois (which is 12 miles from Ferguson, Missouri). Reports on the number of African Americans killed ranged from thirty-nine to two-hundred-and-fifty and 244 buildings were totally or partially destroyed. Historian Edward Robb Ellis reports that in East St. Louis Black women were scalped and four Black children slaughtered.

These riots were widely attributed to “white” labor’s opposition to Black workers coming into the labor market and they were directly precipitated by a car of white “joy riders” who fired guns into the African-American community. Officials of organized labor served as prominent apologists for “white” labor’s role in the rioting. Samuel Gompers, President of the American Federation of Labor, placed principal blame for the riots on “the excessive and abnormal number of negroes” in East St. Louis while W. S. Carter, President of the Brotherhood of Locomotive Firemen and Enginemen, maintained that “the purpose of the railroads in importing Negro labor is to destroy the influence of white men’s labor organizations.” A subsequent House of Representatives committee found that the local police and Illinois National Guard were inept and indifferent, and, in specific instances, supported the white mobs.

The Liberty League’s July 4 meeting in the largest church in Harlem came one day after a “race riot” in the San Juan Hill section of Manhattan (the third in six weeks) in which two thousand people fought after a reserve policemen arrested a uniformed Black soldier standing on a street corner who allegedly refused to move fast enough.

The “New York Times” reported that at the July 4 Liberty League rally a thousand Black men and women were present and enthusiastically cheered the speakers who were “all Negroes.” Every speaker was reported to have denounced the East St. Louis rioters as ruthless murderers and each condemned the authorities for not preventing the atrocities and for not providing protection.

Edgar M. Grey, secretary of the Liberty League, chaired the July 4 meeting. He informed the audience that the League had sent its message to Congress and appealed for a thorough and impartial investigation of East St. Louis, of the lynching of African Americans, and of treatment of Black people throughout the land. Harrison spoke next and reportedly said that “they are saying a great deal about democracy in Washington now,” but, “while they are talking about fighting for freedom and the Stars and Stripes, here at home the white apply the torch to the black men’s homes, and bullets, clubs and stones to their bodies.”

As president of the Liberty League, Harrison advised Black people who feared mob violence in the South and elsewhere to take direct action and “supply themselves with rifles and fight if necessary, to defend their lives and property.” According to the “Times” he received great applause when he declared that “the time had come for the Negroes [to] do what white men who were threatened did, look out for themselves, and kill rather than submit to be killed.” He was quoted as saying: “We intend to fight if we must . . . for the things dearest to us, for our hearths and homes” and he encouraged Black people everywhere who did not enjoy the protection of the law "to arm for their own defense, to hide their arms, and to learn how to use them." He also called for a collection of money to buy rifles for those who could not obtain them, emphasizing that “Negroes in New York cannot afford to lie down in the face of this” because “East St. Louis touches us too nearly.” As he later put it -- “‘An eye for an eye, a tooth for a tooth,’ and sometimes two eyes or a half dozen teeth for one is the aim of the New Negro.” Harrison stressed that it was imperative to “demand justice” and to “make our voices heard.”

The emphasis on a political voice ran across the masthead of “The Voice,” which proclaimed “We will fight for all the things we have held nearest our hearts--for democracy--for the right of those who submit to authority to have a voice in their own government.” Several years later Marcus Garvey, who learned from Harrison and joined Harrison’s Liberty League, emphasized that “[the] new spirit of the new Negro . . . seeks a political voice, and the world is amazed, the world is astounded that the Negro should desire a political voice, because after the voice comes a political place, and . . . we are not only asking but we are going to demand--we are going to fight for and die for that place.” According to Robert A. Hill, this demand for a political voice marked the new spirit of the “New Negro” and keyed the later radicalism of Garvey’s UNIA.

This call for armed self-defense and the desire to have the political voice of the militant New Negro heard marked Harrison’s activities in 1917.

“The Voice” editorial on “The East St. Louis Horror” argued that although the nation was at war to make the world “safe for democracy,” until the nation was made safe for African Americans, they would refuse to believe in the country’s democratic assertions. Harrison stressed that “New Negroes” would not re-echo “patriotic protestations of the boot-licking leaders whose pockets and positions testify to the power of the white man’s gold” and, despite what Black people might be forced by law to say publicly, “the resentment in their hearts will not down.” Then he described the core feeling of the new militancy developing in the wake of East St. Louis:

. . . Unbeknown to the white people of this land a temper is being developed among Negroes with which the American people will have to reckon.
At the present moment it takes this form: If white men are to kill unoffending Negroes, Negroes must kill white men in defense of their lives and property. This is the lesson of the East St. Louis massacre.

For information on Harrison’s life see “Hubert Harrison: The Voice of Harlem Radicalism, 1883-1918” (Columbia University Press). For comments on that work by scholars and activists CLICK HERE

See also information on "A Hubert Harrison Reader” by CLICKING HERE

And see information on the new expanded edition of Hubert H. Harrison, “When Africa Awakes: The ‘Inside Story’ of the Stirrings and Strivings of the New Negro in the Western World” HERE

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Hubert Harrison was a “radical internationalist” who, more than any other political leader of his era, combined class consciousness and (anti-white supremacist) race consciousness in a coherent political radicalism. He opposed white supremacy, capitalism and imperialism and maintained that white supremacy was central to capitalist rule in the U.S., that racism and racist practices were not in “white” workers class interests, and that “Negroes” must not wait on white-Americans while struggling to shape their future. This unique message, repeatedly delivered to the masses, enabled him to play 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 United States history. He served as the foremost Black organizer, agitator, and theoretician in the Socialist Party (SP) of New York; as the founder and leading figure of the militant, WWI-era “New Negro” movement; and as the editor of the Negro World and principal radical influence on the Garvey movement during its radical high point in 1920. Harrison’s views on race and class profoundly influenced a generation of “New Negro” militants including the class radical socialists A. Philip Randolph and Chandler Owen, the future communists Cyril Briggs and Richard B. Moore, and the race radical Marcus Garvey.

For more information on Hubert Harrison CLICK HERE Read More