Events over the past few days have demonstrated how very deeply Hubert Harrison resonates among the people.
Yesterday afternoon Hugh Hamilton, a wonderfully knowledgeable and personable radio show host for WBAI's (99.5 FM in New York) "Talkback!," opened the airwaves for a full-hour to a discussion of Hubert Harrison. By last evening this website had received a record number of new visitor hits, most, presumably, coming from Hugh's politically-astute listener audience.
Following Hugh Hamilton and WBAI, Donna Fleming, the dedicated and community-oriented Coordinator of the Caribbean Literary and Cultural Center of the Brooklyn Public Library, hosted a slide presentation/book talk on Hubert Harrison at the African American Heritage Center in the Macon Library of the Brooklyn Public Library System in the Bedford-Stuyvesant section of Brooklyn. The meeting room was packed and it still saw a steady flow of new arrivals. The event extended beyond the library's closing and many discussions continued in the lobby and then on the street (Lewis Avenue) in front of the library for well-over an hour afterwards.
Last Friday, in Chicago, Brian Jones, a New York City school teacher and a bright and well-informed political activist, hosted a Harrison slide presentation/talk, along with the International Socialist Organization (ISO), as a featured session at the Socialism 2009 Conference. Again, the meeting room was fully packed beyond seating capacity, Q and A was lively and ran over, discussions continued well past the session and on through the weekend, and a new appreciation for Hubert Harrison's importance was commented on by a growing number of the committed activists in attendance.
After all three of the mentioned events people came forward offering new ways to help spread the word about Hubert Harrison, his ideas, and the issues he and others struggled for.
Hubert Harrison is out there, he resonates deeply among the people, and his long period of "unremembrance" (to borrow from Winston James) is ending.
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