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.

Thirty-nine years ago, at midnight on July 20/21, 1978, national postal contracts expired. In the early morning hours of July 21st at the 1.8 million square foot New York Bulk & Foreign Mail Center in Jersey City, the largest postal facility in the world at that time, an informational picket line went up.

Postal workers carried signs of “No Contract, No Work,” a slogan endorsed by the three major postal unions (the American Postal Workers Union, the National Association of Letter Carriers, and the National Post Office Mail Handlers [division of LIUNA]) and a slogan that was the official position of their joint Labor Negotiating Committee. Conditions were oppressive, particularly at the Bulk, and pressing worker issues involved safety, wages, mandatory overtime, COLA, racial and gender discrimination, and the right to strike.

With conditions as bad as they were, and in the political climate that had been created around the contract, it didn’t take much to close the 4,000-worker Bulk Mail facility by the time workers started arriving for the 6 a.m. day shift. Ninety percent of the day shift workers did not report to work and the temperatures that day went into the 90s. Afternoon and evening shifts also stayed out.

The wildcat strike grew and spread quickly to the San Francisco Bulk Mail Center (in Richmond, CA,). There were also walkouts at the Kearney, NJ Mail Processing Center; the Washington, D.C. BMC, and in Philadelphia; and sporadic protests in Chicago, Allentown, Pennsylvania, Miami, and Los Angeles.

The wildcat strike was broken after five days. Postal management fired 125 workers, suspended 130, and issued letters of warning to 2,500. Among those striking postal workers were a number of valiant working class fighters who are no longer with us including Dave Cline, Clarence Fitch, Drake Waller, and Al Mancuso. Worker consciousness was raised in the struggle, the proposed contracts were rejected by union members, and an arbitrated settlement was ultimately imposed that retained the uncapped COLA that workers demanded and weakened no layoff protections as management wanted.

The 1978 wildcat strike was the largest federal employees strike since the 1970 walkout by 173,000 postal workers and it would not be surpassed until the August 1981 strike of 11,500 members of the Professional Air Traffic Controllers Organization (PATCO).

The postal wildcat strikers of 1978 were fired under the administration of Democrat Jimmy Carter. The PATCO workers were fired under the administration of Republican Ronald Reagan.

The full stories of the 1978 postal wildcat and related struggles are still to be told. People interested in more on the 1978 strike may want to look at:

The video Signed Sealed and Delivered: Labor Struggle in the Post Office (1980) by Tami Gold. Dan Gordon, and Erik Lewis

The book There’s Always Work at the Post Office: African American Postal Workers and the Fight for Jobs, Justice, and Equality (University of North Carolina Press, 2010) by Philip F. Rubio.

For a brief discussion of some of the work subsequently done by Mail Handlers from the Jersey City Bulk Mail Center at the branch, local, and national levels see The Centrality of the Struggle Against White Supremacy -- THE MAIL HANDLERS UNION AND THE FIGHT AGAINST RACISM at the National and at the Grass Roots Level Notes From a Talk By the Treasurer of Local 300” at the Labor Notes Conference, Sunday May 21, 1989, Detroit, Michigan

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Work Place Organizing Against White Supremacy
Influenced by Hubert Harrison and Theodore W. Allen

In this interview segment Jeffrey B. Perry discusses organizing work among postal workers that was influenced by insights from two former postal workers and two of the twentieth century’s most important thinkers on race and class – Hubert Harrison (1883-1927) and Theodore W. Allen (1919-2005)

Background on the important work of Harrison and Allen can be found in the article “The Developing Conjuncture and Some Insights from Hubert Harrison and Theodore W. Allen on the Centrality of the Fight Against White Supremacy” by Jeffrey B. Perry can be found Here (at top left) or Here

For information on Hubert Harrison Click Here and Click Here, Click Here , and
Click Here .

For a video of a Slide Presentation/Talk on “Hubert Harrison: The Voice of Harlem Radicalism” at the Dudley Public Library in Roxbury, Mass.
Click Here

For a briefer video see Hubert Harrison: “The Father of Harlem Radicalism” – A Brief Introduction – Video Presentation by Jeffrey B. Perry at Click Here

For information on Theodore W. Allen Click Here and Click Here

For A Slide Presentation/Talk on Theodore W. Allen’s “The Invention of the White Race” at the Brecht Forum in New York City Click Here

For information on Jeffrey B. Perry Click Here

This video is drawn from Jeffrey B. Perry Discusses Theodore W. Allen on "The Invention of the White Race," Labor History, and the Centrality of Labor Struggle Against White Supremacy in Excerpts from an interview conducted with Caeser Pink and staff of Arete Living Arts Center (Brooklyn, NY) on Saturday, June 8, 2013, at the Labor and Working Class History Association (LAWCHA) National Conference, at Brooklyn - CUNY Center for Worker Education, 25 Broadway, 7th floor, New York, NY, 10004
Available Here
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Let Us Not Forget!

Thirty-six years ago, at midnight on July 20/21, 1978, national postal contracts expired. In the early morning hours of July 21st at the 1.8 million square foot New York Bulk & Foreign Mail Center in Jersey City, the largest postal facility in the world at that time, an informational picket line went up.

Postal workers carried signs of “No Contract, No Work,” a slogan endorsed by the three major postal unions (the American Postal Workers Union, the National Association of Letter Carriers, and the National Post Office Mail Handlers [division of LIUNA]) and a slogan that was the official position of their joint Labor Negotiating Committee. Conditions were oppressive, particularly at the Bulk, and pressing worker issues involved safety, wages, mandatory overtime, COLA, racial and gender discrimination, and the right to strike.

With conditions as bad as they were, and in the political climate that had been created around the contract, it didn’t take much to close the 4,000-worker Bulk Mail facility by the time workers started arriving for the 6 a.m. day shift. Ninety percent of the day shift workers did not report to work and the temperatures that day went into the 90s. Afternoon and evening shifts also stayed out.

The wildcat strike grew and spread quickly to the San Francisco Bulk Mail Center (in Richmond, CA,). There were also walkouts at the Kearney, NJ Mail Processing Center; the Washington, D.C. BMC, and in Philadelphia; and sporadic protests in Chicago, Allentown, Pennsylvania, Miami, and Los Angeles.

The wildcat strike was broken after five days. Postal management fired 125 workers, suspended 130, and issued letters of warning to 2,500. Among those striking postal workers were a number of valiant working class fighters who are no longer with us including Dave Cline, Clarence Fitch, Drake Waller, and Al Mancuso. Worker consciousness was raised in the struggle, the proposed contracts were rejected by union members, and an arbitrated settlement was ultimately imposed that retained the uncapped COLA that workers demanded and weakened no layoff protections as management wanted.

The 1978 wildcat strike was the largest federal employees strike since the 1970 walkout by 173,000 postal workers and it would not be surpassed until the August 1981 strike of 11,500 members of the Professional Air Traffic Controllers Organization (PATCO).

The postal wildcat strikers of 1978 were fired under the administration of Democrat Jimmy Carter. The PATCO workers were fired under the administration of Republican Ronald Reagan.

The full stories of the 1978 postal wildcat and related struggles are still to be told. People interested in more on the 1978 strike may want to look at:

The video Signed Sealed and Delivered: Labor Struggle in the Post Office (1980) by Tami Gold. Dan Gordon, and Erik Lewis

The book There’s Always Work at the Post Office: African American Postal Workers and the Fight for Jobs, Justice, and Equality (University of North Carolina Press, 2010) by Philip F. Rubio.

For a brief discussion of some of the work subsequently done by Mail Handlers from the Jersey City Bulk Mail Center at the branch, local, and national levels see The Centrality of the Struggle Against White Supremacy -- THE MAIL HANDLERS UNION AND THE FIGHT AGAINST RACISM at the National and at the Grass Roots Level Notes From a Talk By the Treasurer of Local 300” at the Labor Notes Conference, Sunday May 21, 1989, Detroit, Michigan

 Read More