Hubert
Harrison was born in St. Croix of the Virgin Islands in 1883. At the
age of seventeen he travelled to New York where he worked as a bellhop
and an elevator operator. He also attended night school and studied
sociology, science, psychology, literature, and drama.
Harrison's studies radicalized him and he became a member of the Industrial
Workers of the World. He later joined the Socialist
Party where he met other African American radicals such as Philip
Randolph, Chandler Owen, and
Claude McKay. He impressed them with his
intellect and was given the nickname, the 'Black Socrates'.
Max Eastman, editor of the The
Masses, employed him on his journal. Harrison also edited
The Voice and contributed to the
The Messenger, The
Call, The New Republic,
the New York Times and the New
York World. He also published two important books, The
Negro and the Nation (1917) and When
Africa Awakes (1920).
Harrison was a strong opponent of United States involvement in the
First World War. This caused him to break
with William Du Bois who had argued in
The Crisis that: "Let, us,
while this war lasts, forget our special grievances and close our
ranks."
Harrison also lectured on socialism and
African American civil rights from
street corners and in September, 1922, the New
York Times reported that he was drawing crowds of over 10,000
people and the New York police had to stop the traffic.
It is claimed that Harrison had a great influence on Marcus
Garvey. Harrison, who was now claiming that race was more important
than class and after leaving the Socialist
Party joined Universal
Negro Improvement Association (UNIA). Harrison also
edited the organizations journal, The Negro
World, for four years. He also worked as a staff lecturer
for the New York City Board of Education. Hubert
Harrison died in 1927.
(1)
Hubert Harrison, The Voice (25th July, 1918)
The
essence of the present situation lies in the fact that the people
whom our white masters have "recognized" as our leaders
(without taking the trouble to consult us) and those who, by our own
selection, has actually attained to leadership among us are being
revaluated and, in most cases, rejected. The most striking instance
from the latter class is Dr. W. E. B. Du Bois, the editor of the Crisis.
Du Bois's case is the more significant because his former services
to his race have been undoubtedly of a high and courageous sort.
Dr. Du Bois first palpably sinned in his editorial, "Close Ranks".
But this offense lies in a single sentence: "Let, us, while this
war lasts, forget our special grievances and close our ranks."
It is felt by all his critics that Du Bois, of all Negroes, knows
best that our "special grievances", which the War Department
Bulletin describes as justifiable, consists of lynching, segregation
and disfranchisement and that the Negroes of America cannot preserve
either their lives, their manhood or their vote (which is their political
lives and liberties) with these things in existence.
(2)
Hubert Harrison, When Africa Awakes (1920)
Twenty
years ago all Negroes known to the white publicists of America could
be classed as conservatives on all the great questions on which thinkers
differ. In matters of industry, commerce, politics, religion, they
could be trusted to take the backward view. Only on the question of
the Negro's "rights" could a small handful be found bold
enough to be tagged as "radicals," and they were howled
down by both white and colored adherents of the conservative point
of view. Today Negroes differ on all those great questions on which
white thinkers differ, and there are Negro radicals of every imaginary
stripe — agnostics, atheists, I.W.W.'s, Socialists, Single Taxers
and even Bolshevists.
(3) Joel
Rogers was a close friend of Hubert Harrison and wrote about him
in World's Great Men of Color (1975)
He spoke wherever an audience
could be had on subjects embracing general literature, sociology,
Negro history, and the leading events of the day. He wrote for such
radical and antireligious periodicals as The Call, The Truth
Seeker, and The Modern Quarterly, being perhaps the first
Negro of ability to enter this field. His views on religion and birth
control were often opposed by Catholics and Protestants alike, and
at his open-air meetings he and his friends were obliged to defend
themselves physically from mobs at times. But he fought back courageously,
never hesitating to speak no matter how great the hostility of his
opponents.
One of the men who was very much influenced by Harrison was Marcus
Garvey, later the most prominent of Negro agitators. Garvey's emphasis
on racialism was due in no small measure to Harrison's lectures on
Negro history and his utterances on racial pride, which animated and
fortified Garvey's views. Harrison's slogan became "Race First,"
in opposition to his earlier socialistic one of "Class First."
Harrison's views profoundly influenced the
Messenger Group, headed by A. Philip Randolph and Chandler Owen, two
leaders who did more than anyone else to focus the attention of the
government and of thinking whites on the injustices suffered by Negroes
during the war. While the old leaders capitulated and urged the members
of the race to submit while the war was on, these two brilliant young
men spoke out fearlessly.
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