60 Facts About Hubert Harrison

Hubert Henry Harrison was a West Indian-American writer, orator, educator, critic, race and class conscious political activist, and radical internationalist based in Harlem, New York.

An immigrant from St Croix at the age of 17, Harrison played significant roles in the largest radical class and race movements in the United States.

Hubert Harrison was a seminal and influential thinker who encouraged the development of class consciousness among workers, black pride, agnostic atheism, secular humanism, social progressivism, and freethought.

Hubert Harrison was a self-described "radical internationalist" and contributed significantly to the Caribbean radical tradition.

Hubert Harrison was born to Cecilia Elizabeth Haines, a working-class woman, on Estate Concordia, St Croix, Danish West Indies.

One account from the 1920s suggested that Hubert Harrison's father owned a substantial estate.

Hubert Harrison's biographer found no such landholding and writes that "there is no indication that Adolphus, a laborer his entire life, ever owned, or even rented, land".

In later life Harrison worked with many Virgin Islands-born activists, including James C Canegata, Anselmo Jackson, Rothschild Francis, Elizabeth Hendrikson, Casper Holstein, and Frank Rudolph Crosswaith.

Hubert Harrison was especially active in Virgin Island causes after the March 1917 US purchase of the Virgin Islands, and subsequent abuses under the US naval occupation of the islands.

Hubert Harrison came to New York in 1900 as a 17-year-old orphan and joined his older sister.

Hubert Harrison confronted a racial oppression unlike anything he previously knew, as only the United States had such a binary color line.

Hubert Harrison was especially "shocked" by the virulent white-supremacy typified by lynchings, which were reaching a peak in these years in the South.

Hubert Harrison was described as a "genius" in The World, a New York daily newspaper.

Hubert Harrison became an American citizen and lived in the United States the rest of his life.

Hubert Harrison began lecturing on such subjects as the poetry of Paul Laurence Dunbar and Reconstruction.

Hubert Harrison deconverted from Christianity and became an agnostic atheist similar to Thomas Huxley, one of his influences.

Hubert Harrison said that he preferred going to hell rather than heaven since Satan and his demons were black while God, Jesus, and the angels were white.

Hubert Harrison repeatedly offered scathing rebuttals to both the Bible and the existence of God in his sociopolitical commentary.

Hubert Harrison had been arguing at his event for birth control, and castigating Churches for advancing racism, superstition, ignorance, and poverty.

Hubert Harrison was a firm advocate for separation of Church and State, taxation of religious organizations, and teaching evolution in schools.

Hubert Harrison said that Caucasians were more like apes than black people, having straight hair and fair skin.

In 1907 Hubert Harrison obtained a job at the United States Post Office.

Particularly after the Brownsville Affair, Hubert Harrison became an outspoken critic of Presidents Theodore Roosevelt and William Howard Taft, and of the Republican Party.

In 1910, Hubert Harrison wrote two critical letters to the New York Sun, challenging Washington's statements.

Hubert Harrison was an early advocate of the Georgist economic philosophy and later clarified that he had believed Georgism was the same thing as socialism.

In 1911, after his postal firing, Hubert Harrison began full-time work with the Socialist Party of America and became America's leading Black Socialist.

Hubert Harrison lectured widely against capitalism, campaigned for the party presidential candidate Eugene V Debs in 1912, and founded the Colored Socialist Club.

Hubert Harrison 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.

Hubert Harrison supported the socialistic, egalitarian, and militantly radical Industrial Workers of the World.

Hubert Harrison was a prominent speaker along with IWW leaders Bill Haywood, Elizabeth Gurley Flynn, Carlo Tresca, and Patrick Quinlan at the historic 1913 Paterson Silk Strike of 1913.

Hubert Harrison supported IWW advocacy of direct action and sabotage.

Hubert Harrison commended the interracial, IWW-influenced, Brotherhood of Timber Workers efforts in the Deep South.

The Socialist Party of New York was led by Morris Hillquit, a prominent figure on the right, and party leaders in New York City began restricting Hubert Harrison's activities, including preventing his own branch from having him as a speaker.

Hubert Harrison spoke widely on topics such as birth control, evolution, literature, nonbelief, and the racial aspects of World War I His outdoor talks and free speech efforts were instrumental in developing a Harlem tradition of militant street corner oratory.

Hubert Harrison wrote reviews on the developing Black Theatre and the pioneering Lafayette Players of the Lafayette Theatre.

Hubert Harrison 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.

Hubert Harrison founded the "New Negro Movement," as a race-conscious, internationalist, mass-based, radical movement for equality, justice, opportunity, and economic power.

Hubert Harrison's mass-based political movement was noticeably different from the more middle-class and apolitical movement associated with Locke.

Hubert Harrison founded the Liberty League and the Voice: A Newspaper for the New Negro, as a radical alternative to the National Association for the Advancement of Colored People.

Meanwhile, the Voice achieved circulation of up to 10,000 per issue, however it ceased publication in November 1917 after five months, after refusing to accept advertising for products Hubert Harrison felt were damaging to racial pride such as hair straighteners and skin lighteners, and due to poor financial management.

Hubert Harrison pointed to Ireland and the Irish Home Rule movement as an example to emulate.

In 1918 Hubert Harrison briefly served as an organizer for the American Federation of Labor.

Hubert Harrison repeatedly began his analysis of contemporary situations from an international perspective.

In January 1920 Hubert Harrison became principal editor of the Negro World, the newspaper of Marcus Garvey's Universal Negro Improvement Association.

Hubert Harrison criticized Garvey for exaggerations, financial schemes, and a desire for an empire.

In contrast to Garvey, Hubert Harrison emphasized that African Americans' principal struggle was in the United States, not in Africa.

Hubert Harrison did however contribute to the UNIA's 1920 "Declaration of the Negro Peoples of the World".

Hubert Harrison lectured on politics history, science, literature, social sciences, international affairs, and the arts for the New York City Board of Education, and was one of the first to use radio to discuss topics in which he had expertise.

Hubert Harrison openly criticized the Ku Klux Klan and the racist attacks of the "Tulsa Race Riot" of 1921.

Hubert Harrison worked with various groups, including the Virgin Island Congressional Council, the Democratic Party, the Farmer-Labor Party, the single tax movement inspired by Henry George, the American Friends Service Committee, the Urban League, the American Negro Labor Congress, and the Workers Party.

In 1924 Hubert Harrison founded the International Colored Unity League, which was his most broadly unitary effort.

In 1927 Hubert Harrison edited the ICUL's Voice of the Negro until shortly before his death that year.

Hubert Harrison died on the operating table, at the age of 44.

Hubert Harrison's appeal was aimed directly at the masses.

For many years after his 1927 death, Hubert Harrison was much neglected.

The forthcoming Columbia University Press two-volume Hubert Harrison biography reflects the growing interest in Hubert Harrison's life and thought.

Hubert 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.

Hubert Harrison was a pioneer Black participant in the freethought and birth control movements as well as being a bibliophile and library popularizer.

Hubert Harrison created "Poetry for the People" columns in various publications, including the New Negro magazine, Garvey's Negro World, and the International Colored Unity League's The Voice of the Negro.

Hubert Harrison's collected writings are found in the Hubert H Harrison Papers at the Rare Book and Manuscript Library of Columbia University.