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Jeffrey B. Perry Blog

“It’s Been a Long Time Coming – And It’s Still Not Here!” On The Naming of A Street for Hubert Harrison



Members of the Parks, Recreation & Transportation Committee of Community Board 10, in Harlem voted unanimously on May 11, 2011, to Co-Name 134th St. between Lenox Avenue/Malcolm X Blvd. and Adam Clayton Powell Jr., Blvd. after Hubert Harrison.

Hubert Harrison, “The Father of Harlem Radicalism,” pioneering soapbox orator, founder of the Liberty League (1917), and editor of "The Voice: A Newspaper for the New Negro" (1917-1918), the "New Negro" (1919), and the "Negro World" (1920), lived on that block and often spoke at 134h Street and Lenox Avenue, which was known as “Liberty’s Corner.”

Shortly after the May 2011 vote "a moratorium" was imposed affecting that naming and the street has never officially been co-named after Hubert Harrison.

Thus, no street named after Hubert Harrison is included in the list of the Honorific Streets in New York City.

"Honorific Streets" were the subject of a February 28, 2014, Sam Roberts, “New York Times” article -- “Honorific Streets, Now Catalogued: City Lacked Official Record, So Ex-Urban Planner Made List.”

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"Hubert Harrison: The Voice of Harlem Radicalism, 1883-1918" audio of presentation by Jeffrey B. Perry 16 February 2014 Cambridge, Massachusetts

"Hubert Harrison: The Voice of Harlem Radicalism, 1883-1918" audio of presentation by Jeffrey B. Perry on February 16, 2014. The audio prepared by Stan Robinson for Truth and Justice Radio can be downloaded or streamed. To listen to the audio CLICK HERE
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"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

The article "The Developing Conjuncture and Some Insights From Hubert Harrison and Theodore W. Allen On the Centrality of the Fight Against White Supremacy" can be found in pdf format by CLICKING HERE and GOING TO THE TOP LEFT (top left). The Table of Contents is provided below:

Table of Contents
for
"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


Epigraph
Introduction
Hubert Harrison
Theodore W. Allen
Harrison and Allen and the Centrality of the Struggle Against White-Supremacy
Some Class and Racial Aspects of The Conjuncture
Deepening Economic Crisis
U.S. Workers Faring Badly
White Supremacist Shaping
Wisconsin
Millions are Suffering and Conditions are Worsening
Insights from Hubert Harrison
Arrival in America, Contrast with St. Croix
Socialist Party Writings
“Southernism or Socialism – which?”
The Socialist Party Puts [the “White”] Race First and Class After
Class Consciousness, White Supremacy, and the "Duty to Champion the Cause of the Negro"
On “The Touchstone” and the Two-Fold Character of Democracy in America
Concentrated Race-Conscious Work in the Black Community
Capitalist Imperialism and the Need to Break Down Exclusion Walls of White Workers
The International Colored Unity League
Struggle Against White Supremacy is Central
Insights from Theodore W. Allen
Early Research and Writings and Pioneering Use of “White Skin Privilege” Concept
White Blindspot
Why No Socialism? . . . and The Main Retardant to Working Class Consciousness
The Role of White Supremacy in Three Previous Crises
The Great Depression . . . and the White Supremacist Response
Response to Four Arguments Against and Five “Artful Dodges”
Early 1970s Writings and Strategy
“The Invention of the White Race”
Other Important Contributions in Writings on the Colonial Period
Inventing the “White Race” and Fixing “a perpetual Brand upon Free Negros”
Political Economic Aspects of the Invention of the “White Race”
Racial Oppression and National Oppression
“Racial Slavery” and “Slavery”
Male Supremacy, Gender Oppression, and Laws Affecting the Family
Slavery as Capitalism, Slaveholders as Capitalists, Enslaved as Proletarians
Class-Conscious, Anti-White Supremacist Counter Narrative – Comments on Jordan and Morgan
Not Simply a Social Construct, But a Ruling Class Social Control Formation . . . and Comments on Roediger
The “White Race” and “White Race” Privilege
On the Bifurcation of “Labor History” and “Black History” and on the “National Question”
Later Writings . . . “Toward a Revolution in Labor History”
Strategy
The Struggle Ahead
Addendum
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"Dudley Branch Library Hosts Lecture on Unheralded Black Freedom Fighter " by Glennon L. King, Globe Correspondent Hubert Harrison and His Grandson Ray Richardson Discussed by Jeffrey B. Perry






The Dudley Branch Library in Roxbury hosted a lecture on Hubert Harrison (1883-1927) "The Father of Harlem Radicalism" by Jeffrey B. Perry on Saturday, February 15, 2014. Also discussed was Harrison's grandson, Ray Richardson (1946-1971), the former producer of "Say Brother" on WGBH in Boston.

The event, at the Dudley Library in Roxbury was hosted by Mimi Jones and sponsored by Friends of the Dudley Library, Alliance for a Secular and Democratic South Asia, and Massachusetts Global Action

This video and article on the event was prepared by Glennon L. King, Globe correspondent. Read More 
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"Hubert Harrison: The Voice of Harlem Radicalism, 1883-1918" Audio of February 16, 2014, Presentation by Jeffrey B. Perry

To download or listen to audio of presentation by Jeffrey B. Perry on "Hubert Harrison: The Voice of Harlem Radicalism, 1883-1918" presented on February 16, 2014, at the Center for Marxist Education and recorded by Stan Robinson CLICK HERE
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Mark Solomon on The Invention of the White Race by Theodore W. Allen




“The notion of a ‘post racial’ society today has been obliterated by recurring assaults and killing of African Americans by whites virtually immune from prosecution – echoing the searing racism of the infamous Dred Scott decision that Blacks ‘had no rights which the white man was bound to respect.’ That heinous white supremacy compels a need to understand its historic roots, so essential to fighting it. Theodore Allen’s The Invention of the White Race is a groundbreaking contribution to that understanding. With exhaustive scholarship, Allen demonstrates that there were no ‘white people’ in the early years of 17th century colonization. After labor unrest shook the Virginia colony, the ruling class responded by inventing the white race replete with ‘white skin privilege.’ It created a lethal means of social control by dividing workers, institutionalizing white supremacy as an historic source of class collaboration – producing the principal retardant to progressive social change. The profound insights in The Invention of the White Race are essential both to understand the origins and destructiveness of white supremacy and to provide the means to conduct struggle against it. Allen’s study is mandatory reading for everyone concerned with justice, equality and the liberation of all from the binds of white supremacy.”
Mark Solomon
W.E.B. Du Bois Institute for African and African American Research
Harvard University


For more comments by activists and scholars on Theodore W. Allen’s The Invention of the White Race, Vol. 2: The Origin of Racial Oppression in Anglo-America CLICK HERE Read More 
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Hubert Harrison, Alain LeRoy Locke, and "The New Negro"


1917 -- Hubert H. Harrison edits The Voice: A Newspaper for the New Negro (1917-1919) -- the 1st newspaper of the “New Negro Movement”

1919 -- Hubert H. Harrison edits The New Negro: A Monthly Magazine of a Different Sort (1919) -- “intended as an organ of the international consciousness of the darker races -- especially of the Negro race.”

1920 -- Hubert H. Harrison authors When Africa Awakes: The "Inside Story of the Stirrings and Strivings of the New Negro in the Western World"

1925 -- Alain LeRoy Locke edits The New Negro: An Interpretation (1925) Read More 
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Jeffrey B. Perry Discusses Hubert Harrison at the Center for Marxist Education in Cambridge, Mass., 16 February 2014.


Jeffrey B. Perry discusses Hubert Harrison at the Center for Marxist Education in Cambridge, Mass., 16 February 2014. Video recorded by Enaa Doug Greene.




Hubert Harrison, (1883-1927) was an immensely skilled writer, orator, educator, critic, and political activist who, more than any other political leader of his era, combined class consciousness and anti-white-supremacist race consciousness into a coherent political radicalism. The St. Croix, Virgin Islands-born and Harlem-based Harrison profoundly influenced "New Negro" militants, including A. Philip Randolph and Marcus Garvey, and his synthesis of class and race issues is a key unifying link between the two great trends of the Black Liberation Movement: the labor- and civil-rights-based work of Martin Luther King Jr. and the race and nationalist work associated with Malcolm X.

Harrison played unique, signal roles in the largest class radical movement (socialism) and the largest race radical movement (the New Negro/Garvey) movement of his era. He was the foremost Black organizer, agitator, and theoretician of the Socialist Party of New York, the founder of the "New Negro" movement, the editor of the "Negro World," and the principal radical influence on the Garvey movement. A self-described, "radical internationalist," he was also a highly praised journalist and critic (reportedly the first regular Black book reviewer), a postal labor unionist, a union organizer (with both the Hotel Workers and the Pullman Porters), an IWW supporter, a speaker at the 1913 Paterson strike, a freethinker and early proponent of birth control, a supporter of Black writers and artists, a leading community-based public intellectual, an adult education lecturer for the New York City Board of Education, and a bibliophile who helped transform the 135th Street Public Library into an international center for research in Black culture (known today as the world-famous Schomburg Center for Research in Black Culture). His biography offers profound insights on race, class, religion, immigration, war, democracy, and social change in America.

For more information on Jeff Perry's work, see his website.
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Theodore W. Allen's Challenge to the Historical Master Narratives Associated with the Work of Winthrop D. Jordan and Edmund S. Morgan

For anyone reading (or using in a class or study group) Edmund S. Morgan’s "American Slavery/American Freedom" and/or Winthrop D. Jordan's "White Over Black," I would encourage also reading something by Theodore W. Allen.

In particular, I would recommend either Allen's “The Invention of the White Race” (re-published in a new expanded edition by Verso Books in November 2012), his 1978 review of Morgan’s book in “Monthly Review,” his article “Class Struggle and the Origin of Racial Slavery: The Invention of the White Race” (available online at http://clogic.eserver.org/2006/allen.html Click Here ), or his "Summary of the Argument of 'The Invention of the White Race'" (available online at http://clogic.eserver.org/1-2/allen.html Click Here ).

Allen's work details the development of racial slavery and racial oppression in Anglo-America with special emphasis on social control and "the invention of the 'white race'" in late-17th century Virginia.

In the process, it seeks to challenge what Allen considers to be the two main arguments that undermine the struggle against white supremacy by European-American workers: (1) the argument that white supremacism is innate, and (2) the argument that European-American workers “benefit” from “white race” privileges and white supremacism -- that the privileges are in their class interest.

These arguments are respectively related to two historical master narratives rooted in writings on the colonial period.

The first argument is associated with the “unthinking decision” explanation for the development of racial slavery offered by Winthrop D. Jordan in "White Over Black: American Attitudes Toward the Negro, 1550-1812."

The second argument is related to Morgan’s contention that as racial slavery developed in Virginia, “there were too few free poor [European-Americans] on hand to matter.”

Allen's rigorously researched two-volume "classic" The Invention of the White Race challenges both these positions and it (along with his other writings) offers an important counter-narrative to the narratives of Jordan and Morgan.

It is a seminal contribution to U.S. history!

Jeffrey B. Perry
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Theodore W. Allen’s Major Thesis in The Invention of the White Race by Jeffrey B. Perry

Theodore W. Allen’s probing research and analysis led him to offer his major thesis -- that the “white race” was invented in the late 17th/early 18th century as a ruling class social control formation in response to labor solidarity as manifested in the latter (civil war) stages of Bacon's Rebellion (1676-77). To this he adds two important corollaries: 1) that the ruling elite deliberately instituted a system of racial privileges to define and maintain the “white race” as a ruling-class social control formation and to establish a system of racial slavery and racial oppression, and 2) that the consequence was not only ruinous to the interests of African-Americans, but was also “disastrous” for European-American workers.
For more on Theodore W. Allen's The Invention of the White Race CLICK HERE Read More 
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Please Help to Get Hubert Harrison in Libraries Across the Country!!!


Hubert H. Harrison (1883-1927) was a brilliant writer, orator, editor, educator and political activist. He is one of the giants of our history. He believed that free public libraries were one of the great institutions in America and he wrote such powerful essays as “Read! Read! Read!”

The American Library Association’s Choice Magazine rates Hubert Harrison: The Voice of Harlem Radicalism, 1883-1918" (Columbia University Press) by Jeffrey B. Perry as “Essential . . . All Levels/Libraries.” See the review HERE Please share the review with your local public librarian and the librarian at your school and /or university. Other reviewers’ comments from scholars and activists can be read HERE Information about the life and work of Hubert Harrison is available HERE and HERE

Please Help to Get Hubert Harrison in Libraries Across the Country!!!

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Slide Presentation/Talks on Hubert Harrison by Jeffrey B. Perry Roxbury, Boston, and Cambridge Mass. Feb. 15 and 16, 2014

February 15, 2014
Saturday, 2-4:30 pm, Hubert Harrison: The Voice of Harlem Radicalism, 1883-1918 (Columbia University Press) will be discussed in a slide presentation/talk by Jeffrey B. Perry at the Dudley Branch Library 65 Warren Street, Roxbury, MA. Contact persons Mimi Jones, Mirna Lascano, Umang Kumar, and Charlie Welch; Branch Librarian Janet Buda. Event sponsored by Friends of the Dudley Branch Library, Inc., Alliance for a Secular and Democratic South Asia, and Massachusetts Global Action


February 16, 2014
Sunday, 11 AM -- Hubert Harrison: The Voice of Harlem Radicalism, 1883-1918 (Columbia University Press) will be discussed in a slide presentation/talk by Jeffrey B. Perry at the Community Church of Boston, 565 Boylston St., Boston, MA 02116. Contact persons Linda Jenkins, Karla Rab, and Mary Lynn Cramer.


February 16, 2014
Sunday, 3 PM, Jeffrey B. Perry will discuss "Hubert Harrison: The Voice of Harlem Radicalism, 1883-1918"(Columbia University Press) at the Center for Marxist Education, 550 Massachusetts Ave (Central Square), Cambridge, MA 02116. Contact persons Joe Ramsey, Casey Doyle, Doug Enaa Greene.



Hubert Harrison (1883-1927) was a brilliant writer, orator, educator, critic, and political activist. who he was described by the historian Joel A. Rogers, in World’s Great Men of Color as “the foremost Afro-American intellect of his time.” Labor and civil rights leader A. Philip Randolph described Harrison as “the father of Harlem Radicalism.” Harrison’s friend and pallbearer, Arthur Schomburg, fully aware of his popularity, eulogized to the thousands attending Harrison’s Harlem funeral that he was also “ahead of his time.”

Born in St. Croix, Danish West Indies, in 1883, Harrison arrived in New York as a seventeen-year-old orphan in 1900. He made his mark in the United States by struggling against class and racial oppression, by helping to create a remarkably rich and vibrant intellectual life among African Americans, and by working for the enlightened development of the lives of “the common people.” He consistently emphasized the need for working class people to develop class-consciousness; for “Negroes” to develop race consciousness, self-reliance, and self-respect; and for all those he reached to challenge white supremacy and develop modern, scientific, critical, and independent thought as a means toward liberation.

A self-described “radical internationalist,” Harrison was extremely well-versed in history and events in Africa, Asia, the Mideast, the Americas, and Europe. More than any other political leader of his era, he combined class-consciousness and anti-white supremacist race consciousness in a coherent political radicalism. He opposed capitalism and maintained that white supremacy was central to capitalist rule in the United States. 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,” that “the cant of ‘Democracy’” was “intended as dust in the eyes of white voters,” and that true democracy and equality for “Negroes” implied “a revolution . . . startling even to think of.”

Working from this theoretical framework, he was active with a wide variety of movements and organizations and played 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 U.S. history. 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 America in the twenty-first century.

Harrison served as the foremost Black organizer, agitator, and theoretician in the Socialist Party of New York during its 1912 heyday; he founded the first organization (the Liberty League) and the first newspaper (The Voice) of the militant, World War I-era “New Negro” movement; and he served as the editor of the New Negro in 1919 and as the editor of the Negro World and principal radical influence on the Garvey movement during its radical high point in 1920. His views on race and class profoundly influenced a generation of “New Negro” militants including A. Philip Randolph and Marcus Garvey. Considered more race conscious than Randolph and more class conscious than Garvey, Harrison is a key ideological link between the two great trends of the Black Liberation Movement -- the labor and civil rights trend associated with Martin Luther King, Jr., and the race and nationalist trend associated with Malcolm X. (Randolph and Garvey were, respectively, the direct links to King marching on Washington, with Randolph at his side, and to Malcolm, whose parents were involved with the Garvey movement, speaking militantly and proudly on street corners in Harlem.)

Harrison was not only a political radical, however. J. A. Rogers described him as an “Intellectual Giant and Free-Lance Educator,” whose contributions were wide-ranging, innovative, and influential. He was an immensely skilled and popular orator and educator who spoke and/or read six languages; a highly praised journalist, critic, and book reviewer (reportedly the first regular Black book reviewer in history); a pioneer Black activist in the freethought and birth control movements; a bibliophile and library builder and popularizer who helped develop the 135th Street Public Library into what became known as the internationally famous Schomburg Center for Research in Black Culture; a pioneer Black lecturer for the New York City Board of Education and one of its foremost orators).

For information on Hubert Harrison: The Voice of Harlem Radicalism, 1883-1918 (Columbia University Press) CLICK HERE and CLICK HERE

For writings by and about Hubert Harrison CLICK HERE

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