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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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