A Hubert Harrison Reader

Harrison, Hubert; edited with introduction and notes by Jeffrey B. Perry

ISBN 10: 0819564702 / ISBN 13: 9780819564702

Published by Wesleyan University Press, Middletown, 2001

About this Item

xxv, 473p., wraps, 6x9 inches, very good first wraps printing, date penned on half-title and a couple staple holes, wraps slightly shelfworn, else in very good condition. Harrison became one of the leading black members of the Socialist Party, then quit over its racism and became a journalist before joining forces with the Garvey movement.

Seller Inventory # 85699

Bibliographic Details

• Title: A Hubert Harrison Reader
• Publisher: Wesleyan University Press, Middletown
• Publication Date: 2001
• Language: English
• ISBN 10: 0819564702
• ISBN 13: 9780819564702
• Binding: Paperback
• Edition: 1st Edition
• Seller catalogs:
  • Critical Theory
  • Labor - American
  • Journalism
  • Socialist Party USA
  • African American

About this title

Synopsis

Critical writings by the "father of Harlem radicalism".

The brilliant writer, orator, educator, critic, and activist Hubert Harrison (1883 - 1927) is one of the truly important, yet neglected, figures of early twentieth-century America. Known as "the father of Harlem radicalism,' and a leading Socialist party speaker who advocated that socialists champion the cause of the Negro as a revolutionary doctrine, Harrison had an important influence on a generation of race and class radicals, including Marcus Garvey and A. Philip Randolph.

Harrison envisioned a socialism that had special appeal to African-Americans, and he affirmed the duty of socialists to oppose race-based oppression. Despite high praise from his contemporaries, Harrison's legacy has largely been neglected. This reader redresses the imbalance; Harrison's essays, editorials, reviews, letters, and diary entries offer a profound, and often unique, analysis of issues, events and individuals of early twentieth-century America. His writings also provide critical insights and counterpoints to the thinking of W. E. B. DuBois, Booker T. Washington and Marcus Garvey.

The reader is organized thematically to highlight Harrison's contributions to the debates on race, class, culture, and politics of his time. The writings span Harrison's career and the evolution of his thought, and include extensive political writings, editorials, meditations, reviews of theater and poetry, and deeply evocative social commentary.

About the Author

Jeffrey B. Perry is an independent scholar of the working class formally educated at Princeton, Harvard, Rutgers, and Columbia University. Perry preserved and inventoried the Hubert H. Harrison papers (now at Columbia University's Rare Book and Manuscript Library) and is the author of Hubert Harrison: The Voice of Harlem Radicalism, 1883-1918. He is also literary executor for Theodore W. Allen and edited and introduced Allen's Class Struggle and the Origin of Racial Slavery: The Invention of the White Race.