A Hubert Harrison Reader

A Hubert Harrison Reader

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. "Perry, with his new and valuable collection of Harrison's writings . . . restores Harrison to the center of African American political thought and organizing in the early twentieth century. -- Eric Arnesen --African American Review "I find it hard to put A Hubert Harrison Reader down each time I pick it up and find it more difficult to accept Harrison's absence from my cultural and racial self-understanding." -- Venice R. Williams --Wshington Park Beat "We must thank Jeffrey B. Perry for assembling the definitive collection of Harrison's writings. . . Expertly edited with a gracious introduction along with copious and wonderfully helpful notes."--Corey D.B. Walker --Black Renaissance "Perry's annotation is extensive...It is exemplary scholarship...Harrison's texts are a feast for the intellect and a rich source of information and opinion on the African American issues of Harrison's day."-H. Nigel Thomas --Wadabagei "A Hubert Harrison Reader is a triumph of recovery and scholarship...Harrison...was an outspoken, perspicacious, cultured thinker utterly undeserving of the fog that has obscured his memory."-Christopher Phelps --Science and Society 7 x 10 trim. 4 illus. LC 00-051322 "With publication of this volume it will be possible to trace the evolution of Harrison's thought for the first time ever. The appearance of Harrison's writings will most certainly not only fill a gap in our understanding of black radical and nationalist writings around the World War I period and beyond, but will also, I suspect, change the way in which we tend to look at black thought generally in this period." -- Ernest Allen, Jr. , W.E.B. Du Bois Department of Afro-American Studies, University of Massachusetts at Amherst 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. Du Bois, Booker T. Washington and Marcus Garvey. Jeffrey B. Perry is an independent scholar and author of the first critical biography of Harrison. 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 . Used Book in Good Condition