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Harrison was a critical and independent thinker; his wide-ranging interests included history, politics, science, freethought, literature, social and literary criticism, and the protest philosophy of activists such as W.E.B. Du Bois. Like Du Bois, Harrison criticized the approach of Booker T. Washington. His differences with Washington centered on politics, education, labor unions, protest, and dissent. Washington, the most powerful Black man in the U.S., had achieved his position of influence by building an extensive patronage machine through ties to powerful whites. Washington's policy was one of Black subordination in political and economic spheres, and his core philosophy emphasized industrial over higher education for African Americans, Christian character-building, economic base-building before demands for equal civic and political rights, and co-operation with wealthy and powerful Southern "white friends." Washington warned that "the agitation of questions of social equality is the extremist folly," advised that African Americans must begin "at the bottom of life" and "not at the top," and emphasized that "the Negro" was "not given to strikes and lockouts." Washington also pledged unquestioning loyalty to President Theodore Roosevelt and firmly opposed those African Americans who dared to criticize him.¹⁸

Harrison described Washington as "subservient." He criticized the core of Washington's philosophy, which he referred to as "one of submission and acquiescence in political servitude." In contrast to Washington, Harrison was staunchly anti-Republican Party and favored protests and struggles for equality, "modern education," thought unfettered by religion, support of trade unions, and Black leaders who were chosen by Black people rather than by powerful whites. Only in the area of economic base-building, and only at a later date, would Harrison articulate some views remotely similar to Washington.¹⁹

Harrison's readings in history and politics along with events like the 1906 Brownsville, Texas, affair (in which, under Republican leader- ship, 167 Black soldiers were unjustly dishonorably discharged from the army), led him to reject the Republican Party to which African Americans had been wedded since the Civil War era. (He repeatedly challenged what he called "the great superstition" that "the Negro is a born Republican" whose "political philosophy is presumed to be summed up in the aphorism that 'The Republican Party is the ship and all else is the open sea.'") In addition, as his readings extended further into sociology, economics, evolution, and single taxism, he became familiar with the authors Karl Marx, Herbert Spencer, Lester F. Ward, Charles Darwin, Thomas Huxley, Henry George, Karl Kautsky, T. Thomas Fortune, Mary MacLean, Francisco Ferrer, and Du Bois, and he moved in the direction of socialism. The rejection of the Republican Party and the sympathy for the socialist message accelerated his move toward third-party politics and toward the Socialist Party.²⁰

In this vibrant intellectual environment and with a developing self-confidence, Harrison began lecturing, teaching, and writing letters to newspapers. (His first piece of literary criticism, at age 23, appeared in The New York Times Saturday Review of Books Literary Section in 1907.) His boldness soon affected him economically. After he wrote two 1910 letters to the New York Sun that criticized Booker T. Washington (for inaccurately portraying abroad the oppressive conditions faced by African Americans at home) Harrison lost his postal employment through the efforts of Washington's powerful "Tuskegee Machine." It was a devastating blow and the resultant loss of income and security seriously impacted his remaining years with his family and at times influenced his political and educational efforts.²¹

Shortly after his postal firing, Harrison, who had briefly served as assistant editor of The Masses, turned to full-time work with the Socialist Party. From 1911 to 1914 he was America's leading Black socialist-a prominent party speaker (at times delivering over twenty talks in a week) and campaigner (especially in the 1912 presidential campaign of Eugene V. Debs), an articulate and popular critic of capitalism, the leading Black socialist organizer in New York, and the initiator of the Colored Socialist Club-an unprecedented effort by U.S. socialists at organizing African Americans. His most important theoretical contributions were two series of articles on the subject of "The Negro and Socialism" which appeared in the Socialist Party's New York Call and in the International Socialist Review. The articles provided the first comprehensive political, economic, social, and educational analysis of "The Negro Question" by a Black Socialist, challenged the racism-is-innate and the racism-is-in-workers'-class- interest arguments used to support white supremacist thinking, moved "Negro problem" discussion from the biological and religious spheres to the socio-historical arena, and broke new ground by calling on Socialists to champion the cause of African Americans as a revolutionary doctrine, to develop a special appeal to and for African Americans, and to affirm the duty of all socialists to oppose white supremacy. His proposal that "the crucial test of Socialism's sincerity" was its "duty" to "champion" the cause of the African American anticipated by over a year Du Bois's dictum that the "Negro Problem... [is] the great test of the American Socialists."²²

In his writings Harrison maintained (in an assessment that offers insight into the catalytic nature of Civil Rights struggles fifty years later) that simple democracy for Black people in America implied a revolution "startling to even think of." In direct reference to the philosophy of Booker T. Washington he explained "that the prevailing social philosophy among Negroes-that which white capitalism will pay to have them taught-is one of submission and acquiescence in political servitude." He described the dehumanizing and anti-working class effects of the betrayal of democracy and noted that "the broad denial of justice to colored men as exemplified in lynchings, segregation, public proscription and disfranchisement results in the vitiation of democratic faith." This provided "the supplying power" for other deceitful practices and as the public mind accustomed itself to seeing such inhumanity it became immunized to the injustice in "the jailing of innocent labor leaders and the murder of working girls in a fire trap factory" [a reference to the March 25, 1911, Triangle Shirtwaist factory fire in which 146 were killed].²³

Harrison focused particular attention on "The Duty of the Socialist Party." He suggested that the party take up the largely ignored "Negro Question" at its 1912 National Convention because the time was ripe "for taking a stand against the extensive disfranchisement of the Negro in violation of the plain provisions of the national constitution." He asked: "If the Negroes, or any other section of the working class in America, is to be deprived of the ballot, how can they participate with us in the class struggle?" He directly challenged the party's practices citing instances of gross racism within the Socialist Party including: "dirty diatribes against the Negro in a Texas paper [The Rebel]" that was still on the national list of Socialist papers; the experiences of party speaker Theresa Malkiel in Tennessee "where she was prevented by certain people from addressing a meeting of Negroes on the subject of Socialism"; and "other exhibitions of the thing called southernism." He emphasized that the party could no longer ignore the question "Southernism or Socialism-which?"²⁴

As he placed his challenge before the national party leadership Harrison also addressed the two large groupings in the party, the political (evolutionary) socialists and the industrial (revolutionary) socialists, on their own terms. In each case, using the logic of their theoretical positions, he called for special emphasis on African Americans in the interests of the working class.

First he addressed the political socialists. He agreed that the power of the voting proletariat could be expressed through the ballot and that with good political organization the workers could "secure control of the powers of government by electing members of the working class to office" and could "secure legislation in the interests of the working class until such time as the workers may be able, by being in overwhelming control of the government, to 'alter or abolish it, and to institute a new government.'" He stressed, however, that in this work for "the abolition of capitalism, by legislation," the "Negro, who feels most fiercely the deep damnation of the capitalist system[,] can help" and would be "the balance of power" in certain elections.²⁵

While recognizing the need for political work in electoral politics, Harrison also sought to reach the industrial socialists. He recognized that there was a serious problem to be faced: the majority of African Americans, particularly in the South, were disfranchised. This fact led him to his ultimate conclusions on "The Negro and Industrial Socialism." He argued for an IWW type, point-of-production, economic organizing, even in the South, and explained that "even the voteless proletarian can in a measure help toward the final abolition of the capitalist system." These workers, though absent the ballot, possess "labor power-which they can be taught to withhold" and they can organize themselves "at the point of production" and "work to shorten the hours of labor, to raise wages,... [and] to enforce laws for the protection of labor." He noted that the Western Federation of Miners, an IWW union, had done this and had successfully won the eight-hour workday "without the aid of the legislatures or the courts." This approach required "a progressive control of the tools of production and a progressive expropriation of the capitalist class." In such work African Americans could help. Thus far, many, under the influence of Booker T. Washington's pro-capitalist philosophy, remained unorganized industrially, but industrial unionism beckoned to them. The program of the Socialist Party in the South, in Harrison's opinion, could "be based upon this fact."²⁶

The implications of Harrison's analysis were profound. For the majority in the party the key political debates concerned positions on revolutionary vs. evolutionary socialism and revolutionary unionism vs. AFL craft unionism. Harrison, in 1911-12, proposed a new litmus test, a new "crucial test," for U.S. Socialists-"to champion" the cause of the "Negro." He thought this was central to revolutionary change. For the rest of his life he would seek "to champion" the cause of the "Negro" and to get others to do the same.²⁷

The Socialist Party's National Convention met in Indianapolis May 12-18, 1912, and essentially ignored the "Negro Question." The only person who raised the issue was William D. "Big Bill" Haywood, who argued that industrial unionism was the best way to organize disfranchised southern Blacks. The convention, however, did not limit itself to mere indifference and neglect on the race issue. In the debate over Asian immigration, the Socialists, couched in the cloak of "science," expressed some of the most rabidly racist sentiments in U.S. left history and effectively gave Harrison the answer to his question, "Southernism or Socialism?" In this case it was not only "Southernism," but "Westernism," too, for the racism in the party seemed to know no sectional bounds. Immigration was an issue of particular concern among Western "white" delegates who spoke of fear of an influx of Japanese workers. Both the Majority Report and the Minority Report were approved and each opposed Asian immigration. The Majority Report of the Committee on Immigration went even further and declared, in words Harrison would never forget, that:

Race feeling is not so much a result of social as of biological evolution. It does not change essentially with changes of economic systems. It is deeper than any class feeling and will outlast the capitalist system. It persists even after race prejudice has been outgrown... We may temper this race feeling by education, but we can never hope to extinguish it altogether.

Class-consciousness must be learned, but race-consciousness is in-born and cannot be wholly unlearned.²⁸

Here was the "racism is innate" argument-that Harrison dubbed the core of all racist arguments-and it was proclaimed loudly by national leaders of the Socialist Party at their convention. If race feeling was innate, if race consciousness superseded class consciousness, then the Socialist Party was implicitly saying that corrective actions against racism would be minimal and that they would be of no real importance to a Socialist agenda.²⁹

The significance of this convention towards Harrison's future work is clear. The Majority Report on Immigration favored Asian exclusion as "legislation restricting the invasion of the white man's domain by other races." In a similar debate at the 1908 convention Victor Berger had argued that socialism would be victorious only by keeping the U.S. a "white man's country." The convention debates support the point made by historian Mark D. Naison that "beneath their rhetoric of class struggle, most Socialist Party leaders accepted the political and economic hegemony of whites over non-white peoples..." Leading white socialists were, in Harrison's words, putting [the "white"] "'race first' rather than 'class first.'" Harrison later referred to such "white" Socialists as "the bourgeois opportunists of the Socialist Party," and during the remainder of his life his theoretical development and race consciousness would be shaped, in part, by his efforts to respond to their positions.³⁰

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