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Sensing the need to articulate a new direction, Harrison restarted The Voice and worked on a daring plan to bring it into the Deep South.⁴⁷ Ill health caused him to abort that plan. After the resurrected Voice failed, Harrison next edited the monthly New Negro magazine from August through October 1919. The New Negro was "intended as an organ of the international consciousness of the darker races-especially of the Negro race"; it aimed to be for African Americans what The Nation was for "white" Americans. Harrison's attention to international matters intensified over the next several years and he wrote many powerful pieces critical of imperialism ("the most dangerous phase of developed capitalism") and supportive of internationalism. He was abreast of current events and wrote knowledgeably on Africa, India, Asia, the Islamic world, the Caribbean, the Americas, Europe, Russia, and the Russian Revolution. He repeatedly began his analysis of situations from an international perspective and emphasized that it was important for Black people to overcome ignorance of international events and for African Americans "to get in international touch" with "the downtrodden section of the human population of the globe and establish business, industrial and commercial relations with them."⁴⁸

On the domestic front, Harrison's criticism of left, labor, and Black leadership grew. He increasingly sought to mobilize "the Negro's political power, pocket book power and intellectual power." What was particularly new in his strategy was his conception of, and approach to, race unity. As he later explained, many who sought race unity were unclear as to what they actually meant-was it to be "unity of thought and ideas," "unity of organization," "unity of purpose," or "unity of action"? For Harrison unity of thought was neither desirable nor possible, except in the graveyard, and unity of organization was exceedingly difficult and not likely. Unity of purpose was a real possibility, however. The fault with previous efforts, he wrote, was that the uniters (and here he referred principally to Washington and Du Bois) had "generally gone at the problem from the wrong end." As he explained, "They have begun at the top when they should have begun at the bottom." "To attempt to unite the 'intellectuals' at the top" was "not the same thing as uniting the Negro masses," who were the key to "racial solidarity."⁴⁹

In December 1919, Marcus Garvey approached Harrison and asked him to head a college that he planned to develop. Harrison was a superb educator and considered modern educational work in the Black community to be a revolutionary endeavor. In an article "Education and the Race" he explained how, in "the dark days of Russia, when the iron heel of czarist despotism was heaviest on the necks of the people,... Leo Tolstoi and the other intelligentsia began to carry knowledge to the masses." Then, as "knowledge spread, enthusiasm was backed by brains, and the developing Russian revolution 'began to be sure of itself,' thus confirming the age-old wisdom that 'Knowledge is power.'" Harrison repeatedly emphasized that "brains and... the product of brains" offered the power to open "political, social and economic" doors.⁵⁰

Though Garvey approached Harrison to head a UNIA college, in fact, he wanted him to edit his organization's paper, the Negro World. Harrison became the principal editor of the Negro World in January 1920 and proceeded to reshape and develop that paper- changing its style, format, content, and editorial page. He was primarily responsible for developing it into the preeminent radical, race-conscious, political and literary publication of the day. He initiated the "Poetry for the People" and "West Indian News Notes" sections, wrote book reviews, and, over the first eight months of 1920, he was the Negro World's chief radical propagandist. In August, at the UNIA's 1920 convention, he was the one who gave "radical tone" to the UNIA's "Declaration of the Negro Peoples of the World."⁵¹

By the 1920 convention Harrison was highly critical of Garvey. His criticisms concerned the extravagance of Garvey's claims, Garvey's ego, the conduct of his stock-selling schemes, and his politics and practices. Though Harrison continued to write columns and book reviews for the Negro World into 1922, their political differences grew and Harrison worked against, and sought to develop political alternatives to, Garvey. In particular, Harrison urged political action in terms of electoral politics; he attempted to build the all-Black Liberty Party (to run African American candidates for political offices, including the presidency); he consistently maintained the position that African Americans' principal struggle was in the United States (and that they should therefore not seek to develop a state in Africa); he opposed imperialism and did not seek an African empire; he argued that Africans, not African Americans, would lead struggles in Africa; he vociferously opposed the Ku Klux Klan; and he favored reason, science, and fact-based knowledge over more exaggerated claims to the masses.⁵²

In the 1920s, after breaking with Garvey, Harrison continued his full schedule of activities. He lectured on a wide range of topics for the New York City Board of Education and for its "Trends of the Times" series, which included prominent professors from the city's foremost universities. His book and theater reviews and other writings appeared in many of the leading periodicals of the day- including the New York Times, New York Tribune , New York World, Nation, New Republic, Modern Quarterly, Pittsburgh Courier, Chicago Defender, Amsterdam News, Boston Chronicle, and Opportunity magazine. He also spoke against the revived Ku Klux Klan and the horrific attack on the Tulsa, Oklahoma, Black community, and he worked with numerous groups, including the Virgin Island Congressional Council, the Democratic Party, the Farmer-Labor Party, the single tax movement, the American Friends Service Committee, the Urban League, the American Negro Labor Congress, and the Workers (Communist) Party.

One of his most important activities in this period was the founding of the International Colored Unity League (ICUL) and its organ, The Voice of the Negro. The ICUL was Harrison's most broadly unitary effort (particularly in terms of work with other Black organizations and with the Black church). It urged Blacks to develop "race consciousness" and its 1924 platform had political, economic, and social planks urging protests, self-reliance, self-sufficiency, and collective action. It also included as its "central idea" the founding of "a Negro state, not in Africa, as Marcus Garvey would have done, but in the United States," as an outlet for "racial egoism." It was a plan for "the harnessing" of "Negro energies" and for "economic, political and spiritual self-help and advancement" (which preceded a somewhat similar plan by the Communist International by four years).⁵³

Overall, in his writing and oratory, Harrison's appeal was both mass and individual. He focused on the man and woman in the street and emphasized the importance of each individual's development of an independent, critical attitude. The period during and after World War I was one of intense racial oppression and great Black migration from the South and the Caribbean into urban centers, particularly in the North. Harrison's race-conscious mass appeal utilized newspapers, popular lectures, and street-corner talks and marked a major shift from the leadership approaches of Booker T. Washington and W.E.B. Du Bois. Harrison's affective appeal (later identified with that of Garvey) was aimed directly at the urban masses and, as the Harlem activist Richard B. Moore explained, "More than any other man of his time, he [Harrison] inspired and educated the masses of Afro-Americans then flocking into Harlem."⁵⁴

Though he was extremely popular among the masses who "flocked to hear him," Harrison, according to Rogers, was often overlooked by "the more established conservative Negro leaders, especially those who derived support from wealthy whites." Others, "inferior... in ability and altruism, received acclaim, wealth, and distinction" that was his due. When he died on December 17, 1927, the Harlem community, in a major show of affection, turned out by the thousands for his funeral. A church was (ironically) named in his honor and his portrait was to be placed prominently at the 135^th Street Public Library, where he, along with the bibliophile Arthur Schomburg and others, had helped to found and develop the world-famous "Department of Negro Literature and History."⁵⁵

Despite these manifestations of love and respect from his contemporaries, Harrison has been greatly neglected in death. Some reasons for this neglect are readily apparent. Harrison was poor, Black, foreign born, and from the Caribbean. Each of these groups has suffered from discrimination and neglect in the United States. He opposed capitalism, racism, and the Christian church-dominant forces of the most powerful society in the world. He supported socialism, "race consciousness," racial equality, women's equality, freethought, and birth control. The forces arrayed against the expression of such ideas were, and continue to be, formidable. Others, most notably (the similarly poor, Black, Caribbean-born) Garvey, who challenged the forces of white supremacy only began to emerge from similar historical neglect with the increase in Black studies and popular history that were by-products of the civil rights/Black power struggles of the 1960s. Even then, however, Harrison was largely overlooked. In part this was undoubtedly due to his "radicalism" on issues other than race-particularly on matters of class and religion.⁵⁶

There is one other important factor that has served to keep Harrison's achievements and ideas from the prominence they de- serve. He was a candid critic. He criticized the ruling classes, white supremacists, organized religion, organized labor, politicians, civil rights and race leaders, socialists, and communists. Many leaders who might have publicly preserved his memory made little effort to do so; some actually led in the great neglect that followed.⁵⁷

While students of African American history are familiar with the work of the early 20th-century leaders Booker T. Washington, W.E.B. Du Bois and Marcus Garvey, it is important to recognize in Hubert Harrison a major alternative intellectual and political voice, rooted in the working class, with significant mass appeal.⁵⁹ It is also important to consider the nature of Harrison's radicalism. Among African- American leaders of his era, he was the most class conscious of the race radicals, and the most race conscious of the class radicals. This seeming incongruity was made possible by the political-economic system of the United States in which a system of racial oppression was central to capitalist rule. Harrison's radicalism was grounded in his study, his analysis of society, and his practical work. He stressed modern and historical knowledge, critical and scientific approaches to problems, political independence while working with different groups and parties, and concern with the great democratic issues of the day. He worked tirelessly with those he referred to as the "common people." The radicalism in all this stems from the fact that it came from an African American who would not deny that race and class divided America. Then, as now, the demands for economic justice premised on true racial equality struck at the very heart of the existing social order and were inherently radical.⁵⁹

Notes

1. J[oel] A. Rogers, "Hubert Harrison: Intellectual Giant and Free-Lance Educator (1883-1927)," in J[oel] A. Rogers, World's Great Men of Color [hereafter WGMC], edited with an introduction, commentary, and new bibliographical notes by John Henrik Clarke, 2 vols. (1947; New York: Collier Books, 1972), 2:432-42, esp. 432f.

2. William Pickens, "Hubert Harrison: Philosopher of Harlem," Amsterdam News, February 7, 1923, 12.

3. Henry Miller, The Rosy Crucifixion, Book Two: Plexus (1963; New York: Grove Press, 1965), 560f.

4. Eugene O'Neill to Hubert Harrison (hereafter HH) June 9, 1921, copy in HH Papers, Correspondence, possession of author.

5. W.A. Domingo, interview with Theodore Draper, January 18, 1958, New York, Theodore Draper Papers, Robert W. Woodruff Library for Advanced Studies, Emory University, Atlanta, Georgia, Preliminary listing as Box 20, Folder 7, "Negro Question for Vol. 1 (cont.)," Notes re: W. A. Domingo, 2.

6. Hodge Kirnon, "Hubert Harrison: An Appreciation," Negro World [hereafter NW], December 31, 1927.

7. David Levering Lewis to author, August 13, 2001, possession of author; Henry Louis Gates, Jr., to author, December 12, 1996, possession of author; Gerald C. Horne, BRC-Discuss, general internet discussion group of the Black Radical Congress, June 1, 2001, http://www.mailarchive.com/brcdiscuss@lists.tao.ca/msg01433.html; Bill Fletcher, Jr., "Radicals Known and Unknown," Monthly Review, December 2001, 57-59, quote 57; Winston James, Holding Aloft the Banner of Ethiopia: Caribbean Radicalism in Early Twentieth-Century America (New York: Verso, 1998), 123.

8. Winston James, "Notes on the Ideology and Travails of Afro-America's Socialist Pioneers, 1877-1930," Souls, 1 no. 4 (Fall 1999): 45-63, esp. 54. Bibliographic material on Harrison is found in Jeffrey B. Perry, ed. A Hubert Harrison Reader (Middletown, CT: Wesleyan University Press, 2001), (hereafter cited as AHHR), 407-09 and Jeffrey B. Perry, "Hubert Henry Harrison 'The Father of Harlem Radicalism': The Early Years-1883 Through the Founding of the Liberty League and The Voice in 1917" (Ph. D. Diss., Columbia University, 1986), 711-809.

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