This volume “fill[s] a gap in our understanding of black radical and nationalist writings [and] will . . . change the way . . . we tend to look at black thought.” —Ernest Allen, Jr., W.E.B. DuBois 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. 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. “Jeff Perry’s new book on Hubert Harrison's writings and speeches is a timely addition to the scholarship on early Black radicals and on the Harlem Renaissance period. . . . [A] must read.” —Portia James, Anacostia Museum

This first full-length biography of Harrison offers a portrait of a man ahead of his time in synthesizing race and class struggles in the U.S. and a leading influence on better known activists from Marcus Garvey to A. Philip Randolph. Harrison emigrated from St. Croix in 1883 and went on to become a foremost organizer for the Socialist Party in New York, the editor of the Negro World, and founder and leader of the World War I-era New Negro movement. Harrison s enormous political and intellectual appetites were channeled into his work as an orator, writer, political activist, and critic. He was an avid bibliophile, reportedly the first regular black book reviewer, who helped to develop the public library in Harlem into an international center for research on black culture. But Harrison was a freelancer so candid in his criticism of the establishment-black and white-that he had few allies or people interested in protecting his legacy. Historian Perry s detailed research brings to life a transformative figure who has been little recognized for his contributions to progressive race and class politics. Copyright Booklist Reviews 2008.

This reproduction was printed from a digital file created at the Library of Congress as part of an extensive scanning effort started with a generous donation from the Alfred P. Sloan Foundation. The Library is pleased to offer much of its public domain holdings free of charge online and at a modest price in this printed format. Seeing these older volumes from our collections rediscovered by new generations of readers renews our own passion for books and scholarship.

This anthology is the first to fully integrate the political and literary writings of Anglophone Caribbean authors in the Harlem Renaissance.

Collects nearly four decades' worth of writings by Detroit political and labor activist James Boggs.

The first book from “a tireless champion of African history,” a novel that “challenged the theories that Blacks were inferior to whites” (New York Amsterdam News). Joel Augustus Roger’s seminal work from the Harlem Renaissance, this novel—first published in 1917—is a polemic against the ignorance that fuels racism. The central plot revolves around a train speeding to California, serviced by an African American porter named Dixon. On board is a United States senator from Oklahoma, a man obsessed by race who makes no attempts to hide his prejudice. Unable to sleep, the politician encounters Dixon in the smoking car, and thus ensues a debate about religion, science, and racial equality . . . “A bold discussion novel in which a cultured, well-travelled, black Pullman porter is drawn into a debate with a white passenger, a Southern senator, on the question of the superiority of the Anglo Saxon and the inferiority of the Negro.” —The Guardian “A genuine treasure. I still insist that From ‘Superman’ to Man is the greatest book ever written in English on the Negro by a Negro and I am glad to know that increasing thousands of black and white readers re-echo the high opinion of it which I had expressed some years ago.” —Hubert Henry Harrison “A stirring story, faithful to truth and helpful to a better understanding and feeling.” —Prof. George B. Foster, University of Chicago