Unsung Heroes! Hubert Henry Harrison

PurpleMoons

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Harrison was not only perhaps the foremost Afro-American intellect of his time, but one of America's greatest minds. No one worked more seriously and indefatigably to enlighten his fellowmen; none of the Afro-American leaders of his time had a saner and more effective program — but others, unquestionably his inferiors, received the recognition that was his due. Even today but a very small proportion of the Negro intelligentsia has ever heard of him (World's Great Men of Color. Vol. 2, p. 611, New York: J. A. Rogers, 1947).

http://search.netscape.com/ns/boomf...tp://www.atheists.org/Atheism/roots/harrison/
 
This just appeared in Project Gutenberg:

When Africa Awakes by Hubert Henry Harrison

I have never heard of this book. I read Souls of Black Folks in the 60s and thought, "This is so out of date!" I have seen SoBF mentioned so many times since then but not this.

WTF!

At least this is post-WWI. I haven't read enough to comment yet.


Hubert Harrison: Black Griot of the Harlem Renaissance​

By Brian Kwoba July 8, 2017


 
The White War and the Colored World

There can be no doubt that the white race as it exists today, is the superior race of the world. And it is superior, not because it has better manners more religion or a higher culture; these things are metaphysical and subject to dispute. The white race rests its claim to superiority on the frankly materialistic ground that it has the guns, soldiers, the money and resources to keep it in the position of the top-dog and to make its will go. This is what white men mean by civilization, disguise it how they may. This struggle is a conflict of wills and interests among the various nations which make up the white race, to determine whose will shall be accepted as the collective will of the white race; to decide, at least for this century, who shall be the inheritors of the lands of Africa and Asia and dictators of the lives and destinies of their colored inhabitants.
The peculiar feature of the conflict is that the white race in its fratricidal strife is burning up, eating up, consuming and destroying these very resources of ships, guns, men and money upon which its superiority is built. They are bent upon this form of self-destruction and nothing that we can say will stop them.

HHH - 1920

And I have heard of Marcus Harvey instead of him. He introduced Harvey but Harvey had a bigger ego. I would have ignored Harvey with his silly uniform. My parents never mentioned Hubert Harrison.
 
A contemporary journalist wrote, “Garvey publicly eulogized Harrison, joined the Liberty League and took a keen interest in its affairs… Harrison was the forerunner of Garvey and contributed largely to the success of the latter”. Harrison complained, “Everything that I did he copied”. Yet, though Harrison’s Liberty League collapsed because it had neither the money nor the groundswell of support to keep going, Garvey launched his UNIA in 1918 and it grew rapidly. Harrison noted that “as a propagandist Garvey was without a peer”. Garvey approached Harrison to work with UNIA and he became associate editor of the UNIA’s newspaper, Negro World, in December 1919. Perry writes that Harrison “significantly reshaped” the publication, making it “the nation’s foremost radical, race-conscious paper”. He reduced the “almost endless” editorials and gave them, as he put it himself, “terseness, point, pungency and force”. He ended the practice of basing news stories on clippings from mainstream white papers and shifted the focus in a decidedly socialist direction. Harrison was happy with the opportunity to engage this new mass audience, but never supported Garvey, describing him in his diary as “spiritually as well as intellectually a little man”.


The UNIA’s rapid growth terrified the Bureau of Investigation, forerunner of the Federal Bureau of Investigation, and it launched repeated legal attacks, prodding particularly at Garvey’s irregular methods of fundraising. Harrison’s differences with Garvey came to a head over the UNIA’s showpiece convention in August 1920. Here, Garvey declared that “the problem of leadership has been settled once and for all” after he appointed himself “provisional president of Africa”, demanding that “his ruling on all things African…shall be obeyed by all Negroes”. Harrison left his editorial role after the convention, though he continued to contribute to Negro World. He later wrote, “Garvey is a worshipper of Garvey… It was his instinct for self-worship that prompted him to appropriate the entire front page of the Negro World each week with his stupid declamations… It reduced the circulation…from 50,000 to 3,000”.
 

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