Hubert Harrison was a towering figure in US black and socialist politics in the early years of the 20th century. He was known as the “father of Harlem radicalism” but has now almost disappeared from the history books. Jeffrey B. Perry has already edited a collection of Harrison’s writings entitled A Hubert Harrison Reader.(Wesleyan University, 2001) He is owed a serious debt of thanks for this, the first part of his exhaustive two-part biography, using Harrison’s own journals and a sympathetic understanding of the time. It rescues a fascinating historical figure from obscurity, and allows us to see how far ahead of its time much of his analysis was.
The level of racism in the US in which Harrison became politicised was not simply dreadful – it was getting worse. The American Federation of Labour (AFL) union federation had passed through a radical phase in the 1890s, in which it appealed to black workers, who responded enthusiastically. Indeed, Philip S. Foner records, “In the opening decade of the 20th century, Southern black workers, far from being ‘opposed to unions’, were often among the most militant unionists.” [1] But the brief flowering of radicalism was beaten back. The AFL retreated to support almost exclusively white craft unions. The segregationist Jim Crow laws had begun to appear across the Southern states at the end of the 19th century. New laws were enacted right through the period covered by this book…

Harrison arrived in New York in 1900 from St Croix in the West Indies. His politics shifted from an initial flirtation with Republicanism – which had been the party of Abraham Lincoln, who freed the slaves – through free thought and socialism. He was also a powerful public speaker and always argued for political organisation. His interests were wide ranging. He was an advocate of women’s rights, and, as well as discussing on the origins of racism and how to overthrow capitalism, he wrote on religion, theatre and evolution, and had a deep interest in religion and culture.

Many of Harrison’s theoretical insights are striking. At the end of 1911 he produced five articles on The Negro and Socialism. Perry comments that this was “the first such effort at comprehensive analysis by an African American in US socialist history, and on many points it evidences a profound and still incisive understanding”. (p. 159) Perry summarises Harrison’s argument: “The historic roots ... were ‘found in slavery’ and the need to supply that system with labourers ... [Though he pointed out that] black people were not the first slaves in North America and that ‘under Spanish rule, the Indians of Florida and California had been enslaved, and under English rule white men, women and children from Ireland had been sold into slavery’ ... Black people were treated as chattels, but, ‘to the credit of our common human nature’, steps had to be taken ‘to reconcile the public mind to the system of slavery’. This reconciliation was accomplished by nurturing the belief ‘that the slaves were not fully human’ and ‘wherever the system was most profitable,’ that belief ‘was strongest’.” (p. 159)

Harrison went on to argue that racism could not be seen as innate, citing examples from the interest of slave owners in black women to the need for legislation to enact segregation. He argued that capitalists foster racism to divide workers. Neither black nor white gain because, with a divided working class, white workers can be told that “other wage slaves are doing as hard work or harder and doing it for less”. (p. 162)

In Capital Karl Marx argued, “Labour cannot emancipate itself in the white skin where in the black it is branded.” But Marx did not theorise how racism had developed. It was not until the 1940s that the explanation of how racism developed out of slavery was fully articulated in the writings of Eric Williams and C.L.R. James. I am not aware of anyone else prior to the First World War who approached this level of sophistication. Harrison maintained this view even as he moved to a more overtly race centred politics.

Perry writes: “In 1926 [Harrison] explained, ‘The conception now prevailing that white people are superior and darker people inferior arose as the mental reflex of a social fact. The fact was the military and political dominations exercised by European whites over the darker people who as late as the 14th century had been superior to them.’ He added that the King James version of the Bible ‘does not contain the word “race” in our modern sense of a breed of people ... as late as 1611 our modern idea of race had not yet arisen, or had not found expression in the English language’.” (p. 121)

Harrison also opposed the First World War, arguing that capitalist competition inevitably leads to armed conflict:

“Hence beaks and claws must be provided beforehand against the day of conflict, and hence the exploitation of white men in Europe and America becomes the reason for the exploitation of black and brown and yellow men in Africa and Asia. And therefore it is hypocritical and absurd to pretend that the capitalist nations can ever intend to abolish wars.” (p. 232)

He wrote much of the above in publications associated with the Socialist Party. This had been formed in 1901. It built significant support in the early years of the 20th century. While it was usually dominated by conservative elements, it contained some serious revolutionary socialists. Its presidential candidate, Eugene Debs, won over 900,000 votes in 1912. The party also boasted two Congressmen and many state legislators and mayors. It was later weakened by rows over its opposition to the First World War and how to respond to the Russian Revolution in 1917.

Within the Socialist Party a paternalistic view of black people as at best deprived of education and at worst degenerate held sway. Harrison challenged this. He came to work as a full-time organiser for the party in New York, after being sacked from his job as a post office clerk for his political activity. Initially he was optimistic about the possibilities of winning black workers to socialism. He argued for an organised strategy to recruit a layer of black workers. He was asked if this meant separate black branches, something that Du Bois specifically objected to. Harrison stated, “There is no intention to establish separate branches or separate organisations for coloured people.” However, since black people had a legitimate suspicion of white-led organisations they must be approached, “in part at least, by men of their own race and the work must be done where Negroes ‘most do congregate’.” (p. 170) But Harrison’s attempt to organise in this field was undermined by the party, which offered no support.

Harrison demanded that the party stopped allowing racism within its ranks. He asked, “Southernism or socialism – which? Is it to be the white half of the working class against the black half, or all of the working class? Can we hope to triumph over capitalism with one half of the working class against us?” (p. 183) The Socialist Party’s 1912 congress passed motions favouring the exclusion of Asian immigrants. Race was put ahead of class and Harrison’s views were marginalised. He was pushed out of the party both because of its line on racism and its drift away from anything that could be defined as revolutionary socialism.

He went on to became active in the Industrial Workers of the World (IWW), building support for a number of major strikes in this period and challenging the AFL’s complacency. In 1913 he declared to a rally, “We socialists must go to the workers to hear what we must do. The revolution is not coming from above, remember, but from below, working its way up from the depths.” (p. 210) The freedom to speak like this was a relief after the Socialist Party, even if his words also reflect the IWW’s admiration of spontaneity at the expense of any consistent and sustained organisation.

In late 1915 Harrison became more concerned with organising Harlem’s black community. He increasingly believed that a “race first” view was necessary. Perry says he regarded this as “a self-defence measure under existing social conditions and that it was a necessary corrective to white supremacy.” (p. 278) By 1920 he would advocate separate black unions.

Harrison’s shift was a tragic response to the behaviour of the left in this period. Take, for instance, William Z. Foster, a former member of both the Socialist Party and the IWW, who would become a leading Communist. Foster wrote a history of the great steel strike of 1919. A section of this attacks black workers for their “open hostility” to organised labour, complaining that they were prepared to be used as strikebreakers and took a “keen delight in stealing the white men’s jobs”.

Harrison reviewed the book, saying, “It is conceded on all sides that the white organised labour movement has been and still is pronouncedly anti-Negro. And so long as that remains true, just so long will any self-respecting Negro leaders abstain from urging the labouring masses of their race to join forces with the stupid and shortsighted labour oligarchy which refuses to join forces with them.” (p. 279) Harrison may have been wrong to advocate separate unions but his point stands. Unless the socialist movement actively welcomes the oppressed it has no right to condemn them for not taking part…

Ken Olende, International Socialism 123 (2009), https://isj.org.uk/black-star-rising/ ( )