He penned essays and spoke on events occurring in what would eventually become known as the “Third World.”īy 1920, Harrison became an editor for Marcus Garvey’s Universal Negro Improvement Association (UNIA) newspaper. Harrison quickly developed his internationalist credentials, regularly condemning imperialism across the globe. He gave incendiary soap box talks on Harlem’s streets, contributing to the radical street corner culture for which Harlem became famous. Harrison continued his intellectual endeavors in a variety of different fields, including agnosticism and empiricism. In 1917, Harrison founded the Liberty League, a radical alternative to the National Association for the Advancement of Colored People (NAACP), which broke with other Black leaders calling for Black participation in World War I.Īfter becoming disillusioned with the Socialist Party’s slow action on the issue of race, Harrison resigned in 1918. Most famously, Harrison argued that politically “the Negro is the touchstone of the modern democratic idea,” meaning that real democracy was impossible without a fundamental revolution in race relations. Debs, and founded the first-ever “Colored Socialist Club.” His first theoretical essay, “The Negro and Socialism,” was published in the International Socialist Review and argued that the central responsibility of socialists ought to be challenging racism and undertaking the Black cause in the United States. By 1912, he campaigned heavily for Eugene V. Perry suggests that during the World War I era Harrison was the most class conscious of the race radicals and the most race conscious of the class radicals.Įarly in his political career Harrison become an active supporter of W. As one of the foremost radical internationalists who eloquently combined class and race consciousness, Harrison was the father of Harlem radicalism. By 1917, on the verge of the Russian Revolution, Harrison founded both the first organization and newspaper of the “New Negro” movement, a movement intended to instill dignity in the Black community and outwardly reject institutional forms of racism. Harrison first made a name for himself acting as the leading Black organizer for the Socialist Party of America. While working menial jobs and largely self-taught, he quickly became one of the foremost political activists of the Harlem area. Orphaned at the age of seventeen, Harrison migrated from St. Croix, at that time still a territory controlled by Denmark, to a working class mother and a formerly enslaved father.

Istripper full version credentials