Jeffrey B. Perry

Hubert Harrison (1883-1927) is one of the truly important figures of early twentieth-century America. A brilliant writer, orator, educator, critic, and political activist, he was described by the historian Joel A. Rogers, in World’s Great Men of Color as “the foremost Afro-American intellect of his time.” Labor and civil rights leader A. Philip Randolph described Harrison as “the father of Harlem Radicalism.” Harrison’s friend and pallbearer, Arthur Schomburg, fully aware of his popularity, eulogized to the thousands attending Harrison’s Harlem funeral that he was also “ahead of his time.”

Born in St. Croix, Danish West Indies, in 1883, to a Bajan mother and a Crucian father, Harrison arrived in New York as a seventeen-year-old orphan in 1900. He made his mark in the United States by struggling against class and racial oppression, by helping to create a remarkably rich and vibrant intellectual life among African Americans, and by working for the enlightened development of the lives of “the common people.” He consistently emphasized the need for working class people to develop class-consciousness; for “Negroes” to develop race consciousness, self-reliance, and self-respect; and for all those he reached to challenge white supremacy and develop modern, scientific, critical, and independent thought as a means toward liberation.

A self-described “radical internationalist,” Harrison was extremely well-versed in history and events in Africa, Asia, the Mideast, the Americas, and Europe. More than any other political leader of his era, he combined class-consciousness and anti-white supremacist race consciousness in a coherent political radicalism. He opposed capitalism and maintained that white supremacy was central to capitalist rule in the United States. He emphasized that “politically, the Negro is the touchstone of the modern democratic idea”; that “as long as the Color Line exists, all the perfumed protestations of Democracy on the part of the white race” were “downright lying,” that “the cant of ‘Democracy’” was “intended as dust in the eyes of white voters,” and that true democracy and equality for “Negroes” implied “a revolution . . . startling even to think of.”

Working from this theoretical framework, he was active with a wide variety of movements and organizations and played signal roles in the development of what were, up to that time, the largest class radical movement (socialism) and the largest race radical movement (the “New Negro”/Garvey movement) in U.S. history. His ideas on the centrality of the struggle against white supremacy anticipated the profound transformative power of the Civil Rights/Black Liberation struggles of the 1960s and his thoughts on “democracy in America” offer penetrating insights on the limitations and potential of America in the twenty-first century.

Harrison served as the foremost Black organizer, agitator, and theoretician in the Socialist Party of New York during its 1912 heyday; he founded the first organization (the Liberty League) and the first newspaper (The Voice) of the militant, World War I-era “New Negro” movement; and he served as the editor of the New Negro in 1919 and as the editor of the Negro World and principal radical influence on the Garvey movement during its radical high point in 1920. His views on race and class profoundly influenced a generation of “New Negro” militants including the class radical A. Philip Randolph and the race radical Marcus Garvey. Considered more race conscious than Randolph and more class conscious than Garvey, Harrison is a key ideological link between the two great trends of the Black Liberation Movement--the labor and civil rights trend associated with Martin Luther King, Jr., and the race and nationalist trend associated with Malcolm X. (Randolph and Garvey were, respectively, the direct links to King marching on Washington, with Randolph at his side, and to Malcolm, whose parents were involved with the Garvey movement, speaking militantly and proudly on street corners in Harlem.)

Harrison was not only a political radical, however. J. A. Rogers described him as an “Intellectual Giant and Free-Lance Educator,” whose contributions were wide-ranging, innovative, and influential. He was an immensely skilled and popular orator and educator who spoke and/or read six languages; a highly praised journalist, critic, and book reviewer (reportedly the first regular Black book reviewer in history); a pioneer Black activist in the freethought and birth control movements; a bibliophile and library builder and popularizer who helped develop the 135th Street Public Library into what became known as the internationally famous Schomburg Center for Research in Black Culture; a pioneer Black lecturer for the New York City Board of Education and one of its foremost orators). His biography offers profound insights on race, class, religion, immigration, war, democracy, and social change in America.

For information on vol. 1 of his biography, Hubert Harrison: The Voice of Harlem Radicalism, 1883-1918 (Columbia University Press) CLICK HERE and CLICK HERE

For writings by and about Hubert Harrison CLICK HERE

December 17th is the anniversary of the death of Hubert Harrison in 1927 at age 44. – Please help to spread the word about his important life and work!

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Jeffrey B. Perry October 19, 2013, talk on "Hubert Harrison" (minutes 0-24) and Theodore W. Allen and "The Invention of the White Race" and on the topic of "The Centrality of Struggle Against White Supremacy" at the Dudley Public Library, Roxbury, MA 02116.



This presentation also includes brief discussion of Ray Richardson, Hubert Harrison's grandson, who was producer of Boston Radio Station WGBH's "Say Brother" TV Show from 1968-1970 and died under suspicious circumstances in January 1971 in Mexico.

For information on the new expanded edition of Theodore W. Allen's "The Invention of the White Race" Volume 1: “Racial Oppression and Social Control” CLICK HERE
For information on the new expanded edition of Theodore W. Allen's "The Invention of the White Race"Volume 2: “The Origin of Racial Oppression in Anglo-America” CLICK HERE
For other writings by and about Theodore W. Allen CLICK HERE

For information about Hubert Harrison CLICK HERE, CLICK HERE, CLICK HERE, and CLICK HERE
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Jeffrey B. Perry October 20, 2013, talk on Ray Richardson (minutes 0-5), Hubert Harrison (minutes 5-24) and Theodore W. Allen and "The Invention of the White Race" and on the Centrality of Struggle Against White Supremacy (minutes 24 till end) at the Center for Marxist Education, 550 Massachusetts Ave (Central Square), Cambridge, MA 02116. Watch a video of the event HERE!




For information on the new expanded edition of Theodore W. Allen's "The Invention of the White Race" Volume 1: “Racial Oppression and Social Control” CLICK HERE
For information on the new expanded edition of Theodore W. Allen's "The Invention of the White Race"Volume 2: “The Origin of Racial Oppression in Anglo-America” CLICK HERE
For other writings by and about Theodore W. Allen CLICK HERE

For information about Hubert Harrison CLICK HERE, CLICK HERE, CLICK HERE, and
CLICK HERE

"The Radicalization of Ray Richardson: Suspicion Still Surrounds Death of Black Activist ['Say Brother'] TV Producer [and Grandson of Hubert Harrison]" an article by Jeffrey B. Perry and Charles Richardson is available at Black Agenda Report, at Black Commentator, and at Black Star News.
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I will discuss Theodore W. Allen's “The Invention of the White Race” (Verso Books) especially Volume 2, “The Origin of Racial Oppression in Anglo-America,” in a slide presentation/talk on Saturday, December 7, 2013, at 4 PM, at the Brooklyn Public Library, Dweck Center, 10 Grand Army Plaza, Brooklyn, NY 11238.

Theodore W. Allen was an independent working class scholar, long-time resident of Brooklyn (he lived at Brooklyn Ave. and Dean St.), and an employee of the Brooklyn Public Library.

“The Invention of the White Race” has been described as a “classic” and widely praised by scholars and activists for its seminal contributions to our understanding of race and class and for its extraordinary primary research (much of that primary research was done over a thirty-year period in Virginia archives and at the Brooklyn Public Library).

For the new 2012 edition of “The Invention of the White Race” I prepared new introductions, internal study guides, a biographical sketch, suggested readings, and expanded indexes

The event is free and people are encouraged to attend, to bring friends, and to share this announcement with those who might be interested. People who have heard of Allen’s important work and have not yet had a chance to read it are especially encouraged to attend.

The presentation will be followed by a question and answer period.

For information on the new expanded edition of Volume 1: “Racial Oppression and Social Control” CLICK HERE

For information on the new expanded edition of Volume 2: “The Origin of Racial Oppression in Anglo-America” CLICK HERE

For information on the Brooklyn Public Library Events Calendar CLICK HERE

For other writings by and about Theodore W. Allen CLICK HERE

To join the event on Facebook and to invite others via Facebook CLICK HERE
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Gary Glennell Toms has put together a wonderful You Tube Video on “The Radicalization of Ray Richardson” for “The G-Man Interviews.”



Ray Richardson (1946-1971) was a young, radical producer of “Say Brother,” the WGBH Boston, prime time, Black Power TV show. He reportedly died by “drowning” under suspicious circumstances in Mexico in January 1971.

Ray was also the grandson of Hubert Harrison (1883-1927), “The Father of Harlem Radicalism.”

To see the G-Man video CLICK HERE

"The Radicalization of Ray Richardson: Suspicion Still Surrounds Death of Black Activist ['Say Brother'] TV Producer [and Grandson of Hubert Harrison]" an article by Jeffrey B. Perry and Charles Richardson is available at Black Agenda Report, at Black Commentator, and at Black Star News.

It is also featured in a discussion with hose Janice Graham at Our Common Ground entitled “The Killing of Radical Black Media”, October 12, 2013, which can be heard by CLICKING HERE
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In “White Skin Privilege?” Socialistworker.org October 30, 2013, Bill Mullen mischaracterizes the work of the anti-white supremacist, working class intellectual Theodore W. Allen (1919-2005) on “white skin privilege.” This is particularly unfortunate since Allen’s extraordinary body of work is extremely important to those struggling today and since there is much to learn from his seminal writings.

In his “White Skin Privilege?” article Mullen asserts, without elaboration, that Theodore W. Allen became a critic of “‘white skin privilege’ analysis.”

In fact, Allen pioneered his “white skin privilege” analysis in 1965 and continued to develop it for the remaining forty years of his life. I base my statement on the writings, audios, and videos at Theodore W. Allen (with audio and video links), on my intimate familiarity with Allen and his work for over thirty years, and on the fact that I am currently, preserving, indexing, and inventorying his Papers.

Mullen cites as a reference for his statement that Allen became a critic of “‘white skin privilege’ analysis” Allen’s review “On Roediger’s Wages of Whiteness.” In the review cited by Mullen, however, Allen says nothing to substantiate Mullen’s claim. Instead, Allen emphasizes important points he had made earlier: that “the problem of white supremacy and the white-skin privilege . . . have historically frustrated the struggle for democracy, progress and socialism in the U.S." and that “the white-skin privilege is the Achilles Heel of the American working class."

In discussing, what he calls “‘the white skin privilege’ argument” Mullen writes: “Fundamentally, the idea is that racism is inevitable under capitalism because all whites, no matter their class, benefit from the unequal distribution of social resources along racial lines.”

Allen’s position, however, is quite different from this. Allen argues that racial oppression is not inevitable under capitalism and he describes how racial oppression begins, how it is maintained, and how it can be transformed.

Allen also consistently challenges the “white” assumption and describes how the “white race” was invented as a ruling class social control formation in response to labor solidarity.

Finally, and very importantly, Allen emphasizes that European-American workers do not “benefit” from “white skin privileges,” that these “white skin privileges” are a “poison bait,” a “baited hook,” and they are not in the interest of working class people.

These points are made clearly in The Invention of the White Race where Allen develops his major thesis that the “white race” was invented as a ruling class social control formation in response to labor solidarity as manifested in the later, civil war stages of Bacon's Rebellion (1676-77). To this he adds two important corollaries: 1) the ruling elite, in its own class interest, deliberately instituted a system of racial privileges to define and maintain the “white race” and establish a system of racial oppression; 2) the consequences were not only ruinous to the interests of African-Americans, they were also “disastrous” for European-American workers, whose class interests differed fundamentally from those of the ruling elite.

In developing these theses Allen challenges two main arguments that undermine and disarm the struggle against white supremacy in the working class: (1) the argument that white supremacism is innate, and (2) the argument that European-American workers “benefit” from “white race” privileges and that it is in their interest not to oppose them and not to oppose white supremacy. These two arguments, opposed by Allen, are related to two master historical narratives rooted in writings on the colonial period. The first argument is associated with the “unthinking decision” explanation for the development of racial slavery offered by historian Winthrop D. Jordan in his influential, White Over Black. The second argument is associated with historian Edmund S. Morgan’s similarly influential, American Slavery, American Freedom, which maintains that, as racial slavery developed, “there were too few free poor [European-Americans] on hand to matter.” Allen’s work directly challenges both the “unthinking decision” contention of Jordan and the “too few free poor” contention of Morgan.

Allen was a historical materialist who believed that class struggle was the driving force of history and the key to understanding the origin of racial oppression in the Anglo-American plantation colonies.

Readers interested in learning more about Allen’s work are encouraged to look at the in-depth treatment in “The Developing Conjuncture and Some Insights from Hubert Harrison and Theodore W. Allen on the Centrality of the Fight Against White Supremacy” (Cultural Logic, 2010) available at JeffreyBPerry.net (top left). For those interested in Allen’s two-volume “classic” The Invention of the White Race (Verso Books, 1994, 1997; 2012) see Vol. 1: Racial Oppression and Social Control and Vol. 2: The Origin of Racial Oppression in Anglo-America and see Allen’s online “Summary of the Argument of The Invention of the White Race” (in two parts).

Jeffrey B. Perry is the author of Hubert Harrison: The Voice of Harlem Radicalism, 1883-1918 (Columbia University Press, 2008). He edited and introduced Allen's Class Struggle and the Origin of Racial Slavery: The Invention of the White Race (1975; Center for the Study of Working Class Life, State University of New York, Stony Brook, 2006), wrote "The Developing Conjuncture and Some Insights From Hubert Harrison and Theodore W. Allen on the Centrality of the Fight Against White Supremacy", and contributed new introductions, back matter, internal study guides, and expanded indexes for the new (Verso Books, November 2012) expanded edition of Allen's two-volume The Invention of the White Race.

Published in SocialistWorker.org (November 11, 2013). In that publication the SocialistWorker.org editor removed the word "Seminal" from the title of my original submission.
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The most dangerous phase of developed capitalism is that of imperialism--when having subjugated its workers and exploited its natural resources at home, it turns with grim determination toward “undeveloped” races and areas to renew the same process there. . . .

The case of Hayti and the present plight of the Haytian people helps us to see the aims of our own American imperialists in the white light of pitiless publicity. A people of African descent, scarcely seven hundred miles from our own shores, with a government of their own, have had their government suppressed and their liberties destroyed by the Navy Department of the United States without even the slightest formality of a declaration of war by the United States Congress as required by the Constitution. In the presidential chair our “cracker” marines have installed a puppet in the person of Monsieur [President Phillipe Sudre] D’Artiguenave to carry out their will; the legislative bodies of the erstwhile republic have been either suppressed or degraded; unoffending black citizens have been wantonly butchered in cold blood, and thousands have been forced into slavery to labor on the military roads without pay. Here is American imperialism in its stark, repulsive nakedness. And what are we going to do about it?

Excerpted from Hubert H. Harrison, “Hands across the Sea,” “Negro World” (September 10, 1921). Reprinted in Jeffrey B. Perry, “A Hubert Harrison Reader” (Wesleyan University Press, 2001).

In this forceful “Negro World” piece (written during the 1915-1934 U.S. invasion and occupation of Haiti) Harrison offers an explanation of how imperialism, the “most dangerous stage of developed capitalism,” turns to “the subjection of black, brown and colored workers.” He also offers concrete suggestions for action in opposition to U.S. imperialism in Haiti.

For more information CLICK HERE and CLICK HERE

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Those studying of US Labor History would do well to include writings by and about the independent, working-class scholar Theodore W. Allen (1919-2005), especially as put forth in his The Invention of the White Race (2 vols., Verso Books, [1994, 1997], 2012) and his still-to-be-published “Toward a Revolution in Labor History” (2004). (See some of these writings can be found HERE.)

Important insights from Allen’s writings are found in Jeffrey B. Perry, “The Developing Conjuncture and Some Insights From Hubert Harrison and Theodore W. Allen on the Centrality of the Fight Against White Supremacy” (Cultural Logic July 2010) available online HERE (top left) and HERE . (This article includes links to many writings by Allen.)

Allen contends, that “the beginning of wisdom for labor historians must be the recognition that from 1619 on the history of African American bond-laborers is a history of proletarians. From this all else follows.”

In his writings Allen seeks to lay the basis for a class-conscious, anti-white supremacist, counter-narrative of American history. He offers “the groundwork for a total re-interpretation of U.S. history” that he considers to be “unfettered by white labor apology which consistently locates Afro-Americans outside the working class.”

Of major importance is Allen’s analysis of slavery in Anglo-America as capitalism, slaveholders as capitalists, and enslaved laborers as proletarians. In describing “the capitalist development which motored the Anglo-American racial slavery system,” Allen’s historical work shows “that the means of production on the plantations were monopolized by one class,” that “non-owners were reduced to absolute dependence upon the owners and could live only by the alienation of their own labor power to the service of the owning class,” that “the products of the plantation took the form of commodities,” and “that the aim of production was the accumulation and expansion of capital.”

He emphasizes that “slaveholders were capitalists – a plantation bourgeoisie – and the slaves were proletarians.” He also points out that the “proposition that the United States plantation system based on chattel bond-labor was a capitalist operation is a widely recognized principle of political economy” and cites a disparate group of writers including W. E. B. Du Bois, Ulrich Bonnell Phillips, Lewis C. Gray, Roger W. Shugg, Hubert Harrison, David Roediger, and Winthrop D. Jordan who have taken this position, and he adds that Eric Williams and C. L. R. James “view Caribbean slavery in this light, as well.”

Allen calls special attention to the fact that Karl Marx invariably treated the American plantation economy as capitalist enterprise and quotes Marx that “The production of surplus-value is the absolute law of this [capitalist – TWA] mode of production.” He similarly quotes Marx that “The overworking of the Negro [bond-laborer – TWA] . . . was no longer a question of obtaining from him a certain quantity of useful products [as in ancient classical slavery – TWA]. It was now a question of the production of surplus-value itself.” Referring to circumstances where both rent and profit go to the owner-employer Marx explained, “Where capitalist conceptions predominate, as they did upon the American plantations, this entire surplus-value is regarded as profit.” Allen also quotes Marx before the Civil War discussing the nature of differential rent and commenting that while free wage-labor is the normal basis of capitalist production, still “the capitalist mode of production exists” in the Anglo-American plantation colonies based on “the slavery of Negroes.”

In the course of his work Allen addresses a question that might be raised – How can slavery be capitalist, since it is not based on wage labor? He responds, “What is historically significant about the wages system is that it is based on the general transformation of labor-power into a commodity, and that in turn is due to the fact that the producers have lost ownership of the means production, and therefore can live only by the sale of their labor power.” He cites Marx’s letter to Lincoln, that the African-American bond-laborer was “sold without his concurrence, while the European-American worker could ‘sell himself,’” and Marx’s statement that “‘the business in which slaves are used [in the United States] is conducted by capitalists,’ and for the same purpose, the accumulation of capital by the extraction of surplus value from the exploitation of commodity-producing labor.”

Allen notes, “the bond-labor form was a contradiction of the basic requisites of general capitalist development – a contradiction that was purged away in the Civil War,” but emphasizes that “[for] a time that form of labor was not a barrier to rapid capitalist accumulation, but its main engine.”

On the topic of slaveholders as capitalists and the enslaved laborers as proletarians Allen quotes from Hubert Harrison in the 1912 International Socialist Review that “The . . . Negroes of America form a group that is more essentially proletarian than any other American group.” Allen adds that in “a presumed reference to African American bond-laborers” Harrison wrote, “the Negro was at one period the most thoroughly exploited of the American proletariat.” After quoting Harrison’s statements that “the duty of the [Socialist] party to champion his [the African American’s] cause is as clear as day” and “this is the crucial test of Socialism's sincerity,” Allen concludes: “the study of class consciousness, ‘the working people’s consciousness of their interests and of their predicament as a class,’ should start with the recognition of that fact.”

Allen draws a similar conclusion from Du Bois’ discussion of the interests of “the laboring class, black and white, North and South.” Over his last forty years he would often cite, and add emphasis to, Du Bois’ seminal words that “the [white] labor movement, with but few exceptions, . . . never had the intelligence or knowledge, as a whole, to see in black slavery and Reconstruction, the kernel and the meaning of the labor movement in the United States.

For Allen, this insight expressed by Du Bois was “a basis . . . for understanding and applying the general Marxist principles in assessing the interests of American labor and the state of American labor’s consciousness of those interests.” As Allen explained:

"Given this understanding of slavery in Anglo-America as capitalism, and of the slaveholders as capitalists, it follows that the chattel bond-laborers were proletarians. Accordingly, the study of class consciousness as a sense the American workers have of their own class interests, must start with recognition of that fact. But historians guided by the white blindspot have, in effect, defined the United States working class as an essentially European-American grouping. In doing so they have ignored or, at best, marginalized the propertyless African-American plantation workers, the exploitation of whose surplus value-producing labor was also the basis of capital accumulation for the employers of those workers."

Also of great importance is Allen’s historical research in which he challenged (almost 50 years ago) what he described as the prevailing consensus among left and labor historians, a consensus that attributed the low level of class consciousness among American workers to such factors as the early development of civil liberties, the heterogeneity of the work force, the safety valve of homesteading opportunities in the west, the ease of social mobility, the relative shortage of labor, and the early development of “pure and simple trade unionism.”

He argued that the “classical consensus on the subject” was the product of the efforts of such writers as Frederick Engels, “co-founder with Karl Marx of the very theory of proletarian revolution”; Frederick A. Sorge, “main correspondent of Marx and Engels in the United States” and a socialist and labor activist for almost sixty years; Frederick Jackson Turner, giant of U.S. history; Richard T. Ely, Christian Socialist and author of “the first attempt at a labor history in the United States”; Morris Hillquit, founder and leading figure of the Socialist Party for almost two decades; John R. Commons, who, with his associates authored the first comprehensive history of the U.S. labor movement; Selig Perlman, a Commons associate who later authored A Theory of the Labor Movement; Mary Beard and Charles A. Beard, labor and general historians; and William Z. Foster, major figure in the history of U.S. communism with “his analyses of ‘American exceptionalism.’”

Allen challenged this “old consensus” as being “seriously flawed . . . by erroneous assumptions, one-sidedness, exaggeration, and above all, by white-blindness.” He also countered with his own theory that white supremacism, reinforced among European-Americans by “white skin privilege,” was the main retardant of working-class consciousness in the U.S. and that efforts at radical social change should direct principal efforts at challenging the system of white supremacy and “white skin privilege.”

As he further developed his analysis Allen would later add and emphasize that the “white race,” by its all-class form, conceals the operation of the ruling class social control system by providing it with a majoritarian “democratic” facade and that “the main barrier to class consciousness” was “the incubus of ‘white’ identity of the European-American.”

Allen discussed reasons that the six-point rationale had lost much of its force and focused on historical analyses. He noted that the free land safety valve theory had been “thoroughly discredited” for many reasons including that the bulk of the best lands were taken by railroads, mining companies, land companies, and speculators and that the costs of homesteading were prohibitive for eastern wage earners. He similarly pointed out that heterogeneity “may well . . . have brought . . . more strength than weakness to the United States labor and radical movement”; that the “rise of mass, ‘non aristocratic,’ industrial unions has not broken the basic pattern of opposition to a workers party, on the part of the leaders”; and that the “‘language problem’ in labor agitating and organizing never really posed any insurmountable obstacle.”

He then focused on what he described as “two basic and irrefutable themes.” First, whatever the state of class consciousness may have been most of the time, “there have been occasional periods of widespread and violent eruption of radical thought and action on the part of the workers and poor farmers, white and black.” He cited Black labor's valiant Reconstruction struggle; the Exodus of 1879; the “year of violence” in 1877 marked by “fiery revolts at every major terminal point across the country”; the period from “bloody Haymarket” in 1886 to the Pullman strike of 1894 during which “the U.S. army was called upon no less than 328 times to suppress labor's struggles”; the Populists of the same period when Black and white poor farmers “joined hands for an instant in the South” and when Middle Western farmers decided to “raise less corn and more hell!”; and the labor struggles of the 1930's marked by sit down strikes and the establishment of industrial unionism. Allen emphasized that in such times “any proposal to discuss the relative backwardness of the United States workers and poor farmers would have had a ring of unreality.” He reasoned, “if, in such crises, the cause of labor was consistently defeated by force and cooptation; if no permanent advance of class consciousness in the form of a third, anti capitalist, party was achieved . . . there must have been reasons more relevant than ‘free land’ that you couldn't get; ‘free votes’ that you couldn't cast, or couldn't get counted; or ‘high wages’ for jobs you couldn't find or . . . the rest of the standard rationale.”

His second, “irrefutable” theme was that each of the facts of life in the classical consensus had to be “decisively altered when examined in the light of the centrality of the question of white supremacy and of the white skin privileges of the white workers.” He again reasoned, “‘Free land,’ ‘constitutional liberties,’ ‘immigration,’ ‘high wages,’ ‘social mobility,’ ‘aristocracy of labor’” were “all, white skin privileges” and “whatever their effect upon the thinking of white workers may be said to be, the same cannot be claimed in the case of the Negro.”
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"The Radicalization of Ray Richardson: Suspicion Still Surrounds Death of Black Activist ['Say Brother'] TV Producer [and Grandson of Hubert Harrison]"
by Jeffrey B. Perry and Charles Richardson is available at Black Agenda Report and it is featured in a discussion with hose Janice Graham at OUR COMMON GROUND “The Killing of Radical Black Media” (Saturday, October 12, 2013, 10 PM) and can be heard HERE.

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October 12, 2013
Saturday, 10:00 PM -- 12 PM
Jeffrey B. Perry will discuss "Hubert Harrison, "The Father of Harlem Radicalism, and his grandson Ray Richardson, the former Black Power producer of Boston's prime time "Say Brother" Television Program (who died under suspicious circumstances in Mexico in 1971)" with host Janice Graham on Our Common Ground on Blog Talk Radio.

October 14, 2013
Monday, 4:30 PM -- 6:30 PM
Jeffrey B. Perry will speak on "Hubert Harrison, Theodore W. Allen, and the Centrality of the Struggle Against White Supremacy." Event hosted by SPEAR (Students for Prison Education and Reform), Campaign to End the New Jim Crow (Princeton), the PTS Mumia and Mass Incarceration Group, and the New Jersey Campaign for Alternatives to Isolated Confinement. 4 McCosh Hall, Princeton University, Princeton, NJ, 08540. Contact Persons J. Amos Caley and Jean Ross.

October 14, 2013
Monday, 8 PM, Frist Campus Center, Lecture Hall, Room 302, Princeton University -- Jeffrey B. Perry '68 will chair panel on "Beyond Wall Street: More Careers for Princetonians" and offer a presentation on "Independent Scholarship." Other panelists include Larry Adams ’74 -- labor and community organizer; Gene Bruskin ’68 labor organizer; Lorraine Goodman ’83 -- non-profit theatre groups; Marty Johnson '81, President of Sustainable Development Group; Kiki Karaglou '05 Assistant Curator at Metropolitan Museum of Art; David Holliday ’84 – International Human Rights, Mike Salmanson ’82 – Attorney representing people in need (death penalty, employment discrimination, whistleblowers); and Paul Nehring '10 Princeton Alumni Corps. Event sponsored by Princeton College Democrats, the PACE Center, Princeton Equality Project, SURGE (Students United for a Responsible Global Environment), Greening Princeton, SPEAR (Students for Princeton Education and Reform), Project Civics and Princeton Progressives.Contact persons Jimmy Tarlau and Will Mantell.

October 19, 2013
Saturday, 2 PM - 4:30 PM -- Theodore W. Allen's The Invention of the White Race (Verso Books) especially Volume 2 The Origin of Racial Oppression in Anglo-America will be discussed in a slide presentation/talk by Jeffrey B. Perry at the Dudley Branch Library 65 Warren Street, Roxbury, MA. Event sponsored by South Asians for Global Justice. Contact persons Umang Kumar, Mirna Lascano and Charlie Welch; Branch Librarian Janet Buda; opening presenter Tony Van Der Meer.

October 20, 2013
Sunday, 11 AM, Jeffrey B. Perry will discuss Theodore W. Allen's "The Invention of the White Race," at Community Church of Boston, 565 Boylston St., Boston, MA 02116. Contact persons Linda Jenkins and Mary Lynn Cramer.

October 20, 2013
Sunday, 5 PM, Jeffrey B. Perry will discuss "Hubert Harrison: The Voice of Harlem Radicalism and Theodore W. Allen's "The Invention of the White Race," at the Center for Marxist Education, 550 Massachusetts Ave (Central Square), Cambridge, MA 02116. Contact person Joe Ramsey.
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14 September 2013

To the editor of The New York Times

Historic Background to the “Occupy Wall Street Legacy”

Charles Blow (September 14) writes of the “Occupy Wall Street Legacy” “ingraining in the national conscience the idea that our extreme levels of inequality are politically untenable and morally unacceptable.” Background to that legacy – the message and the occupation of Wall Street – goes back over one hundred years.

Exactly 101 years ago (on September 14, 1912) in “Enlightening Wall Street” the New York Times reported that “Hubert Harrison, an eloquent and forceful negro speaker, shattered all records for distance in an address on Socialism in front of the Stock Exchange building yesterday.” His “voice carried to the furthermost limits of the crowd,” he “was still going strong, at the beginning of the third hour,” and he continued on until “the big gong in the Exchange announced the closing.”

Hubert Harrison (1883-1927) was a brilliant writer, orator, editor and political activist who was described by J. A. Rogers as “the foremost Afro-American intellect of his time” and by A. Philip Randolph as “the father of Harlem Radicalism.” Arthur Schomburg eulogized at Harrison’s funeral that he “was ahead of his time.” Schomburg was correct – and we have much to learn today from the life and work of Hubert Harrison who over 100 years ago delivered an important egalitarian message while seeking to have his audience occupy Wall Street.

Dr. Jeffrey B. Perry

For more on Hubert Harrison CLICK HERE

For the New York Times article from 1912 CLICK HERE

For the Charles Blow column CLICK HERE

The New York Times did not publish this letter.
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Three Upcoming Talks – On Hubert Harrison, Theodore W. Allen – The Invention of the White Race -- Boston/Cambridge Mass – October 19-20, 2013

October 19, 2013
Saturday, 2 PM - 4:30 PM -- Theodore W. Allen's The Invention of the White Race (Verso Books) especially Volume 2 The Origin of Racial Oppression in Anglo-America will be discussed in a slide presentation/talk by Jeffrey B. Perry at the Dudley Branch Library 65 Warren Street, Roxbury, MA. Event sponsored by South Asians for Global Justice. Contact persons Umang Kumar, Mirna Lascano and Charlie Welch; Branch Librarian Janet Buda; opening presenter Tony Van Der Meer.

October 20, 2013
Sunday, 11 AM, Jeffrey B. Perry will discuss Theodore W. Allen's "The Invention of the White Race," at Community Church of Boston, 565 Boylston St., Boston, MA 02116. Contact persons Linda Jenkins and Mary Lynn Cramer.

October 20, 2013
Sunday, 5 PM, Jeffrey B. Perry will discuss "Hubert Harrison: The Voice of Harlem Radicalism and Theodore W. Allen's "The Invention of the White Race," at the Center for Marxist Education, 550 Massachusetts Ave (Central Square), Cambridge, MA 02116. Contact person Joe Ramsey. Read More 

I strongly encourage people who want to know what Theodore W. Allen’s The Invention of the White Race” is about to read it in the original.

His two-volume “classic” is approximately 800 pages including some 30% notes and appendices. It includes voluminous primary research conducted over thirty years and offers profound and compelling theses. He knows the contending arguments, he tries to treat those positions seriously and in their best light, and he refers readers back to detailed and specific sources so they can investigate for themselves. It is high quality and very principled scholarship.

Allen has also provided a very helpful Summary of the Argument of The Invention of the White Race

The new expanded 2012 Verso Books edition of The Invention of the White Race includes introductions to each volume, background on Allen and his work, internal study guides, and significantly expanded indexes (especially the index to vol. 2 on The Origin of Racial Oppression in Anglo-America).

Allen’s “Introduction” to Volume 1: Racial Oppression and Social Control discusses his work in relation to that of Carl Degler, Winthrop D. Jordan, Oscar and Mary Handlin, Eric Williams, Edmund S. Morgan, Timothy Breen, and others.

The following two reviews by Allen are particularly important --

1) Theodore William Allen, “Slavery, Racism, and Democracy," Review of Edmund S. Morgan, American Slavery, American Freedom: The Ordeal of Colonial Virginia (New York: W. W. Norton and Company, Inc., 1974). Monthly Review 29, no. 10 (March 1978): 57-63.
2) Theodore W. Allen, "On Roediger's Wages of Whiteness," Cultural Logic, Vol. 4, No. 2 (Spring 2001)

Strongly recommended for understanding the development of Allen’s thought is “The Developing Conjuncture and Some Insights from Hubert Harrison and Theodore W. Allen On the Centrality of the Fight Against White Supremacy,” in "Cultural Logic" (2010) available in pdf format at the top left HERE and also available at Cultural Logic (2010), especially pages 1-6, 8-12, 26, 30-113.

"The Developing Conjuncture . . ." offers some of Allen’s thoughts on work by labor and left historians and writers on history including Frederick Engels, Frederick A. Sorge, Frederick Jackson Turner, Richard T. Ely, Morris Hillquit, John R. Commons, Selig Perlman, Mary Ritter Beard, Charles A. Beard, William Z. Foster, W. E. B. Du Bois, Ulrich Bonnell Phillips, Lewis C. Gray, Roger W. Shugg, Hubert Harrison, David Roediger, Winthrop D. Jordan, Edmund S. Morgan, Eric Williams, C. L. R. James, Norman Ware, Herman Schlueter, Philip S. Foner, Harry Heywood, and “James S. Allen” [Sol Auerbach]. Of particular interest are Allen’s thoughts from his unpublished “Toward a Revolution in Labor History.”

A number of additional writings by and about Allen can be found HERE!  Read More 

September 12 and 13, 2013, Thursday and Friday, 1-2 p.m.
Jeffrey B. Perry discusses "Hubert Harrison: 'The Father of Harlem Radicalism" (2 parts) with host Utrice Leid on “Leid Stories” on the Progressive Radio Network. “

“Hubert Harrison: ‘The Father of Harlem Radicalism’”

St. Croix, Virgin Islands-born, Harlem-based, Hubert Harrison (1883-1927) was a brilliant writer, orator, editor, educator, critic, and political activist. Historian Joel A. Rogers in World’s Great Men of Color described him as “the foremost Afro-American intellect of his time” and the one with the sanest program. A. Philip Randolph, referring to a time when Harlem was recognized as the “the center of radical black thought,” called him “the father of Harlem radicalism.”

Harrison was the major radical influence on both the class-conscious Randolph and the race-conscious Garvey as well as on a generation of “New Negro” activists and “common people.” He is the only person in United States history to play leading roles in the largest class radical movement (socialism) and the largest race radical movement (the New Negro/Garvey movement) of his era. He is also a key link in the ideological unity of the two great trends of the Civil Rights/Black Liberation Struggle – the labor/civil rights trend associated with Randolph and Martin Luther King, Jr. and the race/nationalist trend associated with Garvey and Malcolm X.

Harrison’s intellectual achievements were similarly extraordinary. He authored two books The Negro and the Nation (1917) and When Africa Awakes: The Inside Story of the Stirrings and Strivings of the New Negro in the Western World (1920) and edited important publications including The Voice: A Newspaper for the New Negro (1917-1918), the New Negro (“intended as an organ of the international consciousness of the darker races—especially of the Negro race” in 1919), the Negro World (newspaper of Marcus Garvey’s Universal Negro Improvement Association in 1920), and The Voice of the Negro (the organ of the International Colored Unity League in 1927). He also delivered hundreds of indoor and outdoor talks and wrote hundreds of articles including 138 that appear in A Hubert Harrison Reader.

To Listen Online Click Here

For writings by and about Hubert Harrison Click Here
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“Negro World” Editors W. A. Domingo and William H. Ferris Discuss Hubert Harrison’s Influence on Marcus Garvey

Marcus Garvey’s boyhood associate, and the first editor of the Negro World, W. A. Domingo, said that “Garvey came at the psychological moment. There had been the East St. Louis riot, he visited the scene and then came back here. However, before him there was Hubert Harrison. He was a brilliant man, a great intellectual, a Socialist and highly respected. Garvey like the rest of us followed Hubert Harrison.”

William H. Ferris, assistant Negro World editor and assistant president general of the UNIA, maintained that Garvey “rapidly crystallized” Harrison’s ideas.

For more on Hubert Harrison: The Voice of Harlem Radicalism, 1883-1918 click here, here and here
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Anselmo Jackson, a writer for both Hubert Harrison’s “Voice” and Marcus Garvey’s “Negro World,” writes that beginning in 1916,

“outdoors and indoors, Hubert Harrison was preaching an advanced type of radicalism with a view to impressing race consciousness and effecting racial solidarity among Negroes. The followers of Harrison, responding to his demand that a New Negro Manhood movement among Negroes be organized, formed the Liberty League fo[r] Negro-Americans, a short while prior to Garvey. . . . The . . . atmosphere was charged with Harrison’s propaganda; men and women of color thruout the United States and the West Indies donated their dollars and pledged their support to Harrison as they became members of the Liberty League.

Garvey publicly eulogized Harrison, joined the Liberty League and took a keen interest in its affairs. . . . Harrison rendered memorable educational and constructive community service to the Negroes of Harlem. It may be truly said that he was the forerunner of Garvey and contributed largely to the success of the latter by preparing the minds of Negroes through his lectures, thereby molding and developing a new temper among Negroes which undoubtedly made the task of the Jamaican much easier than it otherwise would have been.”

For more on Hubert Harrison: The Voice of Harlem Radicalism, 1883-1918 click here, here and here
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Harlem Activist Hodge Kirnon
on the Radicalism of
Hubert Harrison and “The Voice” [c. 1917-1919]
[“The Voice”] “really crystallized the radicalism of the Negro in New York and its environs.” It exerted “a tremendous influence in inspiring the people with the highest racial ideals and aspirations” and inculcated “into every Negro a sense of race pride and determination” that was “without parallel in the history of the race.”

Harrison (who lived on Harlem’s most densely populated block) “lived with and amongst his people; not on the fringes of their social life” and he “taught the masses” and “drew much of his inspiration from them.” Harrison was “the first Negro whose radicalism was comprehensive enough to include racial¬ism, politics, theological criticism, sociology and education in a thorough-going and scientific manner.”

For more on Hubert Harrison: The Voice of Harlem Radicalism, 1883-1918 click here, here and here

The Montserrat-born Hodge Kirnon was a freethinker, editor of the The Promoter, and a race- and class-conscious community activist
For a striking photo of Hodge Kirnon CLICK HERE

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Hubert Harrison was a “radical internationalist” who, more than any other political leader of his era, combined class consciousness and (anti-white supremacist) race consciousness in a coherent political radicalism. He opposed white supremacy, capitalism and imperialism and maintained that white supremacy was central to capitalist rule in the U.S., that racism and racist practices were not in “white” workers class interests, and that “Negroes” must not wait on white-Americans while struggling to shape their future. This unique message, repeatedly delivered to the masses, enabled him to play signal roles in the development of what were up to that time, the largest class radical movement (socialism) and the largest race radical movement (the “New Negro”/Garvey movement) in United States history. He served as the foremost Black organizer, agitator, and theoretician in the Socialist Party (SP) of New York; as the founder and leading figure of the militant, WWI-era “New Negro” movement; and as the editor of the Negro World and principal radical influence on the Garvey movement during its radical high point in 1920. Harrison’s views on race and class profoundly influenced a generation of “New Negro” militants including the class radical socialists A. Philip Randolph and Chandler Owen, the future communists Cyril Briggs and Richard B. Moore, and the race radical Marcus Garvey.

For more information on Hubert Harrison CLICK HERE Read More 

Theodore W. Allen’s probing research and analysis led him to offer his major thesis -- that the “white race” was invented in the late 17th/early 18th century as a ruling class social control formation in response to labor solidarity as manifested in the latter (civil war) stages of Bacon's Rebellion (1676-77). To this he adds two important corollaries: 1) that the ruling elite deliberately instituted a system of racial privileges to define and maintain the “white race” as a ruling-class social control formation and to establish a system of racial slavery and racial oppression, and 2) that the consequence was not only ruinous to the interests of African-Americans, but was also “disastrous” for European-American workers.
For more on Theodore W. Allen's The Invention of the White Race CLICK HERE
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Theodore W. Allen’s The Invention of the White Race is one of the twentieth-century’s major contributions to historical understanding. This extraordinary two-volume work, first published in 1994 and 1997, presents a full-scale challenge to what Allen refers to as “The Great White Assumption” -- the unquestioning acceptance of the “white race” and “white” identity as skin color-based and natural attributes rather than as social and political constructions. It’s thesis on the origin and nature of the so-called “white race” contains the root of a new and radical approach to United States history, one that challenges dominant narratives taught in schools, colleges, universities, and through the media. With its “equalitarian motif” and emphasis on the “class struggle” dimension of history it speaks to people desiring and struggling for change world-wide and its influence can be expected to continue to grow in the twenty-first century.

For more on Theodore W. Allen's The Invention of the White Race CLICK HERE
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