BLACK SOCRATESHUBERT HARRISON AND THE PROBLEM OF RELIGION

Toni-Lee MaitlandAFS4935

December 3, 2013

WHO WAS HUBERT HARRISON?

• Hubert Henry Harrison was and is “one of America’s greatest minds”

• Referred to by peers as the “Black Socrates”

• Father of Black Radicalism

• Influenced other black radical leaders including Marcus Garvey and A. Philip Randolph

• Editor of the Negro World publication

• Black leader of the Socialist Party in New York

• Leader of “New Negro” movement

• Born on April 27, 1883 to Cecilia Elizabeth Haines; his father was Adolphus Harrison

• Born in Concordia, St. Croix in Danish West Indies

• Family was part of the working class; compulsory education in his childhood

• Excelled academically

EARLY LIFE

• Moved to New York in 1900 after his mother’s death• Lived with his sister Mary in lower

Manhattan• Attended night school and worked

as an elevator operator during the day

• Broke away from Christianity around1901• Journal entry recounted this

experience• Became agnostic• “ refuse[d] to put faith in that which

does not rest on sufficient evidence.”

CONVERSION AND LIFE IN THE U.S.

PROBLEM OF RELIGION• Harrison thought that Christianity was a

convenient way for whites to promote servility and a slave mentality amongst blacks• Christianity was used as tool in slavery to

control the slaves whom whites thought were “savages” and “heathens”

• Explore this aspect of Hubert Harrison’s intellectual contribution and its evolution throughout his rather short life• Contrasts with black people and their movements

being deeply rooted in the Christian Church

WHY WAS HIS STORY NEGLECTED?

RELEVANCE TODAY

“Show me a population that is deeply religious, and I will show you a servile population,

content with whips and chains, contumely and the gibbet, content to eat the bread of sorrow

and drink the waters of affliction.”- Hubert Harrison, “On a Certain Conservatism

in Negroes”

SOURCE

• Jeffrey B. Perry, Hubert Harrison: The Voice of Harlem Radicalism, 1883-1918 (New York: Columbia University Press, 2009).