BLACK SOCRATES HUBERT HARRISON AND THE PROBLEM OF RELIGION Toni-Lee Maitland AFS4935 December 3, 2013.

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).