Herbert Lehman Suite (IAB 406)
420 W 118th St.
Brian Kwoba (University of Memphis) in conversation with Brent Hayes Edwards (Columbia University)
Brian Kwoba (University of Memphis) will be discussing his biography of Hubert H. Harrison, a long-forgotten founder of Black radical thought. The conversation will be moderated by Brent Hayes Edwards.
The significance of Hubert Henry Harrison (1883–1927)—as a journalist, activist, and educator—lies in his innovation of radical solutions to radical injustices. Many students in the Columbia and Slavery and Columbia ’68 seminars have used the Hubert Harrison papers in the RBML. As an early advocate for socialism and Black-led political power, he did far more than cultivate the rich, dark soil in which the so-called “Harlem Renaissance” would take root. Harrison also played a pivotal role in the rise of Marcus Garvey and the emergence of the largest international organization of African people in modern history. Because of his fearless radicalism, however, he has been erased from popular memory.
Co-hosted by the Herbert Lehman Center for American History and the Institute for Research in African-American Studies.
“Brian Kwoba has written a beautiful, intellectual biography as radical and original as its subject. He excavates Hubert H. Harrison—brilliant Marxist, Black nationalist, internationalist, and gender rebel—revealing dimensions even his most scrupulous chroniclers missed.”—Robin D. G. Kelley, author of Freedom Dreams: The Black Radical Imagination
