Brian Kwoba

"Hubert Harrison: Forbidden Genius of Black Radicalism" is an award-winning biography of the Caribbean-born journalist, activist, and educator Hubert Henry Harrison (1883-1927). Harrison generated an array of visionary solutions to the systemic injustices of his day. After blazing a trail for people of color in the Socialist Party of America, Harrison emerged as the most prominent Black freethinker and free lover of his generation. He practiced armed self-defense and called for an anti-capitalist, anti-imperialist "Colored International" alliance in the face of European colonialism in Africa, Asia, and Latin America. Most spectacularly, Harrison's Liberty League of Negro Americans catalyzed the rise of Marcus Garvey and the largest international organization of Black people in modern history (the Universal Negro Improvement Association). Because of his fearless radicalism, however, the full scope of Harrison's revolutionary legacy has been erased from popular memory. Until now.