The brilliant writer, orator, educator, critic, and activist Hubert Harrison (1883 - 1927) is one of the truly important, yet neglected, figures of early twentieth-century America. Known as the father of Harlem radicalism, ' and a leading Socialist party speaker who advocated that socialists champion the cause of the Negro as a revolutionary doctrine, Harrison had an important influence on a generation of race and class radicals, including Marcus Garvey and A. Philip Randolph.

Harrison envisioned a socialism that had special appeal to African-Americans, and he affirmed the duty of...