Episode 499 Promo – Hidden History: The First Secular Black Marxist (w/ Dr. Brian Kwoba)

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Hubert Henry Harrison was a writer, orator, & political activist who played a crucial role in the rise of Marcus Garvey and was a influential voice in the Socialist Party and in Harlem during the famed “Renaissance” of the early 20th century. And yet, as Dr. Brian Kwoba argues, Harrison has largely been erased from contemporary memory because he consistently challenged orthodoxy within both socialist and Black liberation circles, pressuring the Socialist Party to attend to the specific needs of America’s most proletarian group — Black Americans — and scrapping with W. E. B. Du Bois and Marcus Garvey over their reformist and imperialist turns, respectively. Harrison and his erasure provide a stunning example of what happens to leftist figures who are not so easily sanitized, and Kwoba’s book Hubert Harrison: Forbidden Genius of Black Radicalism reveals a history that we are regrettably reliving today. This episode addresses how to break the cycle of the endless “race first vs. class first” debate, Harrison’s heterodox views on sex and non-monogamy, & more.

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