Abstract
Strolling through Harlem one summer’s evening in 1931, journalist Henry Lee Moon came upon a familiar sight: ‘Here on the corner of the highways and back alleys you may hear lectures on such sundry subjects as religion, politics and race relations. For with the coming of summer we have again with us the perennial soapboxer.’1
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Notes
Norfolk Journal and Guide, 25 June 1932; Pittsburgh Courier, 28 April 1934.
F. W. Jiles, ‘Reaping the Whirlwind’, Education 2 (July-August 1936) p. 4.
See, for instance, R. Ottley, New World A’Coming: Inside Black America (Boston: Houghton Mifflin, 1943) pp. 116–21.
C. McKay, Harlem, Negro Metropolis (New York: E. P. Dutton, 1940) pp. 181–219.
Ralph Ellison, Invisible Man (Harmondsworth, Middx: Penguin, 1965) pp. 292–305, 387–90, 447–53.
Carl Offord, The White Face (New York: McBride, 1943).
New York City Mayor’s Commission on Conditions in Harlem, The Negro in Harlem: Report on the Social and Economic Conditions Responsible for the Outbreak of March 19 1935 (New York: 1936) p. 4; typescript in Schomburg Center for Black History and Culture, New York City.
Adam Clayton Powell Jr, Marching Blacks (New York: Dial Press, 1945) p. 5.
August Meier and Elliott Rudwick, ‘The Origins of Non-Violent Direct Action in Afro-American Protest: A Note on Historical Discontinuities’, in Along the Color Line: Explorations in the Black Experience, ed. August Meier and Elliott Rudwick (Urbana, Ill.: University of Illinois Press, 1976) pp. 314–44, 380, 386, 388–89.
J. Anderson, Harlem: The Great Black Way 1900–1950 (London: Orbis, 1982) p. 320;
J. W. Johnson, Black Manhattan (New York: Alfred A. Knopf, 1930) pp. 168–9.
For instance, Rabbi Wentworth A. Matthew; H. M. Brotz, The Black Jews of Harlem (New York: Schocken, 1970) pp. 1–59 passim; and ‘The Barefoot Prophet’, Elder Claybom Martin: A. Harris, ‘Barefoot Prophet’, in WPA in New York City, Negroes of New York, microfilm reel 1 in Schomburg Center.
For Harrison’s life, see Anderson, A. Philip Randolph, pp. 79–80, 87, 120–3; The Marcus Garvey and the Universal Negro Improvement Association Papers, vol. 1, ed. R. A. Hill (Los Angeles: University of California, 1983) pp. 209–11.
see P. S. Foner, American Socialism and Black Americans (London: Greenwood Press, 1977) pp. 206–18.
His oratory is described in H. Miller, Plexus (London: Weidenfeld &; Nicolson, 1963) pp. 500–1.
This simplifies a complex situation in which black communists and socialists were opposed to one another and the nationalists; all three groups remained ‘race conscious’; and there was continual debate between the views. See Anderson, A. Philip Randolph, pp. 68–150; Anderson, Harlem, pp. 106–7, 186–91; Foner, American Socialism, pp. 265–336; M. Naison, Communists in Harlem During the Depression (Urbana, Ill.: University of Illinois Press, 1983) pp. 3–10.
For the CLFP’s campaign, see Meier and Rudwick, Along the Color Line, pp. 319–20; W. Muraskin, ‘The Harlem Boycott of 1934: Black Nationalism and the Rise of Labor-Union Consciousness’, Labor History 13 (Summer 1972) pp. 362–9.
M. E. Pollard, ‘Harlem As Is; vol. 2: Negro Business and Economic Community’ (unpublished Master’s thesis, College of the City of New York, 1937) pp. 143–4; typescript in Schomburg Center.
For ethnic business ownership, see McKay, Harlem, p. 29; for Reid and the pushcarters, see ibid., pp. 92–3; Baltimore Afro-American, 15 February and 25 July 1936.
Under threat of deportation in 1935, the Sufi claimed that his real name was Eugene Brown and he was bom in Massachusetts in 1903; New York Amsterdam News, 22 June 1935; McKay, Harlem, pp. 192, 206.
M. E. Pollard, ‘Harlem As Is, vol. 1: Sociological Notes on Harlem Social Life’ (Unpublished Bachelor’s thesis, College of the City of New York, 1936) p. 26; typescript in Schomburg Center. See also New York Age, 30 March 1935. Most comments by black spokesmen on the riots mentioned the fact that white business in Harlem did not employ black sales clerks as a contributory factor in causing the rioting; see, for instance, ‘Editorial’, Opportunity 13 (April 1935) p. 102.
W. R. Scott, ‘Black Nationalism and the Italo-Ethiopian Conflict 1934–1936’, Journal of Negro History, lxiii (April 1978) pp. 118–19.
Joel A. Rogers was the pre-eminent black popular historian. Ottley described him as the street speakers’ Karl Marx; Ottley, New World A’Coming, pp. 101–3. See, for instance, J. A. Rogers, The Real Facts About Ethiopia (New York: Rogers, 1936) passim.
Baltimore Afro-American, 25 July 1936; ‘To the People of Harlem -Don’t Buy From Italians’, APL pamphlet, in WPA in New York City, Negroes of New York, microfilm reel 5 in Schomburg Center; Naison, Communists, pp. 155, 176; Scott, ‘Black Nationalism’, p. 123.
For ‘gum beatin” in New York see New York Amsterdam News, 20 July 1935; for reports of disturbances see ibid., 5 October 1935, 23 and 30 May and 6 June 1936; Crusader News Agency, 11, 18 and 29 May 1936; Daily Worker, 10 October 1935; New York Times, 4 and 5 October 1935; Scott, ‘Black Nationalism’, p. 130.
Foner, American Socialism, pp. 338–9; P. S. Foner, The Negro Labor Committee, What it is and Why (New York: Harlem Labor Center, 1935) passim.
New York Amsterdam News, 21 November 1936, 21 August 1937, 7 May, 4 June, 23 July, 3 and 17 September 1938; New York Post, 17 November 1936, 13 May and 30 August 1938; Unions or Rackets? Negro Workers Beware! (New York: Harlem Labor Center, 1937?) passim; C. McKay, ‘Labor Steps Out in Harlem’, Nation 145 (16 October 1937) pp. 399–402; Naison, Communists, pp. 262–3.
Along the Color Line, ed. Meier and Rudwick, pp. 328–9; A. Meier and E. Rudwick, ‘Communist Unions and the Black Community: The Case of the Transport Workers Union 1934–1944’, Labor History 23 (Spring 1982) pp. 171–82; Naison, Communists, pp. 267–9, 271–2, 304, 306–8.
See, for instance, Ottley on ‘Hustlers’ in New York Amsterdam News, 11 January 1936; and Pollard, ‘Harlem As Is’, vol, 2, p. 146.
On Daniels, see: Samuel Daniels, ‘Death or Salvation! The Part the Black Man Must Play in the Present World Conflict’, Negro Youth 1 (June–July 1941) pp. 1–2; New York Age, 27 August 1933 and 23 January 1937; New York Amsterdam News, 24 January and 24 March 1934, 16 February, 13 and 20 July, 31 August and 2 November 1935. On Reid, see Jewish Review, 22 May 1941; Ottley, New World A’Coming, pp. 119–20. There seem to be no charges of anti-Semitism against Reid until after 1940; but he is probably the model for the viciously anti-Semitic street demagogue, Reeves, in Offord’s The White Face.
This was the International African Friends of Abyssinia, chaired by George Padmore, which later developed into the Pan African Federation (1944). The New York Ethiopian campaign was in contact with the International African Friends, through Dr Willis N. Huggins, who visited London on behalf of the PCDE in 1935. He set up a Friends of Ethiopia in America on his return, but nothing further developed; G. Padmore, Pan Africanism or Communism? The Coming Struggle for Africa (London: Dennis Dobson, 1956) pp. 144–51.
United Aid for Ethiopia became United Aid for People of African Descent in 1936. From 1936 to its demise in 1939, it organised a number of meetings on West Indian affairs in cooperation with Caribbean organisations. In 1940, two of its most important members, Dr P. M. H. Savory and Cyril Philip, served on the West Indian National Emergency Council in New York. New York Amsterdam News, 24 and 31 July 1937, 21 and 28 May, 25 June and 10 December 1938, 20 and 27 July 1940.
Naison, Communists, p. 263. In 1939, Reid recognised the limitations of the HLU: ‘Nit wits who think that I have set up a rival union to the AFL or CIO are foolish. I’m only concerned with Negroes being integrated into the economic life of America’; New York Age, 16 December 1939.
Baltimore Afro-American, 25 July 1936.
Baltimore Afro-American, 25 July 1936.
‘Editorial’, Negro Quarterly 1 (Winter-Spring 1943) p. 296; G. Charney, A Long Journey (New York: Quadrangle, 1968) pp. 101–2.
Malcolm X, The Autobiography of Malcolm X (Harmondsworth, Middx: Penguin, 1968) pp. 317–22 describes his evangelism in New York as Minister of Temple Seven of the Nation of Islam.
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Barnes, R. (1990). Harlem Street Speakers in the 1930s. In: Mulvey, C., Simons, J. (eds) New York. Insights. Palgrave Macmillan, London. https://doi.org/10.1007/978-1-349-20910-1_8
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