Alexander Hughes
the UNIA, quickly overcame the League. Introduced by Harrison to his first major audience at the Liberty League’s first meeting, Garvey, then a member of the Liberty League, more or less “stole the show,” according to biographer Tony Martin.82 Perry argues Harrison was a better orator than Garvey, and subsequently, Garvey’s prowess as a speaker could not account for his sweeping popularity.83 Nevertheless, many members of the Liberty League joined the UNIA and Garvey. This event demonstrates a theme in Harrison’s life: while Harrison created organizations to articulate his powerful Race First ideas, he lacked certain leadership skills necessary to maintain a following, and the organizations were generally short lived. At the first meeting, the Liberty League successfully established its demands, a key first step in founding a successful civil rights organization. These demands were elegantly simple, direct, and dire, largely based on Harrison’s Race First philosophy and a rich tradition of New Negro discourse. Harrison and the members of the Liberty League promoted a platform in which the main evils against the realization of democracy for African Americans were segregation, Jim Crow laws, and lynching.84 Members of the Liberty League and Harrison believed separate but equal institutions were a sham, and Jim Crow laws limiting voting rights ran contrary to the ideas within American democracy. Harrison and those who joined the Liberty League organized because they felt the need for an organization more radical than the NAACP. Harrison referred to NAACP inaction as he advocated federal legislation against lynching.85 Writing about that period, historian Robert Zangrando asserted that, “The NAACP actually declined to make an open push for either the Dyer or Moores bill on grounds that the measures were not constitutional.” In the NAACP’s defense, Zangrando noted that “This was the [NAACP]’s first formal confrontation with congressional antilynching legislation, and it was clearly feeling its way.”86 Although the NAACP later became a strong
[46] The University of Oregon McNair Research Journal