Caribbean Crusaders and the Harlem Renaissance

Joyce Moore Turner's Caribbean Crusaders and the Harlem Renaissance is a study of the emergence of African American radicalism in Harlem, a crossroads of the African Diaspora in the early twentieth century. Turner reveals that the Harlem Renaissance was more than just an artistic florescence; it was also a political movement to counter racism and colonialism. To explores the roots of the Caribbean emigres' radical ideology and the strategies used to extend agitation from Harlem to national and international platforms, the study draws on the papers and writings of Hermina Huiswood, Cyril Briggs, the Rev.E.Ethelred Brown, Langston Hughes, and Richard B. Moore, as well as interviews and biographies of related contemporary figures. It also incorporates census records. FB files, and hundreds of documents from the recently opened Russian Archive. Through focus on Otto Huiswood, the sole African American charter member of the Communist Party, and his wife, Hermuina, Turner exposes the complex developments within the socialist and communist parties on the question of race. The account ranges beyond Harlem to Europe, Africa, and the USSR to reveal the breadth, depth and nearly global reach of the Afro-Caribbean activists' activities.