Jeffrey B. Perry - Hubert Harrison: The Struggle for Equality, 1918–1927

Hubert Harrison used the word Negro with a capital N (as opposed to such words as colored and negro), and he struggled to have others do the same. This usage is evident in his work in the New Negro Movement; in the organization that he founded, the Liberty League of Negro-Americans; and in his daily activities. It is also evident in the publications that he edited including The VoiceA Newspaper for the New Negro, the New Negro monthly, the Negro World, the Embryo of the Voice of the Negro, and the Voice of the Negro. Results of the capitalization struggles that he and others waged included the change to the capital N by the International Socialist Review in 1912 and by the New York Times in 1930 (after his death).

In the 1960s, however, there was a shift from that usage, and today the word Negro is often replaced in the United States by Black, African American, African-American, Afro-American, Afro-Caribbean, Afro-Latino, Afro-Asian, African, or Afrikan.

In this text, Negro is retained in titles, names, and quoted passages. When Harrison used the term it is capitalized, since that is how he wrote it. In other cases, capitalization depends on the policy of the source document. When the term is contextually appropriate, it is often enclosed in quotation marks. In general discussions Negro, African American, or Black are often used.

Because Harrison and others struggled to capitalize the N in Negro as both a statement of pride in the face of racial oppression and as a challenge to white supremacy, when the word Black is used as its equivalent it is used with a capital B. There is no similarly compelling basis for capitalizing the w in white.

Harrison also spoke of the so-called white race. Based on over forty years of work related to Theodore W. Allens seminal, two-volume The Invention ofthe White Race, this author understands the white race to be not merely a social construct but a ruling-class social-control formation and sees nothing progressive in white identity. For these reasons, the word white and the phrase white race, when not used in quotations or in context, are lowercased and at times placed in quotation marks.