Willis Nathaniel Huggins (1886-1941): historian, activist, and community mentor.(Biography)

INTRODUCTION

On Tuesday, July 15, 1941, New York City detectives supervised the recovery of a male body from the Hudson River near 72nd Street. After contacting the Missing Persons Bureau, it was determined that this unfortunate person was Dr. Willis Nathaniel Huggins. His sister, Mrs. Roberta Goldsby and his wife, Rosetta, identified the body at the city morgue on Wednesday morning. Huggins had been missing since December 23rd and last seen by friends and relatives at his home located at 1890 Seventh Avenue. He was reported to have $500 in his wallet at this time. This was not unusual, since Huggins owned the Blyden Bookstore and had been associated with several independent Black publications. The only clues to his whereabouts was an overcoat that had been found on the George Washington Bridge and a letter that Huggins sent to his wife stating that "Something is going to happen." At the time of his disappearance, Huggins was teaching history and economics at Bushwick High School in Brooklyn and serving as Assistant Principal at Harlem's Union High School in the evening. (1)

The Harlem community was both shocked and saddened to hear confirmation of Huggins's death. In the past six and half months, his disappearance had been a hotly debated mystery. The press, his family, and his lawyer all publicly declared that Huggins had committed suicide. His students at the Blyden Society and the street community believed that Huggins had met with foul play from a gangster element due to unpaid business loans. The competing versions of his death have not been reconciled nor does firm documentation exist to disprove either version. Huggins had been associated with the Garvey movement since 1919 and recognized as a dedicated and talented "Race Man" by Harlem's leadership for more than two decades. In addition, he was the former president of the New York branch of the Association for the Study for New York Life and History; the executive secretary for the Friends of Ethiopia In America (FEA); a tireless advocate for including African and African American history in public school curriculums; and an articulate voice for the Black history movement. In addition, he had a network of national and international friends and contacts that included: J. A. Rogers, Carter G. Woodson, W.E.B. Du Bois, Arthur A. Schomburg, Charles S. Johnson, Claude McKay; Jesse E. Moorland, Amy Jacques Garvey, Dantes Bellegarde (the Haitian Ambassador to the United States), President Stenio Vincent of Haiti; Ras Desta Damtew of Ethiopia, and scores of former students in West Africa, Ethiopia, and London. On the community level, his leadership of the Blyden Society facilitated the education of such noted self-trained historians as John Henrik Clarke and John G. Jackson. These accomplishments and his mentorship of a generation of young self-trained Black historians have sadly been neglected and forgotten by contemporary scholars of the African American experience. This paper will rescue and briefly discuss the life and contributions of this Black activist intellectual from his family roots in Alabama to his mysterious death in the early 1940s. (2)

THE EARLY YEARS

Willis Nathaniel Huggins was born February 7, 1886, in Selma, Alabama. His father, Reverend A. Z. Huggins, was a respected Baptist minister. As a youth, Huggins received his first education at the Selma Training School. The Huggins family then joined the wave of Black migrants to the North and moved to Washington, D.C. Huggins, an excellent student, attended Armstrong High School for colored youth. During his senior year he won a scholarship to Columbia University. His outstanding academic record and probably one of the Black faculty members who graduated from Columbia facilitated this connection. The M Street School, later renamed Dunbar High School and Armstrong's sister institution, had a great track record of placing its top students in Ivy League and other prominent private white schools. Under the leadership of Anna J. Cooper this tradition flourished. In 1906, Cooper was forced out as principle of M Street High after supporting an educational curriculum that favored Du Bois' ideas of liberal arts education over Booker T. Washington's industrial education during the 1904-1905 academic year. Huggins must have benefited from this tradition when he landed a spot in the Columbia freshmen class of 1910. (3)

Huggins earned his B.A. from Columbia in 1914. After graduation he became Chairman of the Department of History, Alabama A & M College, Huntsville, Alabama. While teaching history in Alabama, he developed a reputation as a community activist. Huggins led local protests against the showing of D.W. Griffith's Birth of a Nation, organized the Alabama chapter of the National Urban League, and supported educational activities for Black youth. Through the assistance of Chaning H. Tobias, assistant to the National Director of the Colored YMCA, and wealthy white contributors, Huggins helped establish a Black YMCA just four miles from the A & M campus. The relationship with Tabious eventually led to a friendship with John G. Jackson, the nephew of Tabious. In a few short years, Huggins and Jackson would become close friends and fellow advocates for the Black history movement. (4)

LIFE IN THE WINDY CITY

In 1917, Huggins moved to Chicago, Illinois. He began teaching at Wendell Phillips High School and stayed at this post until 1922. During his summer breaks, he returned to Columbia to work toward a Masters degree. Huggins completed this degree in 1919. He also attended classes at Northwestern's Modill School of Journalism while teaching in Chicago. During his Chicago years, he contributed articles to New York Age, the Norfolk Journal and Guide, the Baltimore Afro-American and the Pittsburgh Courier. Although Huggins's name is not mentioned in the John E. Bruce Papers, he must have made contact with Bruce, a nationally respected Black journalist who voiced similar race sentiments in his columns and independent publications. It is not unrealistic to conclude that this prospective contact put Huggins in touch with Arthur Schomburg. Schomburg and Bruce were close associates who were always on the look out for talented young Black thinkers who could join their campaign for the popularization of African American history and after 1918, the Garvey movement. (5)

As the spirit of the New Negro Movement sweep across African America, the Black community's sentiments for self-defense and retaliatory violence were particularly alive in Chicago. These forces exploded in Chicago's race riot of 1919. Huggins sought to contribute to this passion for racial renewal and self-definition by publishing and editing the Seachlight and the Upreach Magazine. Both publications were started in Chicago and concentrated on providing information for teachers and social workers who were attempting to teach African and African American history in schools and independent study groups. Huggins relocated to New York City in 1922 and was assisted in his efforts to keep the Upreach alive by Arthur Schomburg, Charles S. Johnson and John H. Pernell. (6)

THE HARLEM STRUGGLE: CONFRONTING THE SCHOOL BOARD & THE ITALIAN-ETHOPIA WAR

In 1924 Huggins was selected for a teaching position in the New York City public school system. Black educators in the city system were quite rare, according to the New York Times, since Huggins was only the sixth African American to be hired by the Board of Education. Almost immediately, he sought to have African and African American history included in the curriculum of the public school system and struggled with the Board of Education to approve this initiative. Schomburg and Joel A. Rogers supported his efforts but the board rejected their proposals. They then held community history classes at the Harlem YMCA located on 135th Street and occasionally in their private homes. In 1925, Huggins studied geography, history, and French in Europe. He received certificates from the Guilde Internationale and Oxford University for his efforts. In addition, Huggins traveled throughout Europe and recorded his observations on European race relations. (7)

In 1932, Huggins became the first Black student to earn a Ph.D. from Fordham University. He had attended Fordham from 1925 to 1932 and his dissertation was entitled "The Contribution of the Catholic Church to the Progress of the Negro in the United States." For the next eight years, Huggins dedicated himself to the defense of Ethiopia, The Blyden Society, and his efforts to promote the serious study of African history. (8)

On the evening of March 7, 1935, the Provisional Committee for the Defense of Ethiopia (PCDE) held its first public meeting at Harlem's Abyssinian Baptist Church. This organization was a "united front" of Garveyites, communists, journalists, streetcorner orators, liberal Black organizations, socialists, clergymen and Africana scholars who were seeking to mobilize community outrage into a disciplined force to support Ethiopia and challenge American neutrality to the Italo-Ethiopian war. Huggins was one of six speakers that thrilled a crowd of approximately 3,000 who filled Harlem's largest Black church in spite of foul and inclement weather. Four months later, the PCDE in cooperation with the American League Against War and Fascism, sent Huggins to Geneva, Switzerland "with a petition from the concerned black and white masses in the United States." His task was to "urge the League (of Nations) to adopt strong measures to restrain Italian aggression, to assure Ethiopia of its support, and to send a neutral commission to East Africa to report on the boundary disputes between Italian and the Ethiopian governments." Prior to leaving, Huggins, Schomburg, and some of his closer Black colleagues formed the FEA and Huggins was designated the executive secretary. Apparently this was an effort to further legitimize Huggins's leadership credentials and deepen the organizational base representing African American and particularly Harlem's Black community. (9)

Huggins was a perfect choice for this international assignment. He had …