17-year-old orphan and joined his older sister. He confronted a racial oppression unlike anything he previously knew, as only the United States had such a binary color line. In the Caribbean, social relations were more fluid. Harrison was especially "shocked" by the virulent white-supremacy typified by lynchings, which were reaching a peak in these years in the South. They were a horror that had not existed in St. Croix or other Caribbean islands. In addition, the fact that in most places blacks and people of color far outnumbered whites meant they had more social spaces in which to operate away from the oversight of whites. In the beginning, Harrison worked low-paying service jobs while attending high school at night. For the rest of his life, Harrison continued to study as an autodidact. While he was still in high school, his intellectual gifts were recognized. He was described as a "genius" in The World, a New York daily newspaper. At age 20, he had an early letter published by The New York Times in 1903. He became an American citizen and lived in the United States the rest of his life. Marriage and family In 1909 Harrison married Irene Louise Horton. They had four daughters and one son. Career In his first decade in New York, Harrison started writing letters to the editor of The New York Times on topics such as lynching, Charles Darwin's theory of Evolution and literary criticism. He also began lecturing on such subjects as the poetry of Paul Laurence Dunbar and Reconstruction. As part of his civic efforts, Harrison worked with St. Benedict's Lyceum (along with bibliophile Arthur Schomburg from Puerto Rico, journalist John Edward Bruce, and activist Samuel Duncan); St. Mark's Lyceum (with bibliophile George Young, educator/activist John Dotha Jones, and actor/activist Charles Burroughs); the White Rose Home (with educator/activist Frances Reynolds Keyser), and the Colored YMCA. In this period, Harrison also became interested in the freethought movement, which encouraged use of the scientific method, empiricism, and reason to solve problems in place of theistic dogma. He deconverted from Christianity and became an agnostic atheist similar to Thomas Huxley, one of his influences. Harrison's new worldview placed humanity, not god, at its center. Like Huxley, Harrison became a relentless foe of theism and religious faith for the rest of his life. He denounced the Bible as a slave master’s book, said that black Christians needed