The Extraordinary Life of James Harley

Dan Snow's History Hit

History Hit

History

4.7 • 12.9K Ratings

🗓️ 24 October 2022

⏱️ 24 minutes

🔗️ Recording | iTunes | RSS

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Summary

James Arthur Stanley Harley was a scholar, reverend, politician, and perhaps aristocrat. Born in a poor village in the Caribbean island of Antigua, he went on to attend Howard, Harvard, Yale and Oxford universities, was ordained a priest in Canterbury Cathedral and was elected to Leicestershire County Council. This remarkable career was all the more extraordinary because he was black in an age - the early twentieth century - that was institutionally racist.

Pamela Roberts is an award-winning creative producer and historian. Her work as Founder and Director of Black Oxford Untold Stories has raised the profile of many black scholars from the turn of the twentieth century. Pamela joins Dan to offer insight into the Antiguan scholar, his entry by marriage to the Washington elite, and his clerical and political careers.

Produced by Hannah Ward and edited by Joseph Knight.

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Transcript

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0:00.0	I have one welcome to Dance Noes History, you will not have heard of James Arthur Harley,
0:04.2	but you should have done. Because his remarkable figure is a pioneer. He's the black Edwardian
0:08.4	intellectual that we've forgotten to celebrate and remember. But thankfully, award-winning
0:12.9	historian and producer Pamela Roberts has remembered him for us and has now written a remarkable book.
0:19.2	As you'll hear, she was handed a photograph of a young man of colour in Oxford University
0:23.7	a few years back and that was the start of an adventure that took her across continents
0:28.8	and up to a dingy attic where an old battered suitcase she found the archives
0:33.6	and one of the more remarkable men to have lived and worked in the early part of the 20th century
0:38.0	here in the UK. James Arthur Harley, born in Antigua, educated in Harvard and some of the elite
0:43.6	institutions of North America and completed his studies right here in the UK at Oxford University.
0:49.3	Before being made priest and serving communities across rural parishes in England,
0:54.9	he was a politician, he was a thinker, he was a munitions worker during the war,
0:58.4	he's a truly remarkable human being. And his Pamela to tell us more about him, enjoy.
1:08.6	Pamela, thank you very much for coming on the podcast. Thank you, Dan, for inviting me.
1:12.4	You've discovered an overlooked intellectual important stuff. Where did the story of James
1:17.0	Arthur Harley begin? The story begins by a rather strange route where a throw-away comment while I was
1:24.1	in New Zealand led me to discover it. Long story short, I was in a place called Rotorua
1:29.1	and one of the tour guides explained to me about Macaretti Papakora who was a first mario woman
1:34.8	to study anthropology at St. Anne's in Oxford. And while I went to the Pitt Rivers Museum to find out
1:42.5	about Macaretti's collection, I was handed a photograph by the curator of manuscripts
1:48.4	regarding my work as Founder and Director of Black Oxford Untold Stories. And you post the
1:54.0	question, do you know who the man in the photograph is? The photograph is a very iconic image of James
	...

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