TheNiagara Movement (NM)[2] was acivil rights organization founded in 1905 by a group of activists—many of whom were among the vanguard of African-American lawyers in the United States—led byW. E. B. Du Bois andWilliam Monroe Trotter withMary Burnett Talbert. The Niagara Movement was organized to opposeracial segregation anddisenfranchisement. Its members felt the policy of accommodation and conciliation, without voting rights, promoted byBooker T. Washington, was "unmanly." It was named for the "mighty current" of change the group wanted to effect and tookNiagara Falls as its symbol. The group did not meet inNiagara Falls, New York, but planned its first conference for nearbyBuffalo during the week of July 9, 1905. To avoid a possible racist protest, Du Bois instead hired a small hotel across the border inFort Erie, Ontario, Canada.[4] The Niagara Movement was the immediate predecessor of theNAACP.
During theReconstruction Era that followed theAmerican Civil War, African Americans had an unprecedented level of civil freedom and civic participation. In the South, for the first time the former slaves could vote, hold public office, and contract for their labor. With the end of Reconstruction in the 1870s, their freedoms began to narrow. From 1890 to 1908, all the Southern states ratified new constitutions or laws thatdisenfranchised most blacks and significantly restricted their political and civil rights.[5] After Democrats regained control of state legislatures they passed laws imposing legalracial segregation in public facilities. These policies were entrenched after theUnited States Supreme Court in 1896 ruled inPlessy v. Ferguson that laws requiring "separate but equal" facilities were constitutional. The separate facilities for African Americans were often shabby, or they did not exist at all.
The most prominent African-American spokesman during the 1890s wasBooker T. Washington, leader ofAlabama'sTuskegee Institute. In an 1895 speech inAtlanta, Georgia, Washington discussed what became known as theAtlanta Compromise. He believed that Southern African-Americans should not agitate for political rights (such as exercising the right to vote or havingequal treatment under the law) as long as they were provided economic opportunities and basic rights ofdue process. He believed they needed to focus on education and work, to raise their race.[6] Washington politically dominated theNational Afro-American Council, the first nationwide African-American civil rights organization.[7]
By the turn of the 20th century, other activists within the African-American community began demanding a challenge to racist government policies and higher goals for their people than those advocated by Washington. They believed that Washington was "accommodationist". Opponents included NorthernerW. E. B. Du Bois, then a professor atAtlanta University, andWilliam Monroe Trotter, a Boston activist who in 1901 founded theBoston Guardian newspaper as a platform for radical activism.[8][9] In 1902 and 1903 groups of activists sought to gain a larger voice in the debate at the conventions of the National Afro-American Council, but they were marginalized because the conventions were dominated by Washington supporters (also known as Bookerites).[10] Trotter in July 1903 orchestrated a confrontation withWashington inBoston, a stronghold of activism, that resulted in a minor melee and the arrest of Trotter and others; the event garnered national headlines.[11]
In January 1904, Washington, with funding assistance from white philanthropistAndrew Carnegie, organized a meeting in New York to unite African American and civil rights spokesmen. Trotter was not invited, but Du Bois and a few other activists were. Du Bois was sympathetic to the activist cause and suspicious of Washington's motives; he noted that the number of activists invited was small relative to the number of Bookerites. The meeting laid the foundation for a committee to include both Washington and Du Bois, but it quickly fractured. Du Bois resigned in July 1905.[12] By this time, both Du Bois and Trotter recognized the need for a well-organized anti-Washington activist group.
Along with Du Bois and Trotter,Fredrick McGhee ofSt. Paul, Minnesota, andCharles Edwin Bentley ofChicago also recognized the need for a national activist group.[13] The foursome organized a conference to be held July 11–13, 1905, inBuffalo, New York with Buffalo residentMary Burnett Talbert. 59 carefully selected anti-Bookerites were invited to attend; 29 showed up, including prominent community leaders and a notable number of lawyers. At the last minute, to avoid disruption, the meeting was moved to the Erie Beach Hotel[14] inFort Erie, Ontario, Canada, across theNiagara River fromBuffalo.
The organization founded at this meeting chose Du Bois as its general secretary andCincinnati lawyerGeorge H. Jackson as treasurer. It set up committees to oversee progress on the organization's goals. State chapters would advance local agendas and disseminate information about the organization and its goals.[15] Its name was chosen to reflect the site of its first meeting and to be representative of a "mighty current" of change its leaders sought to bring about.[16] Seventeen founders were each appointed as state secretary to individually represent 17 of the states of the union:[17]
The 29 founders who traveled to the inaugural meeting of the Niagara Movement came from 14 states, and became known as "The Original Twenty-nine":[18][19]
The First Niagara Conference was originally scheduled forBuffalo, New York, but because of threatened disruptions from partisans of the politically powerfulBooker T. Washington fled at the last minute to theErie Beach Hotel inFort Erie, Ontario, Canada. Du Bois described the meeting as "secret".[38] One Bookerite, Clifford Plummer, traveled to Buffalo to check up on the proceedings, looked around, and "happily" reported back that there was no conference.[39]: 106 [40]
To disguise this, it was said that they were refused accommodation in Buffalo.[41][42][43] However, no evidence supports this.[40]: 49 : 49 n. 28 According to contemporary reports, Buffalo hotels complied with a statewide anti-discrimination law passed in 1895, and in a recent article it is called an "unlikely...legend".[44][45]
The attendees of the inaugural meeting drafted a "Declaration of Principles," primarily the work of Du Bois and Trotter.[46] The group's philosophy contrasted with the conciliatory approach by Booker T. Washington, who proposed patience over militancy.[47] The declaration defined the group's philosophy and demands: politically, socially and economically. It described the progress made by "Negro-Americans",
"particularly the increase of intelligence, the buy-in of property, the checking of crime, the uplift in home life, the advance in literature and art, and the demonstration of constructive and executive ability in the conduct of great religious, economic and educational institutions."[46]
It called for blacks to be granted manhood suffrage, for equal treatment for all American citizens alike. Very specifically, it demanded equal economic opportunities, in the rural districts of the South, where many blacks were trapped bysharecropping in a kind ofindentured servitude to whites. This resulted in "virtual slavery". The Niagara Movement wanted all African Americans in the South to have the ability to "earn a decent living".
On the subject of education, the authors declared that not only should it be free, but it should also be made compulsory. Higher education, they declared, should be governed independently of class or race, and they demanded action to be taken to improve "high school facilities." This they emphasized: "either the United States will destroy ignorance, or ignorance will destroy the United States."[48] They demanded for judges to be selected independently of their race, and for convicted criminals, white or black, to be given equal punishments for their respective crimes.
In his address to the nation, W. E. B. Du Bois stated, "We are not more lawless than the white race; we [are] more often arrested, convicted and mobbed. We want justice, even for criminals and outlaws." He called for the abolition of theconvict lease system. Established after the Civil War before southern states built prisons, convicts were leased out to work as cheap laborers for "railway contractors, mining companies and those who farm large plantations." Southern states had passed laws targeting blacks and leasing them out to pay off fines or fees they could not manage. The system continued, earning money for local jurisdictions and the state from leasing out prisoners. There was little oversight, and many prisoners were abused and worked to death.[49][50] Urging a return to the faith of "our fathers," the declaration appealed for every person to be considered equal and free.
The declaration also targeted the treatment blacks received from labor unions, often oppressed and not fully protected by their employers nor granted permanent employment. It validated the already announced affirmation that such protest against outright injustice would not cease until such discrimination did. Secondly, Du Bois and Trotter stated the irrationality of discriminating based on one's "physical peculiarities", whether it be place of birth or color of skin. Perhaps one's ignorance, or immorality, poverty or diseases are legitimate excuses, but not the matters over which individuals have no control. Near its end, the document condemns theJim Crow laws, the rejection of blacks for enlistment in the Navy and by the military academies, the non-enforcement of the 13th, 14th and 15th Amendments protecting the rights of blacks, and the "unchristian" behaviors of churches that segregate and show prejudice to their black brothers. The Declaration thanked those who "stand for equality" and the advancement of this cause.[46][51]
Booker T. Washington and his supporters tried to discourage growth of this rival movement. Washington,Thomas Fortune, and Charles Anderson met after learning of the Movement's formation, and agreed to suppress news of it in the black press.[52] They acquired supporters inArchibald Grimké and Kelly Miller, two moderates who had been friendly with Trotter, but had not been invited by Du Bois to the convention (Grimké was hired by Fortune'sNew York Age). TheAge editorialized that the Movement was little more than an attempt to tear down the house that Washington had labored to set up.[53] A Boston supporter of Washington convinced the printer of Trotter'sGuardian to withdraw his services, but Trotter managed to continue printing anyway.[54] Prominent white activists, including Francis Jackson Garrison andOswald Garrison Villard (family of abolitionistWilliam Lloyd Garrison, a hero of Trotter), refused to attend Trotter-organized commemorations of their father's birth centennial.[55] They chose a celebration organized by Bookerites.[56]
Despite Washington's attempts at suppression, Du Bois reported at the end of 1905 that a number of black publications had published accounts of the Movement's activities, and it received further publicity as a consequence of Bookerite press attacks against it.[57] Washington also attacked theConstitution League, a multi-racial civil rights group that was also opposed to his accommodationist policies. The Niagara Movement made common cause with this organization.[58]
After the initial meeting, delegates returned to their home territories to establish local chapters. By mid-September 1905, they had established chapters in 21 states, and the organization had 170 members by year's end.[59] Du Bois founded a magazine,The Moon, in an attempt to establish an official mouthpiece for the organization. Due to lack of funding, it failed after a few months of publication.[60] A second publication,The Horizon, was started in 1907 and survived until 1910.[61][62]
The movement's second meeting, the first to be held on U.S. soil and arguably the movement's high point, took place atHarpers Ferry, West Virginia, the site of abolitionistJohn Brown's1859 raid. The three-day gathering, from August 15 to 18, 1906, took place at the campus ofStorer College (now part ofHarpers Ferry National Historical Park). TheHill Top House Hotel hosted many of the guests. Convention attendees discussed how to secure civil rights for African Americans, and the meeting was later described by Du Bois as "one of the greatest meetings that American Negroes ever held." Attendees walked from Storer College to the nearby Murphy Family farm, relocation site ofthe historic fort where John Brown's quest to end slavery reached its bloody climax. Once there, they removed their shoes and socks to honor the hallowed ground and participated in a ceremony of remembrance.[42]
Several of the organization's chapters made substantive contributions to the advance of civil rights in 1906. TheMassachusetts chapter successfully lobbied against state legislation for the segregation of railroad cars, but was unable to stop the state from helping to fund theJamestown Exposition, a commemoration of the founding of racially motivatedJamestown, Virginia, in which Virginia sought to limit black admission. The Illinois chapter convinced Chicago theater critics to ignore a production ofThe Clansman.[63]
During the early months of 1906 friction began to develop between Du Bois and Trotter over the admission of women to the organization. Du Bois supported the idea, and Trotter opposed it, but eventually relented, and the matter was smoothed over during the 1906 meeting.[64] Their division became more significant when Trotter split with longtime supporter and Movement memberClement Morgan over Massachusetts politics and control of the local Movement chapter, with Du Bois siding with the latter.[65] When the Movement met in Boston in 1907 Du Bois not only admitted Grimké and Miller to the organization, he reappointed Morgan to a leading position in the organization.[66] Further attempts to heal the rift failed, and Trotter then resigned from the Movement.[67]
In 1906 there were several proposals floated in the black press that the Movement be merged with other organizations. None of these proposals got off the ground, with the only substance being a meeting between the Movement'sWashington, DC chapter and members of the BookeriteNational Afro-American Council.[68]
The Movement, in conjunction with the Constitution League (which took Du Bois on as a director), began organizing legal challenges to segregationist laws in early 1907. For an organization with a limited budget, this was an expensive proposition: the single case they mounted challenging Virginia's railroad segregation law put the organization into debt.[61]
Du Bois had sought to return to Harpers Ferry for the 1907 annual meeting, but Storer College refused to grant them permission, claiming the group's presence in 1906 had been followed by financial and political pressure from its supporters to distance itself from them. The 1907 meeting was held in Boston, with conflicting attendance reports. Du Bois claimed 800 attendees, while the BookeriteWashington Bee claimed only about 100 in attendance.[69] The convention published an "Address to the World" in which it called on African-Americans not to vote forRepublican Party candidates in the1908 presidential election, citing PresidentTheodore Roosevelt's support forJim Crow laws.[70]
William Monroe Trotter's departure after the 1907 meeting had a serious negative impact on the organization, as did disagreements about which party to support in the 1908 election. Du Bois, with some reluctance, endorsedDemocratic Party candidateWilliam Jennings Bryan, but many African-Americans could not bring themselves to break from the Republicans, andWilliam Howard Taft won the election, receiving significant African-American support.[71] The 1908 annual meeting, held inOberlin, Ohio, was a much smaller affair, and exposed disunity and apathy within the group at both local and national levels.[72] Du Bois invitedMary White Ovington, asettlement worker andsocialist he had met in 1904, to address the organization. She was the only white woman to be so honored.[73] By 1908, Washington and his supporters successfully made serious inroads with the press (both white and black), and the Oberlin meeting received almost no coverage.[74] Believing the Movement to be "practically dead", Washington also prepared an obituary of the organization for theNew York Age to publish.[62]
In 1909, chapter activities continued to dwindle, membership dropped, and the 1910 annual meeting (held atSea Isle City, New Jersey) was a small affair that again received no significant press.[75] It was the organization's last meeting.[76]
In the wake of theSpringfield Race Riot of 1908, a majorrace riot inSpringfield, Illinois, a number of prominent white civil rights activists called for a major conference on race relations. Held inNew York City in early 1909, the conference laid the foundation for theNational Association for the Advancement of Colored People (NAACP), which was formally established in 1910. In 1911, Du Bois (who was appointed the NAACP's director of publications) recommended that the remaining membership of the Niagara Movement support the NAACP's activities.[62] William Monroe Trotter attended the 1909 conference, but did not join the NAACP; he instead led other small activist civil rights organizations and continued to publish theGuardian until his death in 1934.[77][78]
The Niagara Movement did not appear to be very popular with the majority of the African-American population, especially in the South. Booker T. Washington, at the height of the Movement's activities in 1905 and 1906, spoke to large and approving crowds across much of the country.[79] The 1906Atlanta Race Riot hurt Washington's popularity, giving the Niagarans fuel for their attacks on him.[80] However, given that Washington and the Niagarans agreed on strategy (opposition to Jim Crow laws and support of equal protection and civil rights) but disagreed on tactics, a reconciliation between the factions began after Washington died in 1915.[81] The NAACP went on to become the leading civil rights organization for African Americans in the 20th century.
Van Ness says that the "Malby Law" (1895) prohibited discrimination in hotels on the basis of color, andThe New York Times reported on a successful test of that state law in Buffalo, thus making the hotel legend unlikely.
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