Niagara Movement (Organization)

<p>The Niagara Movement was a black civil rights organization founded in 1905 by a group of civil rights activists– many of whom were among the vanguard of African-American lawyers in the United States –led by W. E. B. Du Bois and William Monroe Trotter. It was named for the "mighty current" of change the group wanted to effect and Niagara Falls, near Fort Erie, Ontario, where the first meeting took place, in July 1905. The Niagara Movement was organized to oppose racial segregation and disenfranchisement. It opposed what its members believed were policies of accommodation and conciliation promoted by African-American leaders such as Booker T. Washington.</p>

<p>Along with Du Bois and Trotter, Fredrick McGhee of St. Paul, Minnesota and Charles Edwin Bentley of Chicago had also recognized the need for a national activist group. The foursome organized a conference to be held in the Buffalo, New York area in the summer of 1905, inviting 59 carefully selected anti-Bookerites to attend. During July 11 - 13, 1905, 29 individuals met at the Erie Beach Hotel in Fort Erie, Ontario, Canada, across the Niagara River from Buffalo.</p>

<p>The attendees of the inaugural meeting drafted a "Declaration of Principles," primarily the work of Du Bois and Trotter. The group's philosophy contrasted with the conciliatory approach by Booker T. Washington, who proposed patience over militancy. The declaration defined the group's philosophy and demands: politically, socially and economically. It described the progress made by "Negro-Americans",<br>
"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."</p>

<p>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 by sharecropping in a kind of indentured 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".</p>

<p>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. Du Bois founded a magazine, the <i>Moon</i>, in an attempt to establish an official mouthpiece for the organization. Due to lack of funding, it failed after a few months of publication. A second publication, <i>The Horizon</i>, was started in 1907 and survived until 1910.</p>

<p>The movement's second meeting, the first to be held on U.S. soil, took place at Harpers Ferry, West Virginia, the site of abolitionist John Brown's 1859 raid. The three-day gathering, from August 15 to 18, 1906, took place at the campus of Storer College (now part of Harpers Ferry National Historical Park). 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 of the 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.</p>

<p>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 Bookerite Washington Bee claimed only about 100 in attendance. The convention published an "Address to the World" in which it called on African-Americans not to vote for Republican Party candidates in the 1908 presidential election, citing President Theodore Roosevelt's support for Jim Crow laws.</p>

<p>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, endorsed Democratic Party candidate William Jennings Bryan, but many African-Americans could not bring themselves to break from the Republicans, and William Howard Taft won the election, receiving significant African-American support. The 1908 annual meeting, held in Oberlin, Ohio, was a much smaller affair, and exposed disunity and apathy within the group at both local and national levels. Du Bois invited Mary White Ovington, a settlement worker and socialist he had met in 1904, to address the organization. She was the only white woman to be so honored. 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. Believing the Movement to be "practically dead", Washington also prepared an obituary of the organization for the <i>New York Age</i> to publish.</p>

<p>In 1909, chapter activities continued to dwindle, membership dropped, and the annual meeting (held at Sea Isle City, New Jersey) was a small affair that again received no significant press. It was to be the organization's last meeting.</p>

<p>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. The 1906 Atlanta Race Riot hurt Washington's popularity, giving the Niagarans fuel for their attacks on him. 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. The NAACP went on to become the leading African-American civil rights organization of the 20th century.</p>

<p>The Niagara Movement emerged out of years of struggle against racial oppression in the United States and frustration with the slow pace of change on the one hand and the moderate, accommodationist policies of Booker T. Washington on the other. In February 1905, W. E. B. Du Bois and William Monroe Trotter helped call together an all-black "national strategy board" to chart a new and more radical course toward social and racial justice. Inviting fifty nine like-minded intellectuals and activists to a conference on the Canadian side of Niagara Falls in July 1905, twenty nine of whom attended, they established the Niagara Movement, an early and strident voice for equality.
From the outset, the Niagara Movement defined itself against both racial oppression and Washingtonian conciliation, demanding immediate freedom of speech and press, full suffrage, the "abolition of all caste distinctions based simply on race and color," a "recognition of the principal of human brotherhood as a practical present creed," and a belief in the dignity of labor. Their demands were simple, but radical for America in 1905: "We want to pull down nothing but we don't propose to be pulled down. We are not 'knockers' save at the Door of Liberty & Opportunity. We are 'out after the Stuff' but that 'stuff' includes education, decent travel, civil rights, & ballots. . ."</p>

<p>With Du Bois as General Secretary, the Movement grew rapidly, establishing chapters in twenty one states by mid-September and reaching 170 members by year's end. Symbolically, they selected Harper's Ferry, W.Va. -- the site of John Brown's raid -- for their second annual conference in 1906, and they met subsequently in Boston, Oberlin, and Sea Isle City, N.J. Through its committees and branches, the Movement organized against segregation in travel and education and worked to secure voting rights and civic equality. In one of their best known works, they made their goals clear:<br>
We claim for ourselves every single right that belongs to a freeborn American, political, civil and social; and until we get these rights we will never cease to protest and assail the ears of America. The battle we wage is not for ourselves alone but for all true Americans. It is a fight for ideals, lest this, our common fatherland, false to its founding, become in truth the land of the thief and the home of the slave -- a byword and a hissing among the nations for its sounding pretensions and pitiful accomplishment.</p>

<p>Weak finances and internal dissension, however, increasingly hampered the effectiveness of the organization. After a bitter feud within its Massachusetts branch and continuing conflict with Washington, the momentum of the Movement slowed and by 1910, it was disbanded altogether. Their work, however, was not abandoned. Du Bois and most of the original members were instrumental in the formation of the National Association for the Advancement of Colored People in 1909, a less radical movement that nevertheless shared the same basic goals.</p>