Niagara Movement Founders, 1905. Top row (left to right): H. A. Thompson, Alonzo F. Herndon, John Hope, James R. L. Diggs (?). Second row (left to right): Frederick McGhee, Norris B. Herndon (boy), J. Max Barber, W. E. B. Du Bois, Robert Bonner. Bottom row (left to right): Henry L. Bailey, Clement G. Morgan, W. H. H. Hart, B. S. Smith. Reproduction. Courtesy of the W.E.B Du Bois Library, University of Massachusetts, Amherst (009.00.00)
[Digital ID # MS0312-0394]

 

Founders of

the Niagara Movement

In July 1905 W.E. B. Du Bois and William Monroe Trotter convened a conference of black leaders to renounce Booker T. Washington’s accommodationism. They met at Niagara Falls, in Ontario, Canada, because hotels on the American side of the falls barred blacks. The twenty-nine men in attendance set forth a platform that demanded freedom of speech and criticism; a free press; manhood suffrage; abolition of all caste distinctions based on race or color; recognition of the principle of human brotherhood; belief in the dignity of labor; and a united effort to realize these ideals under wise and courageous leadership. The organization they formed, the Niagara Movement, met annually at the following locations—Harpers Ferry, West Virginia (1906); Boston, Massachusetts (1907); Oberlin, Ohio (1908); and Sea Isle City, N.J. (1909), until it disbanded in 1910 because of internal dissension and lack of funds.

>via: http://myloc.gov/Exhibitions/naacp/prelude/ExhibitObjects/NiagaraMovementFoun...

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On This Day:

The Niagara Movement

Published by Allie Shay on July 11, 2012 in This Day in Civil Rights History.

 On July 11, 1905—107 years ago today—29 individuals led by W.E.B. Du Bois met at Niagara Falls in Canada to form the Niagara Movement, a direct-action civil rights organization designed to provide a more radical alternative to the more conciliatory responses to oppression espoused by the Tuskegee Institute’s Booker T. Washington.

The group renounced Washington’s accommodation policies, which stressed self-sufficiency and patience rather than integration or political advancement. Instead, the Movement leaders demanded voting rights, an end to segregation, and the establishment of equal rights for African Americans. The group’s manifesto, read by Du Bois, stated, in part:

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 hissing among the nations for its sounding pretensions and pitiful accomplishment.

Thirteen months later, the Movement’s first public meeting in America was held on the Storer College campus in Harper’s Ferry, West Virginia. Today, a historical marker commemorates the meeting.

Over the next six years, the organization established thirty branches and continued to fight for civil rights, while suffering from organizational weakness and low funding. It disbanded in 1911, but many members (including Du Bois himself) continued civil rights work through the newly formed NAACP.

To learn more, check out this story from PBS. The University of Massachusetts’ Du Bois Central provides a good summary as well. The collection also contains many related documents.

To read the Encyclopedia Britannica article, click here. To read an article from the West Virginia Encyclopedia, click here.

To read the group’s Declaration of Principles, click here.

To view a photograph of the movement’s founders, click here.

To learn more about the Niagara Movement, check out Angela Jones’ African American Civil Rights: Early Activism and the Niagara Movement (Praeger, 2011).

To learn more about W.E.B. Du Bois, check out David Levering Lewis’ W.E.B. Du Bois: A Biography (Henry Holt, 1993). Numerous volumes also contain Du Bois’ writing. (See, for example, the Library of America’s Du Bois.) For more speeches available online, check out the Teaching American History collection.

To learn more about Du Bois and Washington’s conflicting views, check out Jacqueline Moore’s Booker T. Washington, W.E.B. Du Bois, and the Struggle for Racial Uplift (Rowman & Littlefield, 2003).

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In 1905, W.E.B. Du Bois, a professor at Atlanta University, exasperated by Booker T. Washington's continued conciliatory policies towards whites and his enormous power within the black community, called for a meeting of Washington's critics of at Niagara Falls, New York. The purpose of the meeting was to form an organization that would offer a militant alternative to Washington. Du Bois called his organization the Niagara Movement, named after the falls where the first meeting was held. The group was representative of some of the intellectual elite of the African-American community. The meeting had originally been planned to take place on the American side of the falls, but the delegates were denied accommodations by racially prejudiced hotel managers. They crossed over to the Canadian side where they were welcomed and received rooms without incident. Altogether, 29 men answered Du Bois' call. Thirty others who were invited failed to make it. The Niagara Movementrenounced Booker T. Washington's policy of accommodation and conciliation, and his refusal to speak out on behalf of black rights. The group issued a manifesto that demanded the rights of black people to vote, to not be segregated in public transportation or discriminated against elsewhere, and to enjoy all those liberties white citizens enjoyed. The manifesto read in part: "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."  Despite the establishment of 30 branches and the achievements of a few scattered civil-rights victories at the local level, the movement suffered from organizational weakness and lack of funds as well as a permanent headquarters or staff. It never was able to attract mass support. Booker T. Washington undermined the movement, insuring that it received almost no publicity in the black press. After the Springfield (Illinois) Race Riot of 1908, however, white liberals joined with the nucleus of Niagara "militants" and founded the NAACP the next year. The Niagara Movement disbanded in 1911.  -- Richard Wormser >via: http://www.pbs.org/wnet/jimcrow/stories_events_niagara.html