Niagara Movement
1905 – 1911
The Niagara Movement’s manifesto is, in the words of W.E.B. Du Bois, “We want full manhood suffrage and we want it now…. We are men! We want to be treated as men. And we shall win.”
At the turn of the century there were divisions in African-American political life: those who believed in accommodation, led by Booker T. Washington, and the more militant group, led by W.E.B. Du Bois and William M. Trotter.
In 1904, a closed-door meeting at Carnegie hall Du Bois developed the Committee of Twelve for the Advancement of the Interest of the Negro Race. Members: WEB DuBois, Atlanta; William Monroe Totter, Massachusetts; Frderick L McGhee, Minnesota; C.E. Bentley, H. A. Thompson, New York; John Hope, Georgia; J. Max Barber, Illinois; Robert Bonner, Massachusetts; Henry L. Baily, Washington, D.C.; Clement G. Morgan, Massachusetts ; W.H.H. Hart, Washington, D.C.; B.S. Smith, Kansas.
In February 1905, co-founders Du Bois and Trotter put together an all black group that included Frederick L. McGhee and C.E. Bentley. They invited 59 well know anti-Washington businessmen to a meeting that summer in western New York. Altogether, 29 men answered Du Bois’ call and on July 11 thru 14, 1905 on the Canadian side of Niagara Falls, they met and formed a group they called the Niagara Movement. The name came because of the location and the “mighty current” of protest they wished to unleash.
The Niagara Movement renounced 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.
Du Bois was named general secretary and the group split into various committees. The founders agreed to divide the work at hand among state chapters.
At the end of the first year, the organizations had only 170 members and were poorly funded. Nevertheless they pursued their activities, distributing pamphlets, lobbying against Jim Crow, and sending circulars and protest letters to President Theodore Roosevelt after the Brownsville Incident in 1906. That summer the Niagara Movement held their second conference at Harper’s Ferry, West Virginia. Despite its impressive beginning, the Niagara Movement did not enjoy a long life. Booker T. Washington’s determined opposition from the beginning kept any white empathy from assisting them in anyway. Even in its decline, the movement left a lasting legacy.
In 1908, Du Bois had invited Mary White Ovington, a settlement worker, and socialist to be the movement’s first white member. By 1910, he had turned his allegiance to the newly formed NAACP, which inherited many of its goals from the Niagara Movement. The Niagara movement disbanded in 1911.