Движение «Ниагара»: Борьба за гражданские права афроамериканцев (1905)

African American civil rights organization founded in 1905

The Niagara Movement (NM) was a civil 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 by W. E. B. Du Bois and William Monroe Trotter. The Niagara Movement was organized to oppose racial segregation and disenfranchisement. Its members felt "unmanly" the policy of accommodation and conciliation, without voting rights, promoted by Booker T. Washington. It was named for the "mighty current" of change the group wanted to effect and took Niagara Falls as its symbol. The group did not meet in Niagara Falls, New York, but planned its first conference for nearby Buffalo (at the last minute, to avoid disruptions, moved across the Niagara River to Fort Erie, Ontario, Canada). The Niagara Movement was the immediate predecessor of the NAACP.

During the Reconstruction Era that followed the American 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 that disenfranchised most blacks and significantly restricted their political and civil rights. After Democrats regained control of state legislatures they passed laws imposing legal racial segregation in public facilities. These policies were entrenched after the United States Supreme Court in 1896 ruled in Plessy 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 was Booker T. Washington, leader of Alabama's Tuskegee Institute. In an 1895 speech in Atlanta, Georgia, Washington discussed what became known as the Atlanta Compromise. He believed that Southern African Americans should not agitate for political rights (such as exercising the right to vote or having equal treatment under the law) as long as they were provided economic opportunities and basic rights of due process. He believed they needed to focus on education and work, to raise their race. Washington politically dominated the National Afro American Council, the first nationwide African American civil rights organization. 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 Northerner W. E. B. Du Bois, then a professor at Atlanta University, and William Monroe Trotter, a Boston activist who in 1901 founded the Boston Guardian newspaper as a platform for radical activism. 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). Trotter in July 1903 orchestrated a confrontation with Washington in Boston, a stronghold of activism, that resulted in a minor melee and the arrest of Trotter and others; the event garnered national headlines. In January 1904, Washington, with funding assistance from white philanthropist Andrew 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. By this time, both Du Bois and Trotter recognized the need for a well organized anti Washington activist group.

The First Niagara Conference was originally scheduled for Buffalo, New York, but because of threatened disruptions from partisans of the politically powerful Booker T. Washington fled at the last minute to the Erie Beach Hotel in Fort Erie, Ontario, Canada. Du Bois described the meeting as "secret". One Bookerite, Clifford Plummer, traveled to Buffalo to check up on the proceedings, looked around, and "happily" reported back that there was no conference. To disguise this, it was said that they were refused accommodation in Buffalo. However, no evidence supports this.

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",
<blockquote>"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." 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 the convict 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. 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 the Jim 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.

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. They acquired supporters in Archibald 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's New York Age). The Age editorialized that the Movement was little more than an attempt to tear down the house that Washington had labored to set up. A Boston supporter of Washington convinced the printer of Trotter's Guardian to withdraw his services, but Trotter managed to continue printing anyway. Prominent white activists, including Francis Jackson Garrison and Oswald Garrison Villard (family of abolitionist William Lloyd Garrison, a hero of Trotter), refused to attend Trotter organized commemorations of their father's birth centennial. They chose a celebration organized by Bookerites. 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. Washington also attacked the Constitution League, a multi racial civil rights group that was also opposed to his accommodationist policies. The Niagara Movement made common cause with this organization.

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 New York Age to publish. It was the organization's last meeting.

In the wake of the Springfield Race Riot of 1908, a major race riot in Springfield, Illinois, a number of prominent white civil rights activists called for a major conference on race relations. Held in New York City in early 1909, the conference laid the foundation for the National 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. 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 civil rights organization for African Americans in the 20th century.

Du Bois, W. E. B. "Niagara movement speech." (1905). online.