Niagara Movement

1906 Niagara Movement Leaders: (seated) W. E. B. Du Bois, (standing from left) J. R. Clifford, L. M. Hershaw, and F. H. M. Murray

The Niagara Movement ( English Niagara Movement ) was founded in 1905 when a group of 32 African-American men, led by W. E. B. Du Bois , John Hope and William Monroe Trotter , met to exercise full civil liberties, an end to racial discrimination ( segregation ) and to demand full "recognition of the bonds that bind all human beings".

The movement's founders included: (Niagara Movement Founders, 1905) HA Thompson, Alonzo F. Herndon, John Hope, James RL Diggs? (unidentified) Frederick McGhee, Norris Bumstead Herndon (son of Alonzo Herndon), J. Max Barber, WEB Du Bois, Robert Bonner, Henry L. Bailey, Clement G. Morgan, WHH Hart, BS Smith.

The document had its origins in a secret meeting on July 11, 1905, when 29 African Americans began their deliberations at the Erie Beach Hotel in Fort Erie, Ontario, just across the border from Buffalo and Niagara, New York. Only the Canadian side accepted African Americans. In three days the Niagara Movement was born. The "Niagara Movement Declaration of Principles" outlined a philosophy and developed a political program to denounce racial inequality in the United States. The movement rejected Booker T. Washington's adjustment policy , which he had outlined in his "Atlanta Compromise" speech in 1895.

Their first meeting took place near Niagara Falls on July 11-14, 1905. The second meeting was at Harpers Ferry , West Virginia , where the assault on abolitionist John Brown took place. Meetings followed at Faneuil Hall in Boston, Massachusetts (1907); Oberlin , Ohio (1908); and Sea Isle City , NJ (1909). After that, disagreements and a lack of funding put an end to the movement. Still, the Niagara Movement was an important milestone in African American history.

The National Association for the Advancement of Colored People emerged from the Niagara Movement in 1909 .

literature

• Angela Jones: African American Civil Rights: Early Activism and the Niagara Movement. Praeger, Westport 2011, ISBN 978-0-313-39360-0 .

Web links

• The Niagara Movement. Buffalo Niagara Convention & Visitors Bureau, archived from the original on January 28, 2006 . 
• Niagara's Declaration of Principles, 1905. Yale University , archived from the original on March 4, 2015 . 
• Stephanie Christensen: Niagara Movement (1905-1909). In: BlackPast.org. December 16, 2007 . 

Individual evidence

1. ^ The Niagara Movement. In: math.buffalo.edu . March 7, 2005, accessed September 14, 2019 .