W.E.B. Du Bois: The Activist Life (pg. 7)

Discrimination based simply and solely on physical peculiarities, place of birth, color of skin are relics of that unreasoning human savagery of which the world is and ought to be thoroughly ashamed.

--W.E.B. Du Bois

In 1905, a call was signed by black leaders from seventeen states for a meeting near Buffalo, New York. As Du Bois described it: "I went to Buffalo and hired a little hotel on the Canadian side of the Niagara River and waited for the men to attend the meeting. If sufficient men had not come to pay for the hotel, I should certainly have been in bankruptcy and perhaps jail, but as a matter of fact, twenty-nine representing fourteen states came and the Niagara Movement was born. Its objects were to advocate and promote full manhood suffrage, the abolition of all caste distinctions based on race or color and the recognition of the highest and best human training as the monopoly of no class or race."

Du Bois and Clement Morgan, Boston attorney and Harvard classmate of Du Bois, at a Boston meeting of the Niagara Movement in 1907.

As a result of the intransigence of Booker T. Washington's "Tuskegee Machine," Du Bois and other black leaders of similar opinions organized what became known as the Niagara Movement. It was the first organization to seek full political and economic rights for Afro-Americans at a national level. By 1910, the organization led to the founding of the NAACP.

Niagara Movement Declaration of Principles.

The original 29 members of the Niagara Movement. Missing are G.W. Mitchell, Pa., and E.B. Jourdain, Mass.

[ An Activist Life ][ Page 1 ][ Page 2 ][ Page 3 ][ Page 4 ][ Page 5 ][ Page 6 ][ Page 7 ][ Page 8 ][ Page 9 ]
[ Page 10 ][ Page 11 ][ Page 12 ][ Page 13 ][ Page 14 ]
[ Du Bois Central ][ SCUA home ]