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A few weeks ago I took a trip to visit my uncle and his family in Toronto. My brother from Los Angeles was in town with his two daughters, and so we had a mini-family reunion. As part of the sightseeing, we scheduled a trip to Niagara Falls. As we drove through from Toronto to the falls, I began to give a little U.S. history lesson to my two nieces (aged 14 and 10) to pass the time and divert them. As we saw road signs for towns like Ste. Catherine’s and Chatham, I told them about the slaves who escaped via the Underground Railroad, and the African American activists who formed colonies in these towns after the Fugitive Slave Act of 1850 made it too dangerous to remain south of the border. When we reached Niagara Falls, I started to recount the story of the Niagara movement. In 1905, I explained, a group of some 50 African American scholars, businessmen and others under the direction of W.E.B. DuBois and William Monroe Trotter created a protest and civil rights group. To hide from Booker T. Washington and his spies, they sneaked over the border, where they could hold their meeting in private. The organization they founded was the forerunner of the NAACP, the oldest and largest American civil rights group. It was only later on, after we returned, that I looked on the Web and discovered that the historic meeting had taken place from July 11-14, 1905, exactly 100 years before my little family visit.
As we got to the town, I saw among the tourist kitsch and shops a great many historical markers, with sepia photos of all sorts tracing the glory days of the Falls. To my surprise, there were no visible traces of the Niagara movement’s organization. Nor did any of the Toronto newspapers or Canadian newscasts mention the group. I have not heard of any special gala events in the United States, either. If we are commemorating such anniversaries as that of the IWW or the Rotary Club, we ought also to give some thought to celebrating this turning point in African American life.
I think, of course, Caleb makes a good point here. With all due respect, it's almost ludicrous to talk about a legislative agenda, when the people pushing the agenda are, as a class, disfranchised. There are a whole series of racial reform groups that organized and collapsed between 1885 and 1909, led by Fortune, Tourgee, Cable, Turner, and others. And, given the serial collapses, the point about decentralized structures doesn't seem to me to be particularly cogent. The NAACP managed to survive by mixing strong branch structures and a strong central office; and by mixing black and white leadership, largely negotiated by Mary White Ovington. And, btw, I recommend my edition of her autobiography.
Caleb McDaniel -
8/7/2005
Thanks for reminding us of this anniversary, Greg. When I was in Harper's Ferry earlier this week, I visited an interesting exhibit there about the second Niagara meeting, which was held there in part because of the symbolic associations of John Brown with the place. At that time, "John Brown's Fort," the armory building where the Old Man was captured, had been moved from its original location to the campus of a nearby college. As one of the culminating acts of the conference, the Niagara delegates marched, barefoot, from the meeting place to the Fort.
As for the Niagara movement's importance, I think that its status as a turning point has to be gauged less by the fact that it ultimately collapsed, or even by the fact that it almost never came together (the exhibit pointed out that DuBois was uncertain whether delegates would even respond to his invitation to meet in Niagara, and that he would be financially ruined because he had reserved an entire hotel for the meeting), and more by its radical break with the contemporary mainstream. At a time when Booker T. Washington still loomed large both in the North and the South as an African American spokesman, it was important that the Niagara movement called for full civil and political equality without delay, while also emphasizing (as Washington did not) and encouraging higher education for black Americans.
Ralph raises an interesting general question, though, about turning points in history. Perhaps the real turning points are usually the false starts and quick failures, because the failure and collapse of social movements often indicates how radically they were turning against the historical currents around them.
Greg James Robinson -
8/7/2005
The difference between the Niagara Movement and T. Thomas Fortune's group, among others, is the concrete legislative agenda and decentralized organizational structures. The Niagara Movement did become biracial in that it ultimately included Mary White ovington as its first member. But really, the essential connection between the Niagara Movement and the NAACP was the leadership of W.E.B. DuBois, and his combination of literary skill and social science data brought into action against inequality.
Ralph E. Luker -
8/6/2005
Greg, I plead guilty, I think, to having mentioned the centenary of the IWW and Rotary and having failed to mention the Niagara Movement. Anyway, it occurs to me that it isn't exactly clear how or if the Niagara Movement is a turning point in Afro-American life. It soon faltered and collapsed. The succession by the NAACP is indirect and is clearly a different initiative because the leadership, at least, of the NAACP was initially and, for two decades thereafter, quite largely white, certainly bi-racial. Until the founding of the NAACP, what strikes me as quite noticeable is the number of racial reform organizations that were established, only to collapse within a decade or so. In that sense, I don't see the Niagara Movement as being noticeably different from others prior to the NAACP.
