What was the “Niagara Movement”?

The “Niagara Movement” was a black civil rights organization founded in 1905 by a group led by W.E.B. Du Bois and William Monroe Trotter. It was named for the “mighty current” of change the group wanted to effect and Niagara Falls, near Fort Erie, Ontario, Canada where the first meeting took place. The “Niagara Movement” opposed racial segregation and disenfranchisement.

The Reconstruction Era that followed the American Civil War lasted until 1877. It ushered in an unprecedented level of civil freedom and civic participation, especially in the southern United States. But when it ended, the southern states introduced laws that significantly restricted the political and civil rights of African Americans including restricting voting rights and creating racially segregated facilities. These policies were approved by the United States Supreme Court in 1896, that ruled in the case called “Plessy v. Ferguson”, that a law requiring “separate but equal” facilities was constitutional.

The most prominent African American spokesman during the 1890s was Booker T. Washington, leader of the “Alabama Tuskegee Institute”. In 1895 he gave a speech in Atlanta, Georgia, that became known as the “Atlanta Compromise” advocating that southern African Americans should not agitate for political rights as long as they were provided economic opportunities and basic rights of due process. The “Niagara Movement” opposed the policies of accommodation and conciliation promoted by Washington.