National Association For The Advancement of Colored People - Pre-History: The Niagara Movement

Pre-History: The Niagara Movement

In 1905, a group of 32 prominent, outspoken African-Americans met to discuss the challenges facing people of color and possible strategies and solutions. Among the issues they were concerned about was the disenfranchisement of blacks in the South starting in 1890, when Southern legislatures ratified new constitutions creating barriers to voter registration and more complex election rules. Voter registration and turnout dropped markedly in the South as a result. Men who had been voting for 30 years were told they did not "qualify" to register.

Because hotels in the U.S. were segregated, the men convened under the leadership of Harvard scholar W. E. B. Du Bois at a hotel (Erie Beach Hotel) on the Canadian side of the Niagara River in Fort Erie, Ontario. As a result, the group came to be known as the Niagara Movement. A year later, three whites joined the group: journalist William E. Walling, social worker Mary White Ovington, and social worker Henry Moskowitz, then Associate Leader of the New York Society for Ethical Culture. They met again in 1906 at Harpers Ferry, West Virginia, and in 1907 in Boston, Massachusetts.

The fledgling group struggled for a time with limited resources and internal conflict and disbanded in 1910. Seven of the members of the Niagara Movement joined the Board of Directors of the NAACP. Although both organizations shared membership and overlapped in their existence, the Niagara Movement was a separate organization and is historically thought of as having a more radical platform than the NAACP. The Niagara Movement was formed exclusively by African Americans, while the meeting which birthed the idea of the NAACP was with three white people.