Publication Type: Individual Paper
Abstract: As the nation celebrates the centennial anniversary of the Niagara Movement’s inaugural meeting it is important to look back and re-examine the origins of the civil rights group. Most scholars have viewed the Movement, led by William Edward Burghardt Du Bois, Monroe Trotter and Frederick McGhee, as the obvious antecedent to the famous inter-racial civil rights organization, National Association for the Advancement of Colored People (NAACP), but there are several forgotten organizations that fought against racial discrimination in America prior to the existence of both groups. In this presentation I will discuss the much ignored the National Afro-American League and the Afro-American Council. The presentation will focus on the development of the programs of the Afro-American Council demonstrating how many of the group’s principles and strategies were carried over into the platform of the Niagara Movement and, in turn, that of the NAACP. In particular, by drawing on material from the local and state branches of the Council, the lecture will broaden our understanding of the activities of the organization. Most importantly I will demonstrate how this organization did not disappear into the woodwork once the Niagara Movement came into existence, but instead continued to struggle for black rights and by the end of 1906 was beginning to coordinate its activities with the Niagara Movement.