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 From The Desk Of
Ron Walters
Columnist Page
Friday, February 18, 2005; Page 15
Needed: A New Niagara Movement
For Black History Month this year, the Association for the Study of Afro American Life and History has recognized the 100th anniversary of the Niagara Movement as the national theme. This was a movement of militant Blacks that began with a meeting on the Canadian side of Niagara Falls (to protest American racism) who vowed to fight racism and the ascendancy of Booker T. Washington's program that appeared to strike an accommodationist stance to racism.
For some time, W. E. B. DuBois had recognized the prominence of Washington and had even attempted to work with him. But by degrees, it became clear that Booker T. was being supported by powerful white industrialists both in the U. S. and abroad who wanted to use him to legitimize their subordination of Blacks. Washington provided them with two reasons for their support of his program. First, he gave them a platform of leadership within the Black community from which the message of continued deference to white rule, racial separation, and the acceptance of menial labor could be propagated to Blacks. Then, as the head of Tuskegee Institute, he produced Blacks with industrial and agricultural training who could fit into the labor needs of whites as a compliant force.
DuBois finally could not agree to the nationalization of such a philosophy and in his famous 1903 work, The Souls of Black Folks, he countered Washington's call for industrial education with what he called "leadership education" for the race, located in the halls of higher education institutions that produced a Talented Tenth. Then in 1905, DuBois called upon others, such as William Monroe Trotter, a fellow Harvard graduate and head of the Guardian newspaper, to join him in creating a protest movement.
It should be noted, however, that the protest movement was not merely against Booker T. Washington, it was connected to the wider mood of the Black community which had been ruthlessly subordinated under conditions that, in some respects, resembled old time slavery. Blacks were excluded from social life, tightly segregated, lynched at the whim Whites, and excluded from political participation and other aspects of democratic practices.
The answer of Blacks was to fight back and a series of organizations were founded beginning in 1890 with the Afro American League, headed by Bishop Alexander Walters. The Niagara group met for about three years and folded, but in 1908 other militant organizations were established, such as the National Independent Political League, the National Equal Rights League and others.
In 1909, the NAACP was born and in 1910, the National Urban League followed. So, these organizations, which still exist today, should be seen as having been founded as part of a movement of other organizations to fight back against the some of the strongest aspects of oppression faced by Blacks at that time.
We need a new Niagara Movement today. We need a series of fighting organizations to arise and say, “this far and no further,” in the face of the attempt to roll back the gains won in the heat of the battle of the 1960s. There appears today to be a forgone conclusion that Affirmative Action will be phased out, that the public system of education will continue to be decimated and ultimately destroyed, that Blacks will continue to make 60% of white income, that the jails will keep filling up with the flower of the youth of our community, that poverty and dope and violence will still mark large areas of our neighborhoods, and that in some cities half of our Black males or more will continue to end up unemployed.
All of these problems are quite visible to me, yet we live in a time when many of us believe that racism is invisible, or subtle, or even non-existent. Yes, all of these things will happen if Blacks continue to sit on the side-line as observers and not as activists, if we continue to adjust to the destructive force of the Right wing movement rather than stand up to it, and if our leadership continues, by example, to point our young people in the direction of fitting-in rather than resistance simply because the price of resistance is too great.
So, let's use this opportunity of Black History Month to remember how our people responded to one of the darkest hours in American history by rallying their forces to stand up as best they could. Then make the contrast to this era, when we are not as mobilized to resist, but in fact, appear to be comfortable with our plight. And as why? That should be some discussion.
Dr. Ron Walters is Distinguished Leadership Scholar, Director of the African American Leadership Institute and Professor of Government and Politics at the University of Maryland College Park. His latest book is: White Nationalism, Black Interests, by Wayne University Press. |
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