The Niagara Movement was a civil rights group organized by W.E.B. Du Bois and William Monroe Trotter in 1905. After being denied admittance to hotels in Buffalo, New York, the group of twenty-nine business owners, teachers, and clergy who comprised the initial meeting gathered at Niagara Falls, Ontario (Canada) from which the group’s name derives.
The principles behind the Niagara Movement were largely in opposition to Booker T. Washington’s philosophy of Accommodationism. Trotter, editor of the Boston Guardian, had publicly reprimanded Washington at a Boston, Massachusetts meeting in 1903. In The Souls of Black Folk (1903), Du Bois had also condemned Washington for his lowered expectations for African Americans. The Niagara Movement drafted a “Declaration of Principles,” part of which stated: “We refuse to allow the impression to remain that the Negro-American assents to inferiority, is submissive under oppression and apologetic before insults.”
The Niagara Movement attempted to bring about legal change, addressing the issues of crime, economics, religion, health, and education. The movement stood apart from other black organizations at the time because of its powerful, unequivocal demand for equal rights. The Niagara Movement forcefully demanded equal economic and educational opportunity as well as the vote for black men and women. Members of the Niagara Movement sent a powerful message to the entire country through their condemnation of racial discrimination and their call for an end to segregation.
While the movement had grown to include to 170 members in 34 states by 1906, it also encountered difficulties. W.E.B. Du Bois supported the inclusion of women in the Niagara Movement, William Monroe Trotter did not. Trotter left the movement in 1908 to start his own group, the Negro-American Political League.
The Niagara Movement met annually until 1908. In that year a major race riot broke out in Springfield, Illinois. Eight blacks were killed and over 2,000 African Americans fled the city. Symbolically important because it was the first northern race riot in four decades and because it was in the hometown of Abraham Lincoln, black and white activists, including members of the Niagara Movement, felt a new more powerful, interracial organization was now needed to combat racism. Out of this concern, the National Association for the Advancement of Colored People (NAACP) was formed. The Niagara Movement was considered the precursor to the NAACP and many of its members, such as W.E.B. Du Bois, were among the new organization’s founders.
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::: spoiler ranting about neurodivergence As someone who is deeply neurodivergent, it's all just frustrating. I feel like I have to tape together a little makeshift version of social acceptance. And I don't think my brain is capable of merely letting go of every time someone was offering friendship the normal way and I just couldn't pick up on it.
There's a frustrating gap in that I don't know what neurotypicals know and grasp about the world that I don't. I just know that they know something, or just get it, and I'm at a deficit, I guess. How someone can turn 30 with the mental fortitude of a 9 year old is beyond me, yet here I am.
Sometimes I hate how subjective everything is. I want there to be a correct number of friends, a proper threshold of how often we talk. I can't have both friends who talk once a year and friends who talk twice an hour, there have to be more specific categories than that.
Without something concrete, I don't know what this is. Like, we just talk about whatever? What does that mean? What are we? Are we anything? Am I anything? What if I'm not real. Oh dear.
Edit: it's a big point of contention for me that I have been called intimidating before, and apparently my resting face just looks fucking miserable to most people. I don't know how to change that, if I'm supposed to literally be smiling at people or what.
I want to learn more feminine mannerisms and I want girl friends because I've only really had guy friendships but I guess I'm just too fucking scared to talk to girls.
I feel like I will be seen as a creepy guy no matter what, if I'm being completely honest. Like that's just how I assume people see me. It feels like a total fluke that people ever approached me to begin with. All that did was create a false expectation that people care.
So now I have to walk up to people and I guess say things like "being a guy makes me sad... does anything make you sad?" or "can we go shopping for clothes together?" or "can you teach me how to be a girl" and try not to walk into the ocean