Niagara Movement

(noun)

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. Its first meeting took place at Niagara Falls, on the Canadian side, in July 1905. The Niagara Movement was a call for opposition to racial segregation and disenfranchisement, and it was opposed to policies of accommodation and conciliation promoted by African American leaders such as Booker T. Washington.

Related Terms

Examples of Niagara Movement in the following topics:

  • Theodore Roosevelt and Race

    • Leaders of major black organizations, such as the Constitution League, the National Association of Colored Women, and the Niagara Movement, tried unsuccessfully to persuade the administration not to discharge the soldiers.

  • The "Color Line"

    • Du Bois rose to national prominence as the leader of the Niagara Movement, a group of African-American activists who wanted equal rights for blacks.
    • Du Bois also wrote an editorial supporting the African-American Great Migration, the movement of blacks from the southern U.S. to the Northeast, Midwest, and West, because he felt it would help blacks escape southern racism, find economic opportunities, and assimilate into American society.

  • Roosevelt, Wilson, and Race

    • Leaders of major black organizations, such as the Constitution League, the National Association of Colored Women, and the Niagara Movement tried to persuade the administration not to discharge the soldiers, but were unsuccessful.

  • The Seven Years' War: 1754-1763

    • The French were driven from many frontier posts such as Fort Niagara, and the key Fortress Louisbourg fell to the British in 1758.
    • Schematic map of the French and Indian War showing territorial possessions and troop movement.

  • The Treaty of Fort Stanwix

    • In this treaty, the Iroquois Confederacy ceded all claims to the Ohio territory, a strip of land along the Niagara river, and all land west of the mouth of Buffalo creek.

  • The British Strategy

    • Several months later, the U.S. launched a second invasion of Canada against the Niagara peninsula.
    • They were decisively defeated by General William Henry Harrison's forces on their retreat towards Niagara at the Battle of the Thames in October 1813.

  • The War in the North

    • Several months later, the United States launched a second invasion of Canada against the Niagara Peninsula.
    • The British also were decisively defeated by General William Henry Harrison's forces on their retreat toward Niagara at the Battle of the Thames in October 1813.

  • American Indians and the New Nation

    • In this treaty, the Iroquois Confederacy ceded all claims to the Ohio territory, a strip of land along the Niagara River, and all land west of the mouth of Buffalo Creek.

  • The Farmer's Alliance

    • The Farmers' Alliance was an organized agrarian economic movement among U.S. farmers that flourished in the 1880s.
    • Political activists in the movement also made attempts to unite the two alliance organizations, along with the Knights of Labor and the Colored Farmers' National Alliance and Cooperative Union, into a common movement.
    • The alliance movement as a whole reached more than 750,000 members by 1890.
    • The alliance failed as an economic movement, but it is regarded by historians as engendering a "movement culture" among the rural poor.
    • As the focus of the farmers' movement shifted into politics, the Farmers' Alliance faded away.

  • Latino Rights

    • The Chicano Movement was the part of the Mexican Civil Rights Movement that sought political and social empowerment for Mexican Americans.
    • The Mexican American Movement was part of the American Civil Rights Movement of the 1960s and 1970s seeking political empowerment and social inclusion for Mexican Americans.
    • Like the African American movement, the Mexican American civil rights movement won its earliest victories in the federal courts.
    • The equivalent of the Black Power movement among Mexican Americans was the Chicano Movement.
    • From this movement arose La Raza Unida, a political party that attracted many Mexican American college students.