Niagara Movement Declaration of Principles

Audience

The authors of the Declaration of Principles concluded by submitting the document to the American people. While this may have represented the wishes of the group assembled at Fort Erie, the actual audience was much more modest. The initial audience for the document was that group of twenty-nine men assembled at the inaugural meeting of the Niagara Movement. The secondary audience was the four hundred or so men and women who would join the Niagara Movement before its demise in 1909. Of course, the intended audience was much larger. It included the African American community, especially in the North, and the intention was that blacks from all parts of the United States would hear about and read the document and join the Niagara Movement. The document was also crafted for a white audience. The language and moderate tone, as well as the specific statement of appreciation to white friends and allies, was intended to attract financial and political support for the agenda or the movement and convince progressive whites that they offered a realistic and palatable alternative to the racial agenda of Booker T. Washington.

In the short term the audience was quite small, as press coverage of the Fort Erie meeting and the Declaration of Principles was limited. It is not clear how much coverage a small meeting of African Americans in Ontario would receive in the white press in ordinary circumstances, but in July 1905 a very effective campaign by the Tuskegee machine kept press coverage to a minimum. News of the Fort Erie events was kept out of most of the white press when a Washington ally went to the Buffalo Associated Press office and persuaded it not to forward the news of the Fort Erie meeting. There was some reporting in the African American press, especially in Atlanta and Washington, where there was widespread support for the Niagarites, and, of course, in Boston, where Trotter's Guardian pushed the story. But on the whole the black press remained loyal to Washington and withheld news of the meeting. Eventually the audience grew significantly. The Declaration of Principles and much of the agenda of the Niagara Movement were picked up by the NAACP and influenced its approach to civil rights.