Niagara Movement Declaration of Principles

Explanation and Analysis of the Document

The Declaration of Principles was approved by the assembly of African American men who met July 11–13, 1905, in Fort Erie, Ontario. The document drafted by W. E. B. Du Bois and William Monroe Trotter contains eighteen short paragraphs, each raising and briefly addressing a specific issue. The style of the declaration is that of a list or an outline rather than an analytical discussion of the status of African Americans. The first seventeen paragraphs contain a manifesto of grievances and demands; the eighteenth is a list of duties. Together they summarize the issues confronting African Americans in the early twentieth century and define the purpose and agenda of the Niagara Movement.

“Progress”

The first section of the declaration, “Progress,” comments on the gathering of the Niagara Movement and congratulates African Americans on progress they had achieved in the preceding ten years. These ten years essentially covered the time period since the death of Frederick Douglass and the rise to power of Booker T. Washington, and the Niagarites viewed this as a period of failed leadership and a decline in the rights of African Americans. The progress cited—the increase in intelligence and in the acquisition of property, and the creation of successful institutions—omits reference to the political and civil rights of African Americans.

“Suffrage,” “Civil Liberty,” and “Economic Opportunity”

The next three paragraphs address in sequence “Suffrage,” “Civil Liberty,” and “Economic Opportunity”—areas in which African Americans faced clear and increasing discrimination. Here the declaration lists grievances for the first time and evokes protest as an appropriate response to these grievances. The declaration asserts the importance of manhood suffrage and then notes that black political rights have been curtailed and that blacks cannot afford to place their political fate in the hands of others. This argument did not address the specifics of the strategies used to disenfranchise blacks—literacy tests, the grandfather clause, or similar practices. Instead, it asserted that all men deserve the right to vote. This approach distinguished the Niagarites from Booker T. Washington, who supported suffrage and attacked disenfranchisement on the basis that it treated blacks differently than whites. The declaration sees universal manhood suffrage as a fundamental right of all men and calls on blacks to protest “empathically and continually” as long as their political rights are violated. This introduces a theme that runs through the declaration: that discrimination is a violation of the rights of African Americans and that the response to these violations must be agitation and protest (not negotiation and patience).

The declaration continues this argument in its examination of civil liberty. It defines civil liberty as civil rights—rights shared equally by all citizens. It broadens the concept to include the right to “equal treatment in places of public entertainment,” that is, restaurants, theaters, hotels, and other places of public accommodation. Exclusion from such places must not be based on race or color but on the individual's behavior and demeanor. The declaration demands equal access not to residences or other private spaces but to places open to the public, the same places blacks finally achieved access to in the Civil Rights Act of 1964. Furthermore, to gain their civil rights, blacks must be willing to protest.

As it turns to economic opportunity, the Declaration of Principles directly confronts the heart of Washington's program for African American advancement. Washington believed that the acquisition of property and prosperity would earn blacks the respect of whites and equal rights and that this prosperity could most easily be achieved in the South. The declaration rejects this, noting that African Americans are denied equal economic opportunity in the South and that prejudice and inequity in the law in that region undermine black economic efforts. Specifically, it protests the spread of peonage that has returned blacks to virtual slavery in large areas of the rural South and the practice of discrimination in hiring, wages, and credit that has “crushed” black labor and small businesses.

“Education”

Education was a key issue for the Niagara Movement. Most of the delegates who attended the gathering were from the college-educated black elite, the group that Du Bois termed the “Talented Tenth,” and the group that most Niagarites believed would provide the leadership for African American advancement. Generally this group denigrated Booker T. Washington and his Tuskegee Institute for their focus on job training and practical education. However, the section on education in the Declaration of Principles recognizes the need for all forms of education in the African American community. It focuses its complaints on the lack of equal access to education for blacks, especially in the South. Specifically, it calls for “common” schools (basically elementary schools) to be free and compulsory for all children, regardless of race. It also calls for blacks to have access to high schools, colleges and universities, and trade and technical schools, and it calls for the U.S. government to aid common-school education, especially in the South.

What is striking about the statement on education is that it does not call for the desegregation of education. It specifically asks for an increase in the number of public high schools in the South, where blacks rarely had access to them, and it requests white philanthropists to provide adequate endowments for black institutions of higher education. The focus is clearly on improving black access to educational facilities of all types and at all levels. The language of this section is also much more conciliatory; agitation is suggested only to pressure the U.S. government to provide aid to black common schools. To understand this, it is important to remember that public school systems did not appear in most southern states prior to the period of Reconstruction, and in 1905 schools throughout the South were very poorly funded. Educational facilities for African Americans received significantly less support than did those for white students.

“Courts,” “Public Opinion,” and “Health”

The next three paragraphs address three seemingly unrelated topics. The statement on courts begins with a “demand” for fair and honest judges, the inclusion without discrimination of blacks on juries, and fair and equitable sentencing procedures. It then lists additional needed reforms ranging from social-service institutions such as orphanages and reformatories and an end to the convict-lease system. In contrast, the statement on health begins, “We plead for health—for an opportunity to live in decent houses and localities.” There was a connection between the two issues, although it was somewhat tenuous. Bringing justice to the criminal justice system extended to providing a decent environment for orphans, dependent children, and children in the court system; health was extended to include a healthy environment, both physically and morally, in which to raise children. While these concerns were not always at the forefront of civil rights agitation, these issues, especially those that relate to child welfare, reflected the social agenda voiced by white progressive reformers in the early years of the century.

The paragraph on public opinion introduces a new concern, a perceived shift away from the ideals of democracy that were voiced in the eighteenth century by the Founding Fathers. The last sentence, with its reference to “all men … created free and equal” and “unalienable rights,” echoes the language of the Declaration of Independence. The Niagara delegates were not ignorant of the slavery and racial prejudice that were central to the founding of the United States, but their alarm over the “retrogression” was justified. Racial violence was rampant; democracy seemed challenged by labor wars and fears of unrestricted immigration; and the arts, sciences, and social sciences embraced a new scientific racism that was based on the application of Charles Darwin's “survival of the fittest” to efforts to categorize and rank human races.

“Employers and Labor Unions”

The declaration's earlier discussion of economic opportunity focuses completely on conditions in the South. Now it turns to economic opportunity in the North, especially the abuses blacks have suffered at the hands of racially prejudiced labor unions and the practice of white employers exploiting blacks by using them as strike breakers. This situation, and especially the restrictive behavior of white labor unions, characterized the African American experience with organized labor throughout much of the twentieth century. It ran counter to the belief of many progressives and socialists that class unity would defeat racial prejudice. The declaration denounces the practices of both employers and unions in strong terms and blames them for contributing to class warfare.

“Protest”

Protest, along with agitation, were central tenets of the Niagara Movement's strategy for achieving racial justice, and both terms appear frequently in the Declaration of Principles. In contrast to Booker T. Washington's Atlanta Exposition Address, with its ambiguity on the effectiveness of agitation, the Declaration of Principles is crystal clear—protest and agitation are necessary tools to combat injustice. However, the language and tone in the section specifically discussing protest are exceptionally mild. The term agitation is not used, and the word protest is used only once. The argument is that blacks must not “allow the impression to remain” that they assented to inferiority, were “submissive” to oppression, or were “apologetic” when faced with insults, and the argument is worded to suggest that Washington was both apologetic and submissive. But there is little power or threat in this language beyond the assurance that although blacks may of necessity submit to oppression, they must continue to raise their voices in protest.

“Color-Line”

Beginning with this paragraph the Declaration of Principles returns to the issue of discrimination and its impact on African Americans. “Color-Line” discusses legitimate and illegitimate discrimination. The former included discrimination based intelligence, immorality, and disease (for example, quarantining someone with a highly infectious disease to protect public health). In contrast, discrimination based on physical conditions such as place of birth (immigrants) and race was never justified. The color line—segregation and discrimination based on race or skin color or both—is described in harsh terms, as barbarous and as a relic of unreasoning human savagery. According to the Declaration of Principles, the fact that the color line is sanctioned by law, custom, or community standards does nothing to legitimize it or to diminish the evil and injustice that it manifests.

“‘Jim Crow’Cars,” “Soldiers,” and “War Amendments”

These three paragraphs briefly address three specific issues related to discrimination. “‘Jim Crow' cars” refers to the segregation of African Americans on railroads. This issue had both practical and symbolic importance. Railroads were by far the chief means of intercity transportation at the beginning of the twentieth century. Policies that restricted black passengers to overcrowded, rowdy Jim Crow cars affected all black passengers, especially women and the black elite. Virtually every black who traveled through the South suffered this indignity. Du Bois himself had been victimized by this practice and sought Washington's help in an unsuccessful effort to seek redress from the Southern Railway Company. The issue of Jim Crow segregation on railroads was the subject of the Plessy v. Ferguson case; the Supreme Court ruling legitimizing separate-but-equal segregation provided the legal basis for segregation in schools, parks, public accommodations, and almost all areas of life. The Declaration of Principles condemns Jim Crow cars as effectively crucifying “wantonly our manhood, womanhood and self-respect.”

“Soldiers” puts the Niagara Movement on record protesting the inequity experienced by African Americans serving in the armed forces. This issue took on additional meaning a year later as blacks reacted to the harsh treatment of the black soldiers following a racial clash with local civilians in the so-called Brownsville incident in Brownsville, Texas, and it was revived again during World War I as black troops suffered from systematic discrimination and mistreatment.

One of the most frustrating issues facing African Americans was that along with abolishing slavery, the three Civil War amendments wrote civil rights and voting rights into the U.S. Constitution. The Fourteenth Amendment guaranteed all citizens, including blacks, equal protection under the law and equal rights and privileges; the Fifteenth Amendment provided that no citizen could be denied the right to vote “on account of race, color, or previous condition of servitude.” What the Declaration calls for is legislation from Congress to enforce these provisions.

“Oppression” and “The Church”

In examining the broad issue of oppression, the Declaration presents a broad litany of crimes perpetrated on African Americans, from their kidnapping in Africa to their ravishment and degradation in America; as they have struggled to advance themselves, again and again they have encountered criticism, hindrance, and violence. In a thinly veiled attack on Booker T. Washington, the Niagarites also place blame on African American leadership for providing in the face of oppression only cowardice and apology, essentially leaving it to the oppressor to define the rights of the oppressed. Finally, in the brief paragraph “The Church,” the Declaration charges churches and organized religion with acquiescence to racial oppression and condemns them as “wrong, unchristian and disgraceful.”

“Agitation”

Following this litany of grievances, the Declaration of Principles reaffirms its commitment to protest and agitation. The delegates vow to voice their grievances “loudly and insistently” and note that “manly agitation is the way to liberty.” As in the section on “Protest,” the language is clear but measured and temperate rather than threatening.