THE NIAGARA MOVEMENT’S POWERFUL FRUIT – 100 YEARS OF PROTEST
BY
JULIANNE MALVEAUX
The Association for the Study of African American Life and History was founded 90 years ago, on September 9, 1915. It’s founder, Carter G. Woodson, author of the scathing masterpiece, The Miseducation of the Negro (1933), was also the founder of Negro History Week (1926) the forerunner to the contemporary Black History Month. Each year, the association develops a theme for Black History Month. This year, it has highlighted The Niagara Movement: Black Protest Reborn, 1905-2005.
The Niagara Movement lasted a decade, at best. At its heyday, it had fewer than 200 members. But while the group was small, almost exclusively male, and poorly funded, it managed to act as a thorn in the side of the accommodationist despot, Booker T. Washington, and also to articulate a series of goals and principles that remain unrealized today. Washington was so profoundly threatened by the Niagara Movement that he sent spies to cover its meetings and encouraged a “blackout” of its coverage by the black press. Still, most historians say the Niagara movement left the legacy of the NAACP, the organization founded in 1909 to advance the civil rights cause.
This could not be a better year to celebrate black protest, in a year when so many African Americans feel no need to protest. Ground down or worn out, too many seem to accept the unjust realities of our current situation as if there are no alternatives. We need simply look back a century to remember the courage that other African Americans had, though they had fewer resources and advantages than we do. Too many of us have accepted the hype that race no longer matters even as lawsuits are being filed against all kinds of folks – Macy’s, Cracker Barrel (why does anyone eat at a place called “Cracker” anyway), Planned Parenthood. To be sure, the merit of these lawsuits has yet to be determined. But the fact is that racial bias in the workplace, the marketplace, and the classroom has hardly disappeared. So why has protest?
The Niagara movement was a protest for – suffrage (although W.E.B. DuBois disturbingly used the term “full manhood suffrage,” which totally sidelined black women), equal enforcement of laws, and “real education.” How do we get these things? “By voting where we may vote; by persistent, unceasing agitation; by hammering at the truth; by sacrifice and work.” Not much, it seems, has changed since the founding of the Niagara movement. African Americans, for all our progress, still seek voting rights (and ask those who stood in long lines in Ohio only to be turned away about that, or ask the felons who have paid their debt to society about their franchise), equal enforcement of the law, and real education. Face, it, No Child Left Behind isn’t going to do it. The real education DuBois said he wanted embraced the notion that our children should be “trained as intelligent human beings. We will fight for all time against any proposal to educate black boys and girls simply as servants and underlings, or simply for the use of other people. They have a right to know, to think, to aspire.” Inscribe that quote at the entry of each of our nation’s inner city schools!
Celebrating protest, beginning with the Niagara movement, means celebrating those folks who refused to go along to get along, those folks who refused to smile and take the payola that Booker T. Washington was offering. It means celebrating the Black Panther Party and its breakfast program, its motivation to feed black children so they could learn. It means celebrating those SNCC workers, those Freedom Riders and civil rights stalwarts, folk like John Lewis, Joyce Ladner, and Eleanor Holmes Norton (not to mention James Farmer, who recently made his transition). And it means celebrating the folks who turned their backs as George W. Bush walked down Pennsylvania Avenue, delusionally thinking that the last election was a referendum on the carnage we have wrought on Iraq. The protest tradition is too often disparaged, nudged to the sidelines, seen as disruptive. But the Niagara Movement, with its very brief history, reminds us that protest sows seeds that often turn into remarkably effective (and sometimes relatively mainstream) flowers.
Remember that the NAACP, the child of the Niagara Movement, was considered a subversive organization by some until the passage of the Civil Rights Act in 1964. Educators in schools that were segregated were frequently harassed because they held NAACP memberships. Today, young people question the relevance of the NAACP. Once upon a time, the NAACP was our nation’s protest organization. This year, as we celebrate the 100th anniversary of the Niagara Movement, one might ask if our oldest and largest civil rights organization will embrace the protest tradition again.
Much of the protest that emerged in the 1965-1975 period took place on our nation’s campuses. Peace activists protested the injustice of the war in Vietnam. Black students protested racist admissions policies, and fought for a place on campus. Women protested their marginalization, and absence in faculty ranks. These protests bore fruit – in black studies departments, black cultural centers, women’s studies departments, and a vibrant multicultural movement. Will these folks, this black history month, celebrate their protest history, or will they focus on tried and true themes this Black History Month?
Too often, black history month turns into recitations of “first blacks,” a reflection on “how far we have come,” a droning and moaning litany of significant dates. This year we have the opportunity to embrace that which is vibrant about black history, to remember the Niagara Movement and the protests we have experienced in these last hundred years. This is a chance for us to celebrate A. Philip Randolph, the mastermind of the March on Washington in 1963. It’s an opportunity for us to lift up the economist Abram Harris and the “Don’t Buy Where You Can’t Work” campaigns. It is also an opportunity for us to change the language around spontaneous street protest, the actions some would call “riots” that are more accurately described as “uprisings.”
The ASALH, this year, has challenged those in the academy to reclaim our protest tradition. With a protest agenda that is a hundred years old, will we step up and meet the challenge?