Niagara Movement Declaration of Principles Facts for
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Fast, fun facts and Frequently Asked Questions (FAQ's)
about the Niagara Movement Declaration of Principles.
Who wrote the Niagara Movement Declaration of Principles? The Niagara Movement Declaration of Principles
were primarily the work of William Edward
Burghardt Du Bois and William Monroe Trotter
When were the Niagara Movement Declaration of Principles
written? The Niagara Movement Declaration of Principles
were drafted during the week of July 9, 1905 at the
inaugural meeting of the
Niagara Movement.
What the Niagara Movement Declaration of Principles?
The Niagara Movement Declaration of Principles
addressed the issues of equal rights and
racial discrimination in relation to
economic opportunity, education, the courts,
health, employers and Labor Unions, housing
and protested against the treatment of WW1
soldiers and Jim Crow policies.
Niagara Movement Declaration of
Principles -
Delivered at the first conference of the Niagara
Movement
at Niagara Falls during the week of July 9, 1905
The Progress: The
members of the conference, known as the Niagara
Movement, assembled in annual meeting at Buffalo, July
11th, 1905, congratulate the Negro-Americans on certain
undoubted evidences of progress in the last decade,
particularly the increase of intelligence, the buying of
property, the checking of crime, the uplift in home
life, the advance in literature and art, and the
demonstration of constructive and executive ability in
the conduct of great religious, economic, and
educational institutions.
Suffrage: At the same time, we believe that this class
of American citizens should protest emphatically and
continually against the curtailment of their political
rights. We believe in manhood suffrage; we believe that
no man is so good, intelligent or wealthy as to be
entrusted wholly with the welfare of his neighbor.
Civil Liberty: We believe also in protest against the
curtailment of our civil rights. All American citizens
have the right to equal treatment in places of public
entertainment according to their behavior and deserts.
Economic Opportunity: We especially complain against the
denial of equal opportunities to us in economic life; in
the rural districts of the South this amounts to peonage
and virtual slavery; all over the South it tends to
crush labor and small business enterprises; and
everywhere American prejudice, helped often by
iniquitous laws, is making it more difficult for
Negro-Americans to earn a decent living.
Education: Common school education should be free to all
American children and compulsory. High school training
should be adequately provided for all, and college
training should be the monopoly of no class or race in
any section of our common country. We believe that, in
defense of our own institutions, the United States
should aid common school education, particularly in the
South, and we especially recommend concerted agitation
to this end. We urge an increase in public high school
facilities in the South, where the Negro-Americans are
almost wholly without such provisions. We favor
well-equipped trade and technical schools for the
training of artisans, and the need of adequate and
liberal endowment for a few institutions of higher
education must be patent to sincere well-wishers of the
race.
Courts: We demand upright judges in courts, juries
selected without discrimination on account of color and
the same measure of punishment and the same efforts at
reformation for black as for white offenders. We need
orphanages and farm schools for dependent children,
juvenile reformatories for delinquents, and the
abolition of the dehumanizing convict-lease system.
Public Opinion: We note with alarm the evident
retrogression in this and of land of sound public
opinion on the subject of manhood rights, republican
government and human brotherhood, and we pray God that
this nation will not degenerate into a mob of boasters
and oppressors, but rather will return to the faith of
the fathers, that all men were created free and equal,
with certain unalienable rights.
Health: We plead for health - for an opportunity to live
in decent houses and localities, for a chance to rear
our children in physical and moral cleanliness.
Employers and Labor Unions: We hold up for public
execration the conduct of tow opposite classes of men:
The practice among employers of importing ignorant
Negro-Americans laborers in emergencies, and then
affording them neither protection nor permanent
employment, and the practice of labor unions in
proscribing and boycotting and oppressing thousands of
their fellow-toilers, simply because they are black.
These methods have accentuated and will accentuate the
war of labor and capital, and they are disgraceful to
both sides.
Protest: We refuse to allow the impression to remain
that the Negro-American assents to inferiority, is
submissive under oppression and apologetic before
insults. Through helplessness we may submit, but the
voice of protest of ten million Americans must never
cease to assail the ears of their follows, so long as
America is unjust.
Color-Line: Any discrimination based simply on race or
color is barbarous, we care not how hallowed it be by
custom expediency or prejudice. Differences made on
account of ignorance, immorality, or disease are
legitimate methods of fighting evil, and against them we
have no word of protest, but discriminations based
simply and solely on physical peculiarities, place of
birth, color of skin, are relics of that unreasoning
human savagery of which the world is and ought to be
thoroughly ashamed.
"Jim Crow" Cars: We protest against the "Jim Crow" car,
since its effect is and must be to make us pay
first-class fare for third-class accommodations, render
us open to insults and discomfort and to crucify
wantonly our womanhood and self-respect.
Soldiers: We regret that his nation has never seen fit
adequately to reward the black soldiers who, in its five
wars, have defended their county with their blood, and
yet have been systematically denied the promotions which
their abilities deserve. And we regard as unjust, the
exclusion of black boys from the military and naval
training schools.
War Amendments: We urge upon Congress the enactment of
appropriate legislation for securing the proper
enforcement of those articles of freedom, the
thirteenth, fourteenth and fifteenth amendments of the
Constitution of the United States.
Oppression: We repudiate the monstrous doctrine that the
oppressor should be the sole authority as to the rights
of the oppressed. The Negro race in America stolen,
ravished and degraded, struggling up through
difficulties and oppression, needs sympathy and receives
criticism: needs help and is given hindrance, needs
protection and is given mob-violence, needs justice and
is given charity, needs leadership and is given
cowardice and apology, needs bread and is given a stone.
This nation will never stand justified before God until
these things are changed.
The Church: Especially are we surprised and astonished
at the recent attitude of the church of Christ - of an
increase of a desire to bow to racial prejudice, to
narrow the bounds of human brotherhood, and to segregate
black men to some outer sanctuary. This is wrong,
unchristian and disgraceful to the twentieth century
civilization.
Agitation: Of the above grievance we do not hesitate to
complain, and to complain loudly and insistently. To
ignore, overlook, or apologize for these wrongs is to
prove ourselves unworthy of freedom. Persistent manly
agitation is the way to liberty, and toward this goal
the Niagara Movement has started and asks the
cooperation of all men of all races.
Help: At the same time we want to acknowledge with deep
thankfulness the help of our fellowmen from the
Abolitionists down to those who today still stand for
equal opportunity and who have given and still give of
their wealth and of their poverty for our advancement.
Duties: And while we are demanding and ought to demand,
and will continue to demand the rights enumerated above,
God forbid that we should ever forget to urge
corresponding duties upon our people:
1.The duty to vote.
2.The duty to respect the rights of others.
3.The duty to work.
4.The duty to obey the laws.
5.The duty to be clean and orderly.
6.The duty to send our children to school.
7.The duty to respect ourselves, even as we respect
others.
This statement, complaint and prayer we submit to the
American people, and Almighty God. |