W.E.B. Du Bois (Niagara Movement Speech)
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Niagara Movement Speech Facts for kids: Fast Fact Sheet
Fast, fun facts and Frequently Asked Questions (FAQ's)
about the Niagara Movement Speech.
Who made the Niagara Movement Speech? The Niagara Movement Speech,
entitled "An Address to the Country" was
written and delivered by W.E.B. Du Bois.
When was the Niagara Movement Speech? The date of the
Niagara Movement Speech was on
August 19th,
1906 at the second annual meeting of the
Niagara Movement.
Where was the Niagara Movement Speech
made?
The Niagara Movement Speech was made
on the campus
of Storer College at Harper's Ferry, West
Virginia
Niagara Movement Speech:
The Niagara Movement Speech by W.E.B. Du
Bois marked the conclusion of the second
conference of the Niagara Movement on
Sunday, August 19th. It is interesting to
compare the text of the Niagara Movement
Speech with the text, tone and words used in
the
Atlanta Compromise Speech by Booker T.
Washington
Text of the
Niagara Movement Speech
Niagara Movement Speech by W.E.B. DuBois
"Address to the Country"
Delivered at the second conference of the Niagara
Movement
Harper's Ferry, West Virginia, 1906
The men of the
Niagara Movement coming from the toil of the year's hard
work and pausing a moment from the earning of their
daily bread turn toward the nation and again ask in the
name of ten million the privilege of a hearing. In the
past year the work of the Negro hater has flourished in
the land. Step by step the defenders of the rights of
American citizens have retreated. The work of stealing
the black man's ballot has progressed and the fifty and
more representatives of stolen votes still sit in the
nation's capital. Discrimination in travel and public
accommodation has so spread that some of our weaker
brethren are actually afraid to thunder against color
discrimination as such and are simply whispering for
ordinary decencies.
Against this the Niagara Movement eternally protests. We
will not be satisfied to take one jot or little less
than our full manhood rights. We claim for ourselves
every single right that belongs to a freeborn American,
political, civil and social; and until we get these
rights we will never cease to protest and assail the
ears of America. The battle we wage is not for ourselves
alone but for all true Americans. It is a fight for
ideals, lest this, our common fatherland, false to its
founding, become in truth the land of the thief and the
home of the Slave - a by-word and a hissing among the
nations for its sounding pretentions and pitiful
accomplishment.
Never before in the modern age has a great and civilized
folk threatened to adopt so cowardly a creed in the
treatment of its fellow-citizens born and bred on its
soil. Stripped of verbiage and subterfuge and in its
naked nastiness the new American creed says: Fear to let
black men even try to rise lest they become the equals
of the white. And this is the land that pro- fesses to
follow Jesus Christ. The blasphemy of such a course is
only matched by its cowardice.
In detail our demands are clear and unequivocal. First,
we would vote; with the right to vote goes everything:
Freedom, manhood, the honor of your wives, the chastity
of your daughters, the right to work, and the chance to
rise, and let no man listen to those who deny this.
We want full manhood suffrage, and we want it now,
henceforth and forever.
Second. We want discrimination in public accommodation
to cease. Separation in railway and street cars, based
simply on race and color, is un-American, un-democratic,
and silly. We protest against all such discrimination.
Third. We claim the right of freemen to walk, talk, and
be with them that to be with us. No man has a right to
choose another man's friends, and to attempt to do so is
an impudent interference with the most fundamental human
privilege.
Fourth. We want the laws enforced against rich as well
as poor; against Capitalist as well as Laborer; against
white as well as black. We are not more lawless than the
white race, we are more often arrested, convicted, and
mobbed. We want justice even for criminals and outlaws.
We want the Constitution of the country enforced. We
want Congress to take charge of Congressional elections.
We want the Fourteenth amendment carried out to the
letter and every State disfranchised in Congress which
attempts to disfranchise its rightful voters. We want
the Fifteenth amendment enforced and no State allowed to
base its franchise simply on color.
The failure of the Republican Party in Congress at the
session just closed to redeem its pledge of 1904 with
reference to suffrage conditions at the South seems a
plain, deliberate, and premeditated breach of promise,
and stamps that party as guilty of obtaining votes under
false pretense.
Fifth. We want our children educated. The school system
in the country districts of the South is a disgrace and
in few towns and cities are the Negro schools what they
ought to be. We want the national government to step in
and wipe out illiteracy in the South. Either the United
States will destroy ignorance or ignorance will destroy
the United States.
And when we call for education we mean real education.
We believe in work. We ourselves are workers, but work
is not necessarily education. Education is the
development of power and ideal. We want our children
trained as intelligent human beings should be, and we will
fight for all time against any proposal to educate black
boys and girls simply as servants and under- lings, or
simpIy for the use of other people. They have a right to
know, to think, to aspire.
These are some of the chief things which we want. How
shall we get them? By voting where we may vote, by
persistent, unceasing agitation; by hammering at the
truth, by sacrifice and work.
We do not believe in violence, neither in the despised
violence of the raid nor the lauded violence of the
soldier, nor the barbarous violence of the mob, but we
do believe in John Brown, in that incarnate spirit of
justice, that hatred of a lie, that willingness to
sacrifice money, reputation, and life itself on the
altar of right. And here on the scene of John Brown's
martyrdom we re-consecrate ourselves, our honor, our
property to the final emancipation of the race which
John Brown died to make free.
Our enemies; triumphant for the present, are fighting
the stars in their courses. Justice and humanity must
prevail. We live to tell these dark brothers of ours -
scattered in counsel, wavering and weak - that no bribe
of money or notoriety, no promise of wealth or fame, is
worth the surrender of a people's manhood or the loss of
a man's self-respect. We refuse to surrender the
leadership of this race to cowards and bucklers. We are
men; we will be treated as men. On this rock we have
planted our banners. We will never give up, though the
trump of doom find us still fighting.
And we shall win. The past promised it, the present
foretells it. Thank God for John Brown! Thank God for
Garrison and Douglass! Sumner and Phillips, Nat Turner
and Robert Gould Shaw, and all the hallowed dead who
died for freedom! Thank God for all those to-day, few
though their voices be, who have not forgotten the
divine brotherhood of all men white and black, rich and
poor, fortunate and unfortunate.
We appeal to the young men and women of this nation, to
those whose nostrils are not yet befouled by greed and
snobbery and racial narrowness: Stand up for the right,
prove your- selves worthy of your heritage and whether
born north or south dare to treat men as men. Cannot the
nation that has absorbed ten million foreigners into its
political life without catastrophe absorb ten million
Negro Americans into that same political life at less
cost than their unjust and illegal exclusion will
involve?
Courage brothers! The battle for humanity is not lost or
losing. All across the skies sit signs of promise. The
Slave is raising in his might, the yellow millions are
tasting liberty, the black Africans are writhing toward
the light, and everywhere the laborer, with ballot in
his hand, is voting open the gates of Opportunity and
Peace. The morning breaks over blood-stained hills. We
must not falter, we may not shrink. Above are the
everlasting stars.
The Niagara Movement
Speech:
African American History
For visitors interested in the history of African
Americans refer to the following articles:
Black
History for kids: Important People and Events
For visitors interested in African American History
refer to
Black History - People and Events.
A useful resource for
teachers, kids, schools and colleges undertaking
projects for the Black History Month.
Niagara Movement Speech - President Theodore
Roosevelt Video
The article on the Niagara Movement Speech provides detailed facts and a summary of one of the important events during his presidential term in office.
The following video will give you additional important facts and
dates about the political events experienced by the 26th American
President whose presidency spanned from September 14, 1901 to March
4, 1909.
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