Before the Harlem Renaissance was born, the Niagara Movement set the grounds for African-American rights. It was with these rights that the people of the Renaissance gained the confidence to persue their artistic endeavors.
On this page, the following questions will be answered:
  1. What is the Niagara Movement?
  2. How did it lead to the Harlem Renaissance?
  3. Who began the Niagara Movement?
  4. Where did the Niagara Movement occur?
  5. When did the Niagara Movement occur?
Answers are at bottom of the page.
The Niagara Movement
     Future leader of the National Association for the Advancement of Colored People, W.E.B. DuBois, was a young man in search of a teaching job when he learned of the unfair disadvantages that the African-Americans faced in the late 1890's and early 1900's. He was not alone in these feelings; therefore, DuBois, Booker T. Washington, and Paul Laurence Dunbar, all began traveling to speak out on the atrocious treatment the blacks were receiving.
     As whites and blacks seemed to separate more, DuBois left a job he had to go to Tuskeegee, Alabama, called the capital of the Negro Nation, to pursue a change from the African-American's role as subservient to the white race to a race of people strong and united. Several meetings and interviews later, a committee was formed to oversee the movement of Negroes into influential society. The committee, named the Committee of Twelve was formed in 1904. This was not very successful, yet laid the grounds for stronger attempts.
     In 1905, fifty-nine men of color from seventeen states called for a meeting in Buffalo, NY, to discuss the need to organize intellectual blacks to move their race forward. Due to financial problems, only twenty-nine men from fourteen states attended. The "Niagara Movement" was incorporated January 31, 1906, in the District of Columbia.
     The Niagara Movement called for the following principles:
  1. Freedom of speech and criticism.
  2. An unfettered and unsubsidized press.
  3. Manhood suffrage.
  4. The abolition of all caste distinctions based simply on race and color.
  5. The recognition of the principle of human brotherhood as a practical present creed.
  6. The recognition of the highest and best human training as the monopoly of no class or race.
  7. A belief in the dignity of labor.
  8. United effort to realize these ideals under wise and courageous leadership.
     The first meeting was held openly in 1906, despite criticism, at the site of the John Brown raid in Harpers' Ferry, West Virginia. By 1907 and 1908, the movement lost steam, but led to the creation of the NAACP. These events were forerunners to the Harlem Renaissance and enabled it to happen.
  1. What is the Niagra Movement? A movement for civil rights.
  2. How did it lead to the Harlem Renaissance? By instilling confidence in the black people, they could persue their own cultures to showcase to the nation.
  3. Who began the Niagra Movement? W.E.B. DuBois.
  4. Where did the Niagra Movement occur? Eastern United States.
  5. When did the Niagra Movement occur? 1904.