On this day in Labor History the year was 1905.
That was the day that revolutionary black scholar W.E.B. DuBois helped found the Niagara Movement.
It was named for the “mighty current” of change the group hoped to bring about.
The initial organizing meeting was held near Niagara Falls, New York.
During the Reconstruction period after the Civil War, African Americans had an unprecedented level of freedom. They were also involved in politics, winning elections for local and state political offices.
However, when Reconstruction ended, those gains were quickly rolled back.
W.E.B. DuBois was one of the more prominent African Americans who opposed Jim Crow laws, which strictly enforced racial segregation in the South.
At the organizing conference of the Niagara Movement, the group drafted a “Declaration of Principles.”
Foremost among these was a demand for voting rights for black Americans.
Another principle concerned labor rights.
“We hold up for public execration the conduct of two opposite classes of men: The practice among employers of importing ignorant Negro- American 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.”
This point recognized that the refusal of many unions to include black workers limited black economic opportunity.
Managers pitted workers against one another along the lines of race to undercut worker solidarity and power.
The Niagara Movement continued until 1908.
That year a race riot by white residents of Springfield, Illinois, the hometown of Abraham Lincoln, left eight black residents dead.
In response DuBois founded an interracial organization, National Association for the Advancement of Colored People, which still exists today.
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Labor History in 2:00 brought to you by the Illinois Labor History Society and The Rick Smith Show