The Niagara Movement 1905-1910: Social change & the making of Black publics

The Niagara Movement 1905-1910: Social Change and the Making of Black Publics is the first full-length comprehensive sociological analysis of the Niagara Movement. Its legacy is neglected, the movement flippantly reduced to being the inconsequential precursor of the NAACP or a superficial organization created by the idealist W. E. B. Du Bois. In reality, the Niagara Movement, although short-lived, was not a failure. It was a success because it made the need to annihilate Jim Crow and the need to address the atrocities caused by slavery publicly visible. This case study of the Niagara Movement ultimately reveals that scholars of social movements, political scientists, and historians alike must focus on the crucial role of talk and debate in political action. It is important that around the turn of the twentieth century, marginalized African Americans carved out new public space for the purposes of discussing the struggle against Jim Crow and the limitations of American democracy. Moreover, the creation of new black publics led to the debates and discussions that set the stage for twentieth-century black protest. This study of the Niagara Movement reveals new insight into the history of the Civil Rights Movement and examines talk and public discussion as an understudied resource for mobilization.;This dissertation has aimed to reveal several important arguments. First, the Niagara Movement was an important civil rights organization that played a crucial role in the development of the larger Civil Rights Movement. The Niagara Movement was the precursor to the National Association for the Advancement of Colored People. Moreover, the Civil Rights Movement was not just a mid-twentieth-century phenomenon. Second, the making of what I call "black publics" played a pivotal role in initiating the Civil Rights Movement. The creation of publics, or groups of concerned citizens that met publicly to challenge hegemonic discourses and shift public opinion, is crucial to social change and, specifically, social movements. Hence, the creation of black publics was crucial to the development of the Civil Rights Movement.;The Niagara Movement prompted public exchanges that produced a space in which African Americans recognized that through the public discussion of various ideas, they could craft a new movement for change. Studying the constitution of black publics is illuminating for understanding how African Americans developed political capacity. African Americans did not become political actors just because the government eventually passed the 15th and 24 th Amendments and the Voting Rights Act. African Americans gradually became political actors by interacting with one another and whites in public. African Americans developed political capacity, gained political legitimacy, and forced American democracy to change by interacting in the early black public sphere. Without talk, debate, and discussion in public political action, protests and the social change that often ensues from the former are not possible.