When he found himself without any allies, he pressed on.
William Monroe Trotter (April 7, 1872 – April 7, 1934) was born to James Monroe Trotter who was born a slave in Mississippi. William was born to much better circumstances than his father. He grew up in an affluent area of Hyde Park, Massachusetts. Growing up, Trotter watched his father ascend to Recorder of Deeds for the District of Columbia, a position held by Frederick Douglass and Sen. Blanche Bruce.
Trotter graduated from the all-white Hyde Park High School, then went on to earn a bachelors and a masters degree from Harvard. After earning his degrees, Trotter began to work towards civil rights for black Americans. Quickly, he clashed with the black establishment. Booker T. Washington and other Southern black thinkers advocated for conservative, incremental reform of the racist systems in the South. Northern black thinkers advocated for more aggressive, disruptive change. Trotter sided with the more aggressive activists. To press his active agenda, Trotter founded The Guardian, a weekly newspaper.
Among the black establishment, the reaction to The Guardian was decidedly nasty. The newspaper was satirical and quite critical of the conservative black thinkers. The paper was never terribly popular; advocating that Southerners fight against the incredible oppression of Jim Crow would never be very palatable coming from a Northerner. As the Great Migration progressed in the first decade of the 20th century, segregation and discrimination began to increase across the northern United States but nothing compared to the war zone that was the former Confederacy.
In 1905, Booker T. Washington organized a meeting to create a national organization for black people. The radicals in attendance, one of whom was William Trotter, felt Washington was trying to dominate the conference in favor of his brand of moderate reform. As a result, Trotter, W.E.B. Du Bois, and other radicals formed The Niagara Movement in 1905.
In 1909, The Niagara Movement dissolved and re-formed as the National Association for the Advancement of Colored People (NAACP). Though instrumental in the founding of the Niagara Movement and the NAACP, William Trotter was once again rejected for his radical views. Trotter proposed introducing a bill that would make lynching a federal crime — that was “radical” for 1909. He never served a very prominent role in the NAACP due to these unpopular views. In response, Trotter founded the National Equal Rights League (NERL).
The NERL never managed to attract the widespread support of the NAACP. Trotter’s influence waned quickly. He continued to publish The Guardian as a protest newspaper publicizing injustices against black Americans, but never managed to gain a widespread audience. He died after a fall from his roof. He was 62 years old.
TL;DR
- William M. Trotter earned two degrees from Harvard in the early 1900s.
- He helped found the NAACP.
- He was too “radical” for the NAACP, but refused to moderate his views to be more acceptable by the establishment.
What You Should Do Now:
- Read this bio of William Monroe Trotter.
- Read this article about William Trotter’s father, James Trotter.
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