W.E.B. DuBois and the Niagra Movement
From the Niagara Movement to the Montgomery Improvement Association
Jul 17, 2009
American history is full of examples of how successful social movements can be a positive tool for societal change. For instance, the American Revolution illustrates how a few individuals dedicated to a single philosophy can even create a New Nation. Sometimes, however, it may take generations before a social movement’s objectives are realized. W.E.B. DuBois established the Niagara movement to show the world how America had failed to live up to its responsibilities to its black citizens by allowing, and in many instances encouraging Jim Crow racism. It would be nearly fifty years before Martin Luther King, Jr. and the Montgomery Improvement Association successfully demonstrated the absurdity of race-based segregation and the power inherent in social movements.
W.E.B. DuBois and the Niagara Movement
Successful social movements rely on the organized and dedicated efforts of a group of people in initiating social change. When DuBois broke ideologically with Booker T. Washington’s “can’t we all just get along” accomodationist strategy found in the Atlanta Compromise, he did so publicly and often rudely. Nonetheless, his creation of the Niagara movement signaled that blacks would no longer accept social and political mistreatment quietly.
Within a few years the Niagara movement grew into the National Association for the Advancement of Colored Peoples (NAACP). The early years of the NAACP were spent exposing the barbarity of lynching. DuBois and other NAACP leaders failed to understand how a country that would accuse others of human rights violations would tolerate such actions within its own borders. This stench of hypocrisy eventually led to DuBois’ self-imposed exile from the land of his birth.
Martin Luther King, Jr. and the Montgomery Improvement Association
Even though DuBois fought racism tirelessly until his death, the modern era of the Civil Rights social movement began in Montgomery, Alabama. On December 1, 1955, Rosa Parks refused to give up her seat to a white bus rider and was subsequently arrested. Park’s actions demonstrated that the local black community would no longer accept second-class citizenship.
The local black clergy recognized the charisma of a young Martin Luther King, Jr. and offered him the leadership of the Montgomery Improvement Association (MIA). King’s commitment to civil disobedience and Christian principles provided him the courage to organize a community under a single well defined goal: reform the segregationist policies on the buses in Montgomery, Alabama. Soon, this transformed into an all-out attack on segregation on city buses. For nine months Montgomery’s black community walked, prayed, endured violence and police taunts, and harassment from their white neighbors.
Conclusion
In November, 1956, the Supreme Court finally acquiesced to reason and affirmed the illegalities of segregation on buses. Even though the Willie Lynch conditioning of fear and distrust through the pitting of “the old black vs. the young black” successfully kept the black community in turmoil for almost 100 years, Parks’ refusal to deny her rights continued the DuBoisian strategy of direct confrontation. The Montgomery bus boycott also confirmed King’s theories of social change through nonviolent confrontation and fulfilled DuBois’ goal of black equality. Perhaps more important than social change or nonviolent strategies, King was able to arouse the consciousness of whites while motivating blacks to action. Unfortunately, it was this ability that led men like J. Edgar Hoover to fear him.
References
Burns, Stewart. Social Movements of the 1960s: Searching for Democracy. Boston: Twayne, 1990.
Graetz, Robert. A White Preacher’s Memoir: the Montgomery Bus Boycott. Montgomery: Black Belt Press, 1999.
Robinson, Jo Ann Gibson. The Montgomery Bus Boycott and the Women Who Started it: The Memoir of Jo Ann Gibson Robinson. Knoxville: University of Tennessee Press, 1987.
Smith, Robert. “Hammering at the Truth.” Transition, no. 54 (1991): 90-103.
