William Monroe Trotter
William Monroe Trotter | |
---|---|
Born | William Monroe Trotter April 7, 1872 near Chillicothe, Ohio, U.S. |
Died | April 7, 1934 Boston, Massachusetts | (aged 62)
Alma mater | Harvard University |
Spouse | Geraldine "Deenie" Pindell |
Scientific career | |
Fields | Civil rights, real estate |
Institutions | Boston Guardian |
William Monroe Trotter, sometimes just Monroe Trotter (April 7, 1872 – April 7, 1934), was a newspaper editor and real estate businessman based in
Trotter was born into a well-to-do family and raised in
In 1914, he had a highly publicized meeting with
Early life and education
William was the third child, and first to survive infancy, of
Virginia Isaacs, also of mixed race, was born free in 1842 in either
Shortly after the Civil War, the Trotters moved from Ohio to settle in
Trotter's father broke through many racial obstacles placed before him, but was often frustrated in his attempts to gain equal treatment or fair consideration. While serving in the Union Army, he protested the inequality of pay between blacks and whites.
The young Trotter (who was usually called by his middle name "Monroe") grew up in this environment, and was introduced to
During his years at Harvard, he adopted a number of habits which he maintained for much of his life. He organized and led the Total Abstinence League, a temperance organization; he was a teetotaler and never drank alcohol.[16] He was active in the Baptist church, in which he had considered becoming a minister.[17]
Marriage and family
Following his graduation, Trotter participated in
Early career
Trotter's career began inauspiciously. His initial attempts to get jobs at established banking and real estate firms were unsuccessful, leading him through a succession of lower-paying clerking jobs.[22] He finally landed a job in a white-owned real estate firm in 1898, but decided the next year to open his own business selling insurance and brokering mortgages. He was not particularly active in agitating for civil rights in these years, although his strong opinions on racial equality were evident in an 1899 paper in which he called on African Americans to seek admission to institutions of higher learning. (It was a common practice of the time to direct African Americans away from higher education opportunities and into industrial training programs.) Trotter's business was relatively successful, and he was able to purchase investment properties.[23]
Trotter was increasingly troubled by what he saw as the accommodationist policies of
Although Boston was comparatively congenial when compared to other parts of the country, Trotter and others felt that Washington's stance was leading to an increase in more typically Southern racist attitudes in the city. "The conviction grew upon me", he wrote, that his business successes could be endangered "if race prejudice and persecution and public discrimination from mere color was to spread up from the South and result in a fixed caste of color".[20][26]
The Guardian
My vocation has been to wage a crusade against lynching, disenfranchisement, peonage, public segregation, injustice, denial of service in public places for color, in war time and peace.
—William Monroe Trotter[27]
Trotter's racial activism blossomed in 1901. He helped found the Boston Literary and Historical Association, which became, according to biographer Stephen Fox, "a forum for militant race opinion".[28] He also joined the Massachusetts Racial Protective Association, another local group that promoted political goals of equality. Under the aegis of the latter group, Trotter in October 1901 gave his first major protest speech, attacking Washington's accommodationist stance: "In Boston [Washington] said that the Negro should wait for the franchise until he had got property, education and character. Washington's attitude has ever been one of servility."[29]
With
The Guardian was bitter, satirical, and personal; but it was earnest, and it published facts. It attracted wide attention among colored people; it circulated among them all over the country; it was quoted and discussed. I did not wholly agree with the Guardian, and indeed only a few Negroes did, but nearly all read it and were influenced by it.
—W. E. B. Du Bois[34]
Trotter, in a deliberate move, transferred the Guardian's offices in 1907 to the same building that had once housed
The Guardian was always unprofitable, a condition that was exacerbated by Trotter's refusal to take advertising for alcohol and tobacco. He sold off all of his Boston-area properties by 1910 to raise funds for the newspaper, and he was lax in collecting payments from his subscribers. In his later years, the quality of the publication noticeably declined, and its operations were propped up by a local community group's fund-raising activities.[37][38]
Attacking the African-American establishment
In the early 1900s Trotter noticed that racial segregation was spreading in Boston: the number of hotels, restaurants, and other public establishments refusing service to African Americans was increasing.[39] He came to realize that, in order to effect real change, the radical message needed to be taken out of Boston, and began organizing protest meetings across New England in 1903. At the suggestion of Trotter, William H. Ferris went to Washington D.C. in January 1903. Ferris gave a presentation critical to Booker T. Washington in front of the Bethel Literary and Historical Society on January 6, 1903. Richard W. Thompson spoke in support of Washington as replies at the Second Baptist Lyceum on January 25[40] and Jesse Lawson did the same on February 3.[41] In 1999, Jacqueline M. Moore argued that Thompson's paper failed to hold his ground against Ferris, who was present at the talk.[42]
His long-term objective was to effect policy changes in the National Afro-American Council, then the only national-level organization of African Americans.[43] At the group's annual meeting in Louisville, Kentucky, Trotter and others introduced resolutions calling for more activism, but Booker T. Washington supporters (also known as "Bookerites"), who controlled the council, saw to their defeat. One commentator wrote that the "Boston idiots" had been treated "in delightful fashion".[44] The Guardian described the convention as "dominated to death by one man".[45] The activities of the radicals at the convention did bring them some national press.[45] Trotter continued to criticize Washington in the Guardian; his attacks were particularly harsh and personal, and brought a bitter tinge to the disagreement.[46]
In this period, while the Great Migration of African Americans out of the South to the North was beginning, blacks in the two regions dealt with different conditions. The vast majority of the millions of African Americans still lived in the South, many in rural areas where they were the majority population. But they were effectively disfranchised by new electoral rules and state constitutions, utterly closed out of the political process. This situation would continue, despite some temporarily effective court challenges, through the 1960s. Washington believed he had to help this population within the constraints of their environment. At the same time, he secretly funded legal challenges against the voter registration and electoral restrictions.[47] Trotter and other radicals tended to come from the North, where African Americans exercised more rights in daily life, including the suffrage, were more urbanized, and had achieved more in work and education, but were still subject to discrimination.
Following their failure to advance the radical agenda in Louisville, Trotter and the other radicals sought a more sympathetic forum in which to attack Booker T. Washington. An opportunity arrived when Washington was set to speak in Boston in July 1903.[45] When the Tuskegee Institute leader was introduced to a visibly hostile crowd, a small riot broke out. Trotter, who had arrived prepared with several provocative questions to ask Washington, attempted to read them over the din of the melee. He was among the arrested, and the "Boston riot" received national press coverage.[48] Trotter later claimed that there was no plan to break up the meeting.[49] Bookerites pressed charges against Trotter for disrupting the meeting; defended by Archibald Grimké, Trotter was convicted and spent thirty days in the Charles Street Jail. Although the Bookerites had hoped to discredit the radicals with the trial, they gained them wider publicity.[50][51] After the trial, Trotter founded the Boston Suffrage League (1903), and when a New England Suffrage League was founded in 1904, Trotter was elected president.[52]
Washington countered Trotter's attacks with a variety of tactics. He took various legal actions against Trotter, including at least one libel suit and criminal charges. In addition, he used his network to apply pressure to Trotter's supporters in their workplaces (in some cases government and academic positions). In addition, he had other sympathizers secretly infiltrate and report on activist meetings organized by Trotter and others.[53] Washington also provided financial support and expertise to start other publications in Boston to counter Trotter's radical voice.[54] As a result of such activities, Trotter's printer dropped the activist and his newspaper as a client. But Trotter found another printer and continued publishing the Guardian despite the setback.[55]
Niagara Movement and the NAACP
In the early months of 1905, Booker T. Washington sought to create an umbrella organization to represent all the major African-American leaders of the day. Du Bois and Grimké were the two most radical leaders invited to its early organizational meetings, but both eventually refused to ally with Washington, whom they saw as dominating the group.[56] Du Bois, Trotter, and two others organized a meeting of radicals from across the nation in western New York. Meeting in July just across the Canada–US border in Fort Erie, Ontario they founded the Niagara Movement.[57] Organized so that no one man could dominate it, the group espoused a radical declaration of principles (authored by Trotter and Du Bois), calling for agitation for equal economic opportunity and exercise of full civil rights for African Americans.[58] The organization was soon divided internally by political and personal disagreements, and Washington worked from outside against its growth.[59]
During the early months of 1906, friction began to develop between Du Bois and Trotter over the admission of women to the organization. Du Bois supported the idea, and Trotter opposed it, but eventually relented. The matter was smoothed over during the 1906 meeting.
Despite the Niagara Movement's failure, its goals had appealed to white supporters of racial equality. They participated in the founding of the
Trotter never played a significant role in the NAACP, and in its early years actively competed with it. In 1911 Trotter's group and the NAACP both held rallies in Boston to mark the centennial of abolitionist Charles Sumner's birth.[67] Trotter was peripherally involved with the NAACP for a few years, but he did not approve of the amount of white involvement in the interracial group. His feud with Du Bois ran deep, so he rarely contributed to the organization at the national level.[68] He was also troubled by the attitudes expressed in the Boston chapter, which he told NAACP leader Joel Spingarn needed more "radical, courageous activity." He eventually drifted away from the NAACP.[69]
National Independent Political League
After Trotter split from the Niagara Movement, he helped organize a conference of like-minded activists held in
NIPL, which biographer Fox describes as Trotter's "personal fief", was unable to attract high-profile membership as the NAACP did.[74] Trotter did not want white members, and was unable to work effectively with other African-American leaders.[73] NIPL and the NAACP, while both working toward similar goals, regularly feuded over matters public and personal.[75]
As the NAACP attracted more money and talent, and became the center of anti-Bookerite civil rights activity, Trotter and the NIPL became increasingly marginalized on the left.[76] Trotter would not have as prominent a role in the civil rights dialogue again.[77] By 1921 the league had been reduced to a handful of Trotter supporters.[78]
Trotter and Woodrow Wilson
Trotter's opposition to Booker T. Washington placed him at odds with Theodore Roosevelt and William Howard Taft, Republican presidents who relied on Washington as an adviser and otherwise enjoyed widespread African-American support. Trotter supported the Southern Democrat Woodrow Wilson in the 1912 election. Wilson, in a brief meeting with Trotter and other NERL members, made vague statements about fair treatment of African Americans. But, he succumbed to pressure from Southerners in his cabinet and agreed to segregate federal offices. The NAACP and NERL (then known as the National Independent Political League, or NIPL) protested, and Trotter secured a meeting with Wilson at the White House in November 1913.[79][80] Wilson said that his policies were not segregationist, but Trotter characterized Wilson's denial as "preposterous".[79]
Trotter continued his protests, eventually gaining a second invitation to the White House in November 1914. This meeting with Wilson ended with a heated exchange between the two men. Wilson claimed to be dealing with a "human problem" from which politics should be left out, and suggested to Trotter's group that they could always vote for someone else in the next election. Trotter continued to argue that the segregationist policy was humiliating to African Americans. Wilson responded, "If you take it as a humiliation, which it is not intended as, and sow the seed of that impression all over the country, why the consequences will be very serious."[79] After Trotter said this was an insult, Wilson angrily ordered him to leave, saying "If this organization wishes to approach me again, it must choose another spokesman ... your tone, sir, offends me."[79]
Trotter's second meeting with the President was widely covered in the press, featured on the front page of The New York Times and other leading newspapers. A white Texas newspaper described Trotter as "merely a nigger" and "not a Booker T. Washington type of colored man",[81] and Northern papers also criticized him for his "insolence" to the president.[82] The Boston Evening Transcript, while observing that Wilson's policy was segregationist and divisive, pointed out that although Trotter was basically correct, he "offends many of his own color by his ... untactful belligerency".[82] African Americans were divided in their response to the incident: some claimed that he did not represent them, while others, notably Du Bois, grudgingly admired Trotter's audacity. Du Bois wrote that Wilson was "insulting & condescending" in the meeting.[83] Trotter parlayed the publicity into a series of speaking engagements, in which he denied "that in language, manner, tone, in any respect or to the slightest degree I was impudent, insolent, or insulting to the President."[84]
Trotter continued to protest segregationist policies of the Wilson administration. When the country began large-scale recruiting for the military in
When the
To get to Europe, Trotter posed as a seaman seeking work in New York, and got a job as a cook on the SS Yarmouth to gain passage to France.[88] He arrived in Paris alone and with little more than his cook's clothing, only to find that the principal peace negotiations had already taken place. The powers did not include any statement of racial equality. Trotter attracted the French press in his accounts of racial mistreatment in the United States, but he could not gain access to any of the official delegations to the peace conference.[89] He also missed Du Bois' Pan-African Congress, which was held in February 1919 while he was still seeking passage.[90]
Trotter returned to the United States in July 1919 to learn of
Other protests and later years
Trotter mounted a campaign against
The KKK had a revival for a decade after 1915, especially in industrial cities and the Midwest. In 1921, Trotter was successful in shutting down new screenings of The Birth of a Nation in Boston; he allied with Roman Catholic organizations, who objected to the KKK's anti-Catholic stance of the 20th century, and were strong in the city as a result of extensive Irish and Italian immigration.[97]
Trotter's wife had died in the
Through the 1920s and 1930s, Trotter subsided into a genteel poverty, using the Guardian as an ongoing voice of protest.[98] He lobbied for anti-lynching bills in Congress, with limited success. Even when the House overwhelmingly passed such a bill in 1922, the Southern bloc in the Senate filibustered and effectively killed passage of the bill for three years running.[99] (White Democrats effectively controlled nearly all the Congressional seats apportioned to the total population of the South, after having disfranchised blacks.[47]) They controlled chairmanships of numerous important committees, which were established by seniority.[99]
In 1923 Trotter eventually came to an uneasy truce with the NAACP.
Through these years, Trotter routinely wrote in the Guardian about incidents of racial injustice, including the 1931 trials of the
On the morning of April 7, 1934, his 62nd birthday, William Monroe Trotter died after a fall from the roof of his home in Boston. The cause is uncertain, but it is known that he was depressed and troubled at the time. He may have committed suicide.[103] He was buried in Boston's Fairview Cemetery.[104]
Legacy and honors
- Several schools and academic institutions were named for him: the William Monroe Trotter Elementary School in Dorchester,[105] the William Monroe Trotter Institute at the University of Massachusetts Boston (a research institute for the study of black history and black culture),[106] and the William Monroe Trotter Multicultural Center (aka Trotter House) at the University of Michigan.[107]
- Trotter's first home in Dorchester, the William Monroe Trotter House, was designated a National Historic Landmark in recognition of his significance in the civil rights cause.[108]
- In 2002, scholar Molefi Kete Asante listed William Monroe Trotter among his 100 Greatest African Americans.[109]
Notes
- ^ "Negro Year Book and Annual Encyclopedia of the Negro". 1922.
- ^ a b Fox, p. 9
- ^ Fox, p. 3
- ^ Fox, p. 4
- ^ a b Fox, p. 5
- ^ Duganne, Erina, "Black Civil War Portraiture in Context", mirror of race.org, April 5, 2012. Retrieved 2015-11-29.
- ^ a b "Virginia Isaacs Trotter". Monticello. Retrieved 2012-05-08.
- ^ Fox, p. 8
- ^ Fox, p. 10
- ^ Fox, p. 12
- ^ a b Harrison, p. 239
- ^ Finkelman, p. 216
- ^ Fox, p. 13
- ^ Fox, p. 14
- ^ Fox, pp. 15–19
- ^ Fox, p. 17
- ^ Fox, p. 15
- ^ Fox, p. 21
- ^ Fox, p. 22
- ^ a b c d Harrison, p. 240
- ^ Fox, p. 212
- ^ Fox, p. 24
- ^ Fox, p. 25
- ^ Brown and Stentiford, pp. 55–56
- ^ Fox, pp. 36–43
- ^ Fox, p. 27
- ^ Harrison, p. 241
- ^ Fox, p. 28
- ^ Fox, p. 29
- ^ Fox, pp. 29–30
- ^ Fox, p. 31
- ^ Fox, pp. 30, 64–65
- ^ Horne and Young, pp. 31–32
- ^ Du Bois, pp. 72–73
- ^ a b Fox, p. 98
- ^ Fox, pp. 118–119
- ^ Fox, pp. 206–208
- ^ Puttkammer and Worthy, p. 311
- ^ Fox, pp. 34–35
- ^ The Race's Leader! the Friends of Booker T. Washington after Conspirators, Freeman (Indianapolis, Indiana), Saturday, February 14, 1903, Volume: XVI Issue: 7 Page: 1 Piece: One of Two
- ^ Booker T. Washington, Louis R. Harlan, The Booker T. Washington Papers: 1903-04 University of Illinois Press, 1976
- ^ Jacqueline M. Moore, Leading the Race: The Transformation of the Black Elite in the Nation's Capital, 1880-1920 University of Virginia Press, 1999, p68
- ^ Fox, p. 46
- ^ Fox, p. 48
- ^ a b c Fox, p. 49
- ^ Fox, pp. 39–40
- ^ a b Richard H. Pildes, Democracy, Anti-Democracy, and the Canon, Constitutional Commentary, vol.17, 2000, pp.13-14 Accessed 10 March 2008
- ^ Fox, pp. 50–53
- ^ Fox, p. 51
- ^ Fox, pp. 55–58
- ^ Trotter, Granville Martin, and Bernard Charles were tried, Charles was acquitted, while Trotter and Martin were found guilty and served thirty-day jail terms. Two Sent To Jail For Disturbing Booker Washington's Meeting. Broad Ax (Chicago, Illinois), Saturday, October 24, 1903, Page: 1
- ^ Smith, n.p.
- ^ Fox, pp. 60–71
- ^ Schneider, p. 67
- ^ Fox, p. 97
- ^ Fox, pp. 82–86
- ^ Fox, p. 90
- ^ Fox, p. 91
- ^ a b c Wintz, p. 8
- ^ Fox, p. 103
- ^ Fox, pp. 104–106
- ^ Fox, p. 108
- ^ Fox, pp. 109–110
- ^ Fox, pp. 100–114
- ^ Schneider, p. 116
- ^ Fox, pp. 128–130
- ^ Schneider, pp. 116–117
- ^ Fox, p. 136
- ^ Fox, pp. 136–140
- ^ Fox, pp. 110–111
- ^ Fox, p. 154
- ^ Fox, pp. 111, 140
- ^ a b Fox, p. 140
- ^ Fox, pp. 140–141
- ^ Fox, p. 141
- ^ Fox, pp. 144–145
- ^ Fox, p. 146
- ^ Puttkammer and Worthy, p. 304
- ^ a b c d O'Reilly, p. 119
- ^ Fox, p. 175
- ^ Fox, p. 182
- ^ a b Fox, p. 183
- ^ Fox, pp. 184–185
- ^ Fox, p. 186
- ^ Harrison, p. 243
- ^ Harrison, pp. 243–244
- ^ Fox, pp. 223–224
- ^ Fox, p. 224
- ^ Fox, pp. 226–228
- ^ Fox, p. 225
- ^ a b Fox, p. 233
- ^ Fox, p. 234
- ^ Harrison, pp. 242–243
- ^ Fox, pp. 191–192
- ^ Fox, pp. 194–197
- ^ Fox, pp. 198–200
- ^ Fox, pp. 260–261
- ^ Fox, pp. 260–270
- ^ a b Associated Press, "Senate Apologizes for Not Passing Anti-Lynching Laws", Fox News. Note: From 1882-1968, "...nearly 200 anti-lynching bills were introduced in Congress, and three passed the House. Seven presidents between 1890 and 1952 petitioned Congress to pass a federal law." None was approved by the Senate because of the powerful opposition of the Southern Democratic voting bloc.
- ^ Fox, pp. 240–249
- ^ Fox, pp. 252–256
- ^ Puttkammer and Worthy, p. 313
- ^ Fox, pp. 271–275
- ISBN 978-1-61039-823-7.[page needed]
- ^ "About the Trotter School". William Monroe Trotter Elementary School. Retrieved 2012-12-14.
- ^ "Message from the director". UMass Boston. Archived from the original on 2013-01-08. Retrieved 2012-12-14.
- ^ "About MESA/Trotter". University of Michigan. Retrieved 2012-12-14.
- ^ "NHL summary for William Monroe Trotter House". National Park Service. Archived from the original on 2012-10-10. Retrieved 2012-12-26.
- ISBN 1-57392-963-8.
References
- Brown, Nikki; Stentiford, Barry, eds. (2008). The Jim Crow Encyclopedia. Westport, CT: Greenwood Press. OCLC 369409006.
- Du Bois, W. E. B. (1940). Dusk of Dawn: An Essay Toward an Autobiography of a Race Concept. New York. ISBN 0-87855-917-5.)
{{cite book}}
: CS1 maint: location missing publisher (link - Finkelman, Paul, ed. (2006). Encyclopedia of African American History, 1619–1895. New York: Oxford University Press. OCLC 162212339.
- Fox, Stephen (1970). The Guardian of Boston: William Monroe Trotter. New York: Atheneum Press. OCLC 21539323.
- Harrison, William (1946). "Phylon Profile IX: William Monroe Trotter–Fighter". Phylon. 7 (3): 236–245. JSTOR 272144.
- Horne, Gerald; Young, Mary, eds. (2000). W.E.B. Du Bois: An Encyclopedia. Westport, CT: Greenwood Press. OCLC 228433306.
- O'Reilly, Keith (Autumn 1997). "The Jim Crow Policies of Woodrow Wilson". The Journal of Blacks in Higher Education (17): 117–121. JSTOR 2963252.
- Patler, Nicholas (2007). Jim Crow and the Wilson Administration: Protesting Federal Segregation in the Early Twentieth Century. Boulder, Colorado: University Press of Colorado. ISBN 978-0870818646.
- Puttkammer, Charles; Worthy, Ruth (October 1958). "William Monroe Trotter, 1872–1934". The Journal of Negro History. 43 (4): 298–316. S2CID 150292524.
- Schneider, Mark (1997). Boston Confronts Jim Crow, 1890–1920. Boston: Northeastern University Press. OCLC 35223026.
- Smith, Jessie Carney (2015). The Complete Encyclopedia of African American History. ISBN 978-1578595365.
- Wintz, Cary, ed. (1996). African American Political Thought : 1890–1930 ; Washington, DuBois, Garvey, and Randolph. Armonk, NY: Sharpe. OCLC 246974002.
Further reading
- Greenidge, Kerri K. (2020). Black radical : the life and times of William Monroe Trotter (First ed.). New York: Liveright Publishing Corporation. OCLC 1183994791.
- Michaeli, Ethan (2016). The Defender: How the legendary Black newspaper changed America (First ed.). Boston: Houghton Mifflin Harcourt. ISBN 978-0-547-56069-4.