As W.E.B. DuBois’ 156th birthday was celebrated on Feb. 23, WNED PBS’s unique documentary The Niagara Motion: The Early Battle for Civil Rights, which provides perception into the distinguished Black chief, is now out there for streaming.
The movie captures the battle between sociologist, creator and mental DuBois, Boston newspaper writer William Monroe Trotter, and orator and educator Booker T. Washington over the pathway to Black liberation throughout the flip of the 20th century.
The movie, directed by Emmy® Award-winning and two-time Oscar®-nominated filmmaker Lawrence R. Hott, is streaming on Buffalo Toronto Public Media’s YouTube Channel, the PBS app and theniagaramovement.org.
The Niagara Motion can also be airing on public tv stations across the nation, distributed by American Public Tv.
With commentary by distinguished students and authors like Angela Jones, Aldon Morris, Amilcar Shabazz and Chad Williams, the hour-long movie immerses viewers within the battle between three distinguished Black leaders within the early days of the 1900s.
Whereas Washington had known as the thought of social equality for African-People “folly” and urged Blacks “to study to dignify and glorify widespread labor,” the repressive Jim Crow legal guidelines and widespread lynching that sprung up on the finish of Reconstruction pressed Du Bois and Trotter to oppose Washington’s conciliatory tact.
The duo helped summon Black intellectuals, clergy, writers, newspapermen and activists from throughout the nation to Buffalo, New York, to plan subsequent steps.
To avert disruption by Washington’s supporters, the group of 29 males finally met throughout the Niagara River in Fort Erie, Canada, the place they fashioned a nationwide campaign known as The Niagara Motion which known as for full rights for African People.
“We refuse to permit the impression to stay that the Negro-American assents to inferiority, is submissive beneath oppression, and apologetic earlier than insults,” the group asserted in its 1905 Declaration of Rules — a pointy rebuke to Washington.
The short-lived motion — named to evoke the facility of the close by Niagara Falls and the “mighty present” of protest they hoped to generate — set the tone for the trendy American civil rights motion and impressed the formation of the NAACP.
“We’re happy that WNET is making out there this enlightening movie which finds a lot historical past within the lengthy and ongoing combat for civil rights — tales, locations and names that ought to be identified by folks all through the U.S. and Canada,” mentioned Tom Calderone, president and chief government officer of Buffalo Toronto Public Media.
