Trotter, William Monroe

Trotter, William Monroe (1872–1934), civil rights activist, newspaper editor, integrationist.Born in Ohio, William Monroe Trotter spent most of his life in Boston. A Phi Beta Kappa graduate of Harvard, he belonged to a class of northern, middle‐class African Americans whose backgrounds included college education and a profession. Along with W.E.B. Du Bois, Ida B. Wells‐Barnett, and the novelist Charles Chesnutt, he was part of what Du Bois called the “Talented Tenth,” which insisted upon equal rights for African Americans and challenged the racial leadership of Booker T. Washington and his accommodationist platform.

In 1901, Trotter and his wife, Geraldine L. Pindell, founded the Boston Guardian, an African American newspaper devoted to the cause of racial integration. Two years later, Trotter gained national attention in the so‐called “Boston Riot” by publicly confronting Washington at a local church. Trotter's actions and editorials made him a central figure in the Niagara movement, a series of annual meetings of African‐American leaders held at Niagara Falls, New York, beginning in 1905, and Trotter's own National Equal Rights League, which competed unsuccessfully with Du Bois and the National Association for the Advancement of Colored People (NAACP) for the allegiance of integrationists, black and white.

Trotter again made headlines by criticizing the racial policies of President Woodrow Wilson, and by meeting with presidents Warren G. Harding and Calvin Coolidge to protest racial segregation in the federal government. In the 1920s, he tried to connect his organization to Marcus Garvey's movement and the African Blood Brotherhood. The death of his wife, combined with financial problems and waning national influence, shadowed Trotter's final years. He spent his life and fortune pushing the nation to recognize African Americans as full citizens.
See also Civil Rights Movement; Racism.

Bibliography

Stephen R. Fox , The Guardian of Boston: William Monroe Trotter, 1970.
David Levering Lewis , W.E.B. Du Bois: Biography of a Race, 1993.

Gregory Mixon