Buffalo, N.Y. – The WNED PBS original The Niagara Movement: The Early Battle for Civil Rights, an engrossing documentary capturing the conflict between three national Black leaders at the turn of the 20th century over the pathway to Black liberation, will premiere during Black History Month on Monday, February 12, at 8 p.m. EST on WORLD. Directed by Emmy® Award-winning and two-time Oscar®-nominated filmmaker Lawrence R. Hott, the film shines a spotlight on the fight pitting sociologist W.E.B Du Bois and Boston newspaper publisher William Monroe Trotter against educator and orator Booker T. Washington, then the de facto leader of Black America. The Niagara Movement will also be distributed to public television stations around the country by American Public Television beginning February 1.
With commentary by prominent scholars and authors like Angela Jones, Aldon Morris, Amilcar Shabazz and Chad Williams, the hour-long film immerses viewers in the conflict between three prominent Black leaders in the early days of the 1900s. While Washington had called the idea of social equality for African-Americans “folly” and urged Blacks “to learn to dignify and glorify common labour,” the repressive Jim Crow laws and widespread lynching that sprung up at the end 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 across the country to Buffalo, New York, to plan next steps. To avert disruption by Washington’s supporters, the group of 29 men ultimately met across the Niagara River in Fort Erie, Canada, where they formed a national crusade called The Niagara Movement which called for full rights for African Americans.
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“We refuse to allow the impression to remain that the Negro-American assents to inferiority, is submissive under oppression, and apologetic before insults,” the group asserted in its 1905 Declaration of Principles — a sharp rebuke to Washington.
The short-lived movement — named to evoke the power of the nearby Niagara Falls and the “mighty current” of protest they hoped to generate — set the tone for the modern American civil rights movement and inspired the formation of the NAACP.
Encore presentations on WORLD will air on Tuesday, February 13, at 1 a.m. EST (10 p.m. PT on Monday, February 12) and again at 9 a.m. EST; and on Sunday, February 18, at 5 a.m. EST.
The Niagara Movement can currently be streamed on Buffalo Toronto Public Media’s YouTube Channel, the PBS app and theniagaramovement.org. The film, which premiered in November on WNED PBS, will re-air on the station on Friday, Feb. 9, at 10 p.m.
“We are pleased that WORLD is making available this enlightening film which unearths so much history in the long and ongoing fight for civil rights — stories, places and names that should be known by people throughout the U.S. and Canada,” said Tom Calderone, president & CEO of Buffalo Toronto Public Media.
Additional information, educational resources and bonus materials can be found at www.theniagaramovement.org. Follow WNED PBS on X (formerly known as Twitter), Facebook and Instagram (@wnedpbs).
Major funding for The Niagara Movement: The Early Battle for Civil Rights was provided by The John R. Oishei Foundation, with additional funding from the Corporation for Public Broadcasting, Community Foundation of Tampa Bay Inc. – In Memory of Susan Howarth and Visit Buffalo Niagara.
