Trial/EOTO post

 

The Niagara Movement Annual Meeting photograph (1905-1909)

Before the NAACP: The Reconstruction-Era Roots of a Civil Rights Movement

Most histories date the NAACP to February 12, 1909, when it was founded in New York City. Its closest predecessor was the Niagara Movement of 1905, but the story begins earlier, in the Reconstruction era, when Black activists built the national networks the NAACP later inherited.

Booker T. Washington
and Niagara Movement leaders
Monroe Trotter and W.E.B. DuBois

The foundation was the Colored Conventions movement. After a white mob attacked Cincinnati’s Black community in 1829, more than 200 local and national conventions followed, and the movement spread rapidly into the South after the Civil War. In October 1864, 144 delegates from 18 states gathered in Syracuse, New York. Their chief accomplishment was establishing the National Equal Rights League (NERL), meant to unify civil rights activism in the North and the South. The convention also adopted a Declaration of Wrongs and Rights, and the League soon built state and local chapters across the North and in most southern
states.

The League turned principles into action. In 1866, the Pennsylvania League won lawsuits ending streetcar segregation, and the organization pressed for citizenship and Black male suffrage. One scholar calls the Fifteenth Amendment’s ratification in 1870 perhaps the most decisive moment of the northern equal rights struggle. Progress was uneven, though. School integration won little support, and most members feared that pushing women’s suffrage would weaken the campaign for Black men’s votes.

Early victories arrived quickly. In 1865, John Rock became the first Black lawyer admitted to practice before the U.S. Supreme Court, Illinois repealed its Black code, and Massachusetts guaranteed equal access to public accommodations. These wins showed that organized pressure could change law, a lesson the NAACP’s litigation strategy later built upon.

NAACP officials at the Twentieth
Annual Session of the NAACP
 in Cleveland, Ohio, June 26, 1929.

Organizing flourished in the South too. In North Carolina, 117 Black delegates from 42 counties met in Raleigh to demand voting rights, public education, and an end to discrimination. In Texas, the first of roughly ten Black state conventions met in Austin in 1866.

Reconstruction ended, but the work continued. By the early 1900s the League had nearly disbanded. In 1908, William Monroe Trotter revived it, and when that effort faltered he joined the new NAACP. Meanwhile, Trotter and W. E. B. Du Bois’s Niagara Movement grew to 170 members in 34 states by 1906. The Oxford University Press blog describes the NAACP as a direct continuation of decades of national organizing, noting that Du Bois’s Niagara magazine, The Horizon, became the NAACP’s Crisis. By 1921, most League members had joined the NAACP.

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Sources

• BlackPast, “National Equal Rights League (1864–1915)”: https://blackpast.org/aah/national-equal-rights-league-1864-1915

• Colored Conventions Project, Library Company of Philadelphia: https://librarycompany.org/geniusoffreedom/colored-conventions/

• National Endowment for the Humanities, “Colored Conventions”: https://www.neh.gov/project/colored-conventions

• Cornell University Press, chapter on the Syracuse Convention: https://cornellpress.manifoldapp.org/read/d0c6e933-6b43-4cff-b113-f416be977d6c/section/dcef12d2-dbe2-4d90-ba08-849aeab7289f

• HarpWeek, “The National Colored Convention in Session”: https://blackhistory.harpweek.com/7Illustrations/Reconstruction/NatColoredConv.htm

• NCpedia, “African Americans Get the Vote”: https://ncpedia.org/node/13847

• Houston Chronicle blog, Handbook of Texas: https://blog.chron.com/txpotomac/?p=5754

• U.S. Census Bureau, “1909 Founding of the NAACP”: https://www.census.gov/about/history/stories/monthly/2024/february-2024.html

• Oxford University Press blog, “Founding the NAACP”: https://blog.oup.com/2014/02/founding-the-naacp/

• Penn Capital-Star, “The Niagara Movement, a precursor to NAACP”: https://penncapital-star.com/civil-rights-social-justice/the-niagara-movement-a-precursor-to-naacp-fought-for-economic-and-civil-rights-michael-coard/

AI Disclosure: I used Claude.ai as an assistant for research findings and for writing my post. I used key terms like "shape the research based on my script" and "write in a professional style, not academic." The images were found and embedded by me while the writing portion was done entirely by Claude.ai.

In The Heat Of the Night (1967) Reaction Key post

In the Heat of The Night (1967) is an interesting piece of progressive film making for its time. It hits the landmarks of America's vast social, political, and cultural changes regarding the civil rights movement. Its lead black protagonist, detective Virgil Tibbs is unintentionally entangled with a murder case after being wrongfully accused of murder by Mississippi police officers. Detective Tibbs constantly goes back and forth with the murder case with the chief of police, while also experiencing hostile racist attacks from the town of the south. 

My opinion on this film is quite mixed but I found myself enjoying a lot of the brilliant acting performances and the way certain scenes were shot with beautiful cinematography. 

To start off, I believe that Sidney Poitier gives an amazing performance as Detective Tibbs and brings out the cool yet contained frustration that his character carries in the movie. You can feel his exasperation towards the other police officers' incompetence and the lack of trust they instill in him. While simultaneously chasing him back before his train arrives. 

Detective Tibbs is very outwardly calculative. His investigative work reflects the beginning of the movie backwards, him tracing steps back to the illegal affair between Officer Sam and Delores. I appreciate how his outbursts always caught me off guard given how collected his character is, yet it feels so justified given how all forces are against him. It shows how Virgil's environment fights against him rather than fighting alongside him. The movie is set in the deep south, not shying away from representing the brutal reality of southern racism for African Americans; along with the sharp contrast between the south and north progressiveness. 

I wasn't that taken aback from the reveal of the murderer, as Ralph Henshaw's unsettling body language made it very easy to guess he would be the obvious choice of committing such crimes. Yet, I like the way the reveal was framed in an intense, frantic moment of life or death for detective Tibbs. 

The lingering confession quite literally weighed on his life. 

I appreciate how the film's endings don't go through a stereotypical message of racial harmony, but exhibit realism of the lingering issues of racial tensions at the time. The chief does not have a groundbreaking realization that racism is bad. He doesn't apologize to Virgil. They simply part ways and exchange a polite smile that sums up the unfortunate amount of progress that wouldn't come to fruition years later. 

My criticisms towards the film mostly aligns with issues with its 

Plessy v Ferguson mock trial reaction

 

This 1977 political cartoon, "In 1892, we were here...," was published in a weekly series in the New Orleans States-Item newspaper. John Wilds wrote the columns, while John Churchill Chase created accompanying cartoon illustrations.

Plessy’s team

A cartoon depicting
"Separate but equal"
law as unfair and unequal

Plessy’s lawyers argued that the promise of equality has not been fulfilled. They said separating passengers by race creates discrimination, and that “separate but equal” does not give African Americans equality. They also argued that our constitution is colorblind and that religion stands against racism. They pointed to “all men are created equal” and said our nation has not lived up to that promise, and that Americans have abandoned the practices that represent liberty and justice.

I thought their economic argument was the most interesting. They said segregation is harmful to the economy because it limits economic opportunity and adds unnecessary costs when passengers are separated by race. Equal access to travel allows for more opportunity, which means a greater economy and more employment. 

Ferguson’s team

Ferguson’s team argued that the law does not forbid Plessy from having equal travel and accommodations. They said Louisiana did not invent separation, since it was already practiced in schools and public places, and Congress has maintained separate schools. In their view, the law treats both races alike because both have different cars, and it exists for equality but not race mixing. They described the conductor as someone who does not determine a man’s worth and only guides passengers to the right spot. 

They also argued that the amendments did not command mingling of the races and do not reach private social distinctions. Throughout civilization, communities have organized themselves around individuality, culture and customs, and the United States is no exception. The 14th Amendment guarantees equal protection of the laws, but they said history does not show it was meant to eliminate segregation. They added that separate but equal does not eliminate voting rights.

My takeaway

Both teams relied on the same amendment and reached opposite conclusions. Ferguson’s team leaned on history and tradition, while Plessy’s team leaned on the nation’s own promises of equality. Seeing both arguments back to back showed me how “equal” can be defined in a way that sounds fair while still allowing discrimination.

Ai Disclosure: I used Claude. AI in a grammar correction and reformatting type of way for my blog post. I specifically asked Claude to not use any sources but my notes to reformat itself into a blog post around 300~400 words. The images and links embedded in them were done entirely by me, while Claude.AI is responsible for reformatting/grammar.