Founders of The Niagara Movement at Niagara Falls Left to right: Top row: H. A. Thompson, Alonzo F. Herndon, John Hope, unidentified. 2nd row: Fred McGhee, Norris Bumstead Herndon, J. Max Barber, W.E.B. DuBois, Robert Bonner. 3rd Row: Henry L. Baily, Clement G. Morgan, W.H.H. Hart, B.S. Smith.

In 1905, W.E.B. DuBois and a group composed of 59 leading African American intellectuals, writers, newspapermen and activists, 29 of whom attended the organizational meeting in Buffalo, gathered at Niagara Falls. They met on the Canadian side since no hotel on the American side would allow them to register. The name, Niagara Movement, came because of the location and the “mighty current” of protest they wished to unleash.

This episode was the first significant black organized protest movement of the twentieth century. It also represented the attempt of a small yet articulate group of radicals to challenge the then dominant ideals on accommodation proposed by Booker T. Washington in the Atlanta Compromise ten years earlier. It can be argued that the 20th Century Civil Rights Movement began at Niagara Falls. The African-American organization created here espoused for the first time a modern program of uncompromising protest and demand for change. They drafted a list of demands that included an end to segregation and to discrimination in unions, the courts, and public accommodations, as well as equality of economic and educational opportunity.

Despite the establishment of 30 branches and the achievement of a few scattered civil-rights victories at the local level, the group suffered from organizational weakness and lack of funds as well as a permanent headquarters or staff, and it never was able to attract mass support. After the Springfield Race Riot of 1908, however, white liberals joined with the nucleus of Niagara "militants" and founded the NAACP the next year. They adopted many of the goals of the Niagara movement and DuBois became the NAACP’s director of publicity and research.