Page 16 Portland Observer Section II Thursday. February 23, 1978
Trotter began immediately to
mount an almost weekly editorial
attack on Washington in the
Guardian questioning his person,
prestige and racial policies. It
was inevitable that the two men,
so opposite in their views, would
eventually meet and when they
did it was to be recorded as the
Boston Riot." The site was
Boston's Columbus Avenue Afri
can Methodist Episcopal Church
and the occasion was an address
by W ashington on July 30. 1903.
at the invitation of the Boston
branch of the National Negro
Business League. In preparation
for the event, the editors of the
Guardian drafted a series of nine
highly provocative questions
which Trotter would ask from
the floor. The questions went to
the heart of the nature of the
kind of leadership Washington
was giving to Black people.
The church was crowded with
2.000 people. The first time a
C. i t - rl»an supporter attempted to
make himself heard, he was
ejected.
When he returned,
after Washington had been in
troduced. and attempted to
speak again, the program's mod
erator ordered the police to
arrest him. As he was being
taken out, the crowd exploded,
scuffles and fist fights broke out
and in the midst of it all. Trotter
climbed onto a chair and attempt
ed to read his questions, but in
the confusion could not be heard.
Someone suggested that they
“throw Trotter out the window,"
but the police settled for arrest
ing him instead and filed a
charge of disturbing a public
meeting against him. He was
fined $25 and sentenced to 30
days in jail - which he served.
Newspapers all over the coun
try published the story of the
"Boston Riot,” reacting with
surprise and distaste over the
fact that other Blacks would dare
disagree with Washington. It
was as if whites had been betray
ed.
How dare Blacks place
themselves in opposition to the
sensible course that Washington
had charted, the press seemed to
be saying.
The Boston Transcri.itioo edi
tonalized: "In no case is the old
text that a prophet is not without
honor save in his own country,
better exemplified than in the
case of Booker T. Washington,
whose work is appreciated and
applauded even by the Negroes'
hereditary oppressors and whose
person is persecuted only by his
own race."
"If the Boston Negro is not
capable of understanding so able
a representative of his race what
is to be expected of other Afro-
Americans?”. asked the 8t. Louis
Post-Dis.latch in its pages.
And the New York Times
observed that the incident was "a
most disgraceful and lamentable
episode" perpetrated by individ
uals who were "all for war and
for a rush into full equality of
every kind, deserved or unde
served."
To these critics, Reverend Re
verdy Ransom, an anti-Washing
ton clergyman, answered: "The
revolt at Boston was the first
that has reached the public.
There would be others if Mr.
Washington did not control the
strong papers conducted by co
lored men and if they expressed
the sentiments of the people."
The allegation that Washing
ton controlled a good portion of
the Black press through the
dispensation of money and favors
was to surface time and time
again over the succeeding years
and while no firm evidence was ,
ever presented to substantiate
such charges, the fact is that the
Black press of that time was
almost universally uncritical of
Washington.
A few notable
exceptions were The Guardian.
The Washington Bee, the Chica
go Broad Axe, and later The
Crisis magazine under the editor
ship of W.E.B. DuBois.
For the next fourteen years,
until W ashington’s death in 1915,
Trotter continued to attack the
racial policies of the former and
was one of the leading figures in
the convening of “The Niagra
Movement" which, in time, was
to lead to the formation of the
National Association for the Ad
vancement of Colored People,
and a culmination of the anti-
Washington movement.
After the death of Washington
and the end of the feud, the
remaining career of Trotter
seems strangely anti-climatic, as
if the fire had gone out. There
were flashes of the old Trotter on
occasion, such as the confronta
tion with President Woodrow
Wilson over the chief executive's
acquiescence in the imposition of
segregated facilities for Black
and white Federal employees;
the campaign against the racist
firm. “Birth of the Nation”; and
his activities on behalf of Black
people at the Versailles Peace
Conference following World War
I. But after Washington passed
away, The Guardian began to
decline in influence and by the
time Trotter died in a mysterious
fall or leap from a Boston build
ing in 1935, he was very much a
forgotten man.
However, the contributions he
made to the Black press and
Black people, were substantial
and of permanent value. His
attacks on Washington came at a
time when the nation badly need
ed to hear alternative views on
race questions - though those
views may not have been univer
sally approved. Some of those
who originally supported Trott
er, thought on occasion that he
went too far in his battle against
Washington and the school of
thought he represented.
But
somewhere there had to be an
editor so sure of his own right
ness that he could face the
condemnation that would surely
come his way once he attacked
the accommodationist policies of
Washington. Trotter was that
editor.
Trotter has been described as
a “true pioneer, decades ahead of
his time” by Lerone Bennett,
whose actions fathered latter day
Civil Rights efforts. “Trotter laid
the first stone of the modern
protest movement," asserted
Bennett. To be sure, Trotter’s
approach to the press set a
pattern that other Black editors
were to follow in the years
ahead. With Trotter, a new mili
tancy appeared in the Black
press and it could not have been
developed at a more propitious
time in the history of Black
America.
If there ever was a low point in
the history of the Blacks as free
citizens in America, this was it.
The overwhelming majority of
Blacks still lived in the South
where a carefully constructed,
dehumanizing and odious system
of Jim Crow permeated almost
every aspect of their lives. Un
punished lynching were common
place and hope for any easing of
racist oppression was faint in
deed.
With Trotter leading the way,
other militant Black papers be
gan to appear and quickly be
came a dominant force in Black
life. Free from dependence on
white beneficiaries, the Black
papers could strike out boldly at
racism and say those things that
many Blacks wanted to say - but
were in no position to do so.
CHRIVTMN
SUPPLY
CGNÎGR
A New Voice Emerges
These new papers could also
be economically viable as was
demonstrated by Robert Abbott
who has been described as “the
greatest single voice in the Black
press." Abbott began the Chica
go Defender on a shoestring in
1905 when the city had a Black
population of some 40,000 per
sons.
Until the advent of Abbott,
Black papers generally were
marginal operations. Few were
financially successful en ter
prises. Abbott changed that and
also the emphasis of the Black
press.
Abbott brought sensa
tionalism to the Black press with
screaming headlines heavily
weighted in favor of crime stor
ies and the latest scandal.
The purists could shake their
heads in disapproval, but Abbott
made the Black press, perhaps
for the first time, a paying propo
sition. At the same time the
Defender maintained constant
crusades against segregation and
discrimination.
More than any one individual.
Abbott was responsible for the
massive migration of Blacks from
the South to the North during
and after World War I. His
paper was widely circulated in
the South, sometimes dande
stinely because in many places
the white authorities sought to
have it suppressed. In the pages
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