The Cornerstone of the Modern Civil Rights Movement

On Sunday, August 16, 2015, a small group of people quietly walked around the foundation of a building in a field above the Shenandoah River. Some of them had removed their shoes, and as they circled the building they sang the "Battle Hymn of the Republic" and "John Brown's Body." They gathered on this warm August morning to commemorate the pilgrimage of the Niagara Movement that took place in 1906. The event was made poignant by the death of civil rights leader Julian Bond the night before.

Photo: John Grabowska

In 1906, Jim Crow laws reigned supreme in the United States, especially in the American South. Reconstruction was officially over and appeared to have failed. Despite this, or perhaps because of it, prominent African Americans gathered at the campus of Storer College in Harpers Ferry, West Virginia. In opposition to Booker T. Washington's strategy of accommodation, these African Americans, led by W.E.B. DuBois, did not believe in appeasement to the white majority culture.

Photo: tuskegee.edu (Booker T. Washington)

In 1905, Du Bois founded a civil rights group called the Niagara Movement. Due to racial issues, their first meeting was held in Canada near Niagara Falls but their second meeting took place in the United States at a significant location in African American history. For the 1906 meeting Du Bois chose Storer College at Harpers Ferry as the venue. Storer College had originally been established as a school to educate former slaves until it became an integrated Normal College.

Photo: nps.gov (W.E.B. DuBois)

Du Bois selected Storer for a number of reasons: it was an integrated school that did not prevent admission based on race, it was in the south, and the legacy of John Brown was prevalent in Harpers Ferry. On the third day of the public meeting, the Niagarites commemorated John Brown's raid on the federal armory by making a pilgrimage to the building in which he was captured. Historians today say that Brown's actions at Harpers Ferry sparked the Civil War.

Photo: kshs.org

As they approached the fort, the Niagara Movement members removed their shoes and socks and began to walk around the building. They removed their shoes because the ground near the fort was considered to be hallowed ground. As Frederick Douglas once wrote, "John Brown could die for the slave," and that is why these early civil rights activists honored Brown's actions by singing "Battle Hymn of the Republic" and "John Brown's Body" while paying homage to John Brown and his effort to bring about the end of slavery.

109 years later, a group of clergy, staff from Harpers Ferry National Historical Park and other local citizens honored the efforts of the founders of the modern civil rights movement. The Niagara Movement would evolve into the NAACP, chaired for many years by Julian Bond.

Photo: wagner.edu