William Monroe Trotter

Article by Geoff Love

UMass Boston; MA, History, 2022

Demonstration Legislation Words

Black and white photograph of William Monroe Trotter, a Black man approximately in his late 40s or 50s. He has short hair, a full moustache, and a small patch of facial hair under his bottom lip. He is wearing a 3 piece suit with tie in the 1920s style. He is looking slightly to the side of the camera with a neutral expression, perhaps a slight smile.

Portrait of William Monroe Trotter, circa 1920.

Courtesy Howard University

For every right, with all thy might.

The Guardian Motto

William Monroe Trotter (1872-1934) was a Boston civil rights leader in the early twentieth century who practiced activism through words and protest by publishing a radical newspaper, the Guardian, near today’s City Hall and organizing public protests at Faneuil Hall, the State House, and Boston Common. Ranking with Booker T. Washington and W.E.B. Du Bois, Trotter continued Boston’s revolutionary tradition with his uncompromising political activism to fight for the equality of African Americans and the fulfillment of the Reconstruction amendments.

Photograph of William Monroe Trotter his senior year of high school. It is sepia-toned, as the paper is of a yellow/brown color. Trotter, a Black man, has short hair, a medium sized moustache, and is looking slightly away from the camera. His left eye faces a slightly different direction and he has a neutral expression. He is wearing a three piece suit with a wide tie with light-colored polka dots.

Senior portrait of Trotter from Hyde Park High School.

Courtesy Bancroft Library, University of California, Berkeley

Early Years

Trotter grew up in Hyde Park, a wealthy suburb of Boston, in a family that had money and extensive political connections. His father, James Monroe Trotter, served in the first federally-recognized African American unit, the 55th Massachusetts Volunteer Infantry Regiment, during the Civil War. Born into slavery in Mississippi, James was one of only a few Black soldiers to earn an officer’s commission during the conflict. His example taught Trotter that racial equality was his right as an American, but that he would have to stand up for his beliefs. Trotter attended high school in Hyde Park and graduated magna cum laude from Harvard in 1895. He went on to receive a master’s degree from Harvard the following year. His later effort to launch a business career proved unsuccessful due to racial bias among prospective employers. He eventually found success working as a broker in a Boston real estate firm, but his exposure to racism and the values his family had fostered compelled him to leave his job and engage in the fight for civil rights. He decided to launch a newspaper “to show the light to those in darkness and to keep them from at least being duped into helping in their own enslavement.”[1]Kerri K. Greenidge, Black Radical: The Life and Times of William Monroe Trotter (New York: Liveright Publishing, 2020), 17-19; W. M. Trotter to John A. Fairlie, June 15, 1902, September 16, 1906, … Continue reading

Front page of a newspaper in black and white. It is titled The Guardian. It is labeled as volume 1, number 38, is from Boston, Massachusetts on Saturday, July 26th, 1902. The right side states that the price is 5 cents. The majority of the page is in small-print text and is not legible. There are 4 portraits of men, one of the left, one in the middle, and two on the right in the same column.

New issues of The Guardian appeared every Saturday for 5 cents a copy; an annual subscription cost $1.50. The paper was eight pages long and reported local and national news for African American readers. The editorials on page four were generally incendiary, providing readers regular material for debate and discussion.

Courtesy Center for Research Libraries

America’s Greatest Race Journal: Activism by Words

Trotter founded a weekly newspaper that he dubbed the Guardian in 1901 in partnership with his friend George Forbes. At the dawn of the new century, Boston, once a hotbed of abolitionist activism as well as anti-abolition violence, was entering a new era. In exchange for keeping political power in Washington after the election of 1876, the Republican party abandoned reconstruction and the enforcement of racial equity in the South. White Southerners reclaimed political power and brought widespread Black disenfranchisement and Jim Crow laws. The pressure of racial segregation, disenfranchisement, and violent terrorism led many African Americans to look North for better opportunities. Yet racism and segregation were no strangers to the Northern states. If not as openly violent as the South, racial politics in the North contributed to inequality in housing, education, and healthcare. Trotter saw the need and opportunity at this time for a strong African American voice to talk about racism, equality, and justice, and that voice would emanate once again from the corridor of revolution in Boston. The Guardian’s editorials, penned largely by Trotter, opposed the accommodationist policies of Booker T. Washington, which advocated for gradual change towards racial equality and the avoidance of conflict. Instead, Trotter made a more strident call for change. W. E. B. Du Bois, Trotter’s contemporary and colleague in the struggle for African American civil rights, described the Guardian thus:[2]Greenidge, 37, 60-61; Mark R. Schneider, Boston Confronts Jim Crow, 1890-1920 (Boston: Northeastern University Press, 1997), 9-11; Nicholas Patler, Jim Crow and the Wilson Administration: Protesting … Continue reading

The Guardian was bitter, satirical, and personal; but it was earnest, and it published facts. It attracted wide attention among colored people; it circulated among them all over the country; it was quoted and discussed. I did not wholly agree with the Guardian, and indeed only a few Negroes did, but nearly all read it and were influenced by it.

W. E. B. Du Bois, Dusk of Dawn[3]W. E. B. Du Bois, Dusk of Dawn: An Essay Toward an Autobiography of a Race Concept (1940; repr., New York: Schoken Books, 1968), 73.

Trotter and Forbes established their publishing office on Tremont Row, near today’s City Hall Plaza, an area which was central to Boston’s community of publishers and editors and near the offices of the city’s major newspapers. In 1907, Trotter moved the office from Tremont Row to Cornhill Street; the move was only a block or two away, but the new location held special significance.[4]Fox, 98.

Street map of Boston from 1895, zoomed in and centered on Cornhill Street. At the center left, a portion of Boston Common is visible. Two small red circles indicate the locations of the Guardian offices which were located first at Tremont Row, and then on Cornhill Street.

Trotter positioned the Guardian’s office in the busy center of Boston’s publishing district, near the Globe and the Herald and only two blocks from Boston Common. The prominent location ensured that the paper’s political message would be heard. In 1907, he moved the office from 3 Tremont Row to 21 Cornhill Street to occupy the same office used by William Lloyd Garrison to publish the famous abolitionist newspaper, the Liberator.

Courtesy Norman B. Leventhal Map & Education Center at the Boston Public Library

The Guardian’s office on Cornhill Street was the former site of William Lloyd Garrison’s weekly abolitionist newspaper, the Liberator, published from 1831 to 1865. Garrison’s use of the media as a weapon to fight for an end to slavery was a significant influence and inspiration for Trotter, who kept a bust of Garrison on his office desk. Trotter continued Garrison’s legacy of media activism to fight, not for the end of slavery, but for the end of the institutional racism that followed emancipation.[5]Fox, 98; Greenidge, 60.

Trotter considered the Guardian his weapon in the fight for civil rights and the paper won the loyalty of African American working-class readers by calling out injustice and inequality, organizing protests and demonstrations, and encouraging unity and reforms.[6]Greenidge, 60.

We have come to protest forever against being proscribed or shut off in any caste from equal rights with other citizens, and shall remain forever on the firing line at any and all times in defense of such rights.

The Guardian, November 9, 1901

Activism and Protest

William Monroe Trotter was a tireless political organizer and protest leader whose activism was centered in Boston’s revolutionary corridor, and he led political agitation and civil rights discussions from many of Boston’s most prominent public forums and churches. He organized commemorations of Crispus Attucks, the American of African and Native American descent regarded as the first person killed in the Boston Massacre. He supported anniversary celebrations of the Emancipation Proclamation and organized events at Faneuil Hall to remember abolitionist leaders and martyrs. He led memorials to the 54th Massachusetts Regiment and its fallen heroes. Trotter was a pivotal character in keeping alive the memory of what abolitionists and Black soldiers sacrificed in the name of freedom.[7]Greenidge, 97; “Emancipation Proclamation Exercises in Park-St Church Tonight,” Boston Globe, January 1, 1913, https://www.newspapers.com/image/430621750/?terms=emancipation&match=1; … Continue reading

A key achievement in Trotter’s activism was the opposition he organized against the Boston screening of D.W. Griffith’s deeply racist film The Birth of a Nation in April 1915. He had previously blocked Boston Public Schools’ use of the book The Clansman, upon which the Griffith film was based, so naturally he took action. On April 7th, Trotter joined a delegation of Boston civil rights leaders, including Moorfield Storey, the founding president of the NAACP (National Association for the Advancement of Colored People), to attend a hearing with Boston’s mayor, James M. Curley. The group requested that the mayor ban the film; D.W. Griffith and his production team, also present, opposed the ban. Trotter was eloquent in his attack, stating that the film’s purpose was to “disparage the Colored race” and to “convert the North to belief in the South’s repression and disenfranchisement.” Following this meeting, and a private screening of the film, Mayor Curley requested minor edits to remove, for instance, an opening intertitle which seemed to blame the Civil War on African Americans; but Curley said he found no legal basis to ban the film. Griffith agreed to the edits, but left town without making any changes. The Birth of a Nation was screened on Saturday, April 17th, at the Tremont Theater across from the Boston Common. Trotter mobilized his supporters, and once again, Downtown Boston was at the center of a nation fighting to find its soul.[8]Schneider, 148-149; Greenidge, 207-210; Dick Lehr, The Birth of a Nation: How a Legendary Director and a Crusading Editor Reignited America’s Civil War (New York: PublicAffairs, 2014), 197-202.

Gathering a few thousand protesters, Trotter attempted to disrupt the movie. Uniformed police arrived and scuffles broke out, resulting in the arrest of Trotter and several others. Some protesters were able to get into the theater, disrupt the film, and pelt the screen with eggs. The film’s notoriety, publicity from Trotter’s arrest, and rough police treatment of the protesters led to citywide outrage. These images did not correspond with the progressive image Boston had of itself. The weekend following Trotter’s arrest saw a multi-racial crowd of hundreds of working class men and women assemble at Faneuil Hall to express their anger that not just African American citizens, but the poor in general were being left behind by the American Dream.[9]Greenidge, 212-213; Fox 214-220.

Black and white photograph of a large crowd in the park. The park is the background, with lines of benches and many trees. The trees have all lost their leaves and the ground has a soft dusting of snow on it. Behind the park, you can see multi-story Boston buildings. The crowd of people takes up a little bit over the bottom half of the photograph, and extends beyond the left, right, and bottom boundaries of the image. The crowd is made up of men and women, Black people and white people. They are all wearing winter clothes and hats of many different kinds. There is one man standing above the rest in the middle of the crowd.

Trotter organized a mass protest on Boston Common on May 2, 1915 to rally African American opposition to The Birth of a Nation and pressure legislators to reform the state’s censorship law.

Courtesy Brown Digital Repository, Brown University Library

Over the next several days, Trotter organized large crowds to gather daily at the State House and Boston Common, successfully pressuring the governor to support prosecution of Griffith and the Tremont Theater management on grounds of the film’s obscenity and immorality. However, once the case was heard, the judge refused to consider race as a factor and only required the theater to cut a single scene. Trotter took this setback in stride, pivoting his supporters to seek a change to the state censorship laws. On May 2nd, he organized a large demonstration on Boston Common to maintain the momentum of the anti-film movement.[10]Greenidge, 214; Lehr, 234-238; Fox, 194-195

“By racial slander and evil design [The Birth of a Nation] seeks and tends to create, excite and augment prejudice against colored Americans, and thereby to deprive them of equal opportunity… Our appeal is for the removal of this play from Boston right speedily.”

William Monroe Trotter, Statement to the Board of Censors, May 23, 1915[11]Boston Post, May 24, 1915, quoted in Lehr, 264.

The effort succeeded in pressuring new legislation updating the state’s censorship law and instituting a three-person Board of Censors which could ban a film by a simple majority vote. The committee was established with Mayor Curley as chairman. Trotter and the NAACP led a petition effort to have the Griffith film brought before the committee. On June 2nd, the committee met and and decided to take no action against the film or the theater. Though these attempts were unsuccessful, Trotter’s organization and activism demonstrated that an organized African American community was able to mobilize and oppose racist propaganda.[12]Greenidge, 215; Lehr, 255-259, 263-264; Fox, 196-197.

… Trotter and his radical coalition of working-class black activists inaugurated a civil rights strategy replicated… decades later – civil disobedience in direct defiance of white supremacy as a public demonstration of political and racial consciousness.

Kerri K. Greenidge, Black Radical: The Life and Times of William Monroe Trotter, 217.

Trotter edited and published the Guardian until his death in 1934, but the paper continued, and the demonstrations he led in Boston’s corridor of revolution echoed in the large scale, nonviolent marches and protests picked up again during the Civil Rights movement in the 1960s.

Footnotes[+]



Questions to Consider:

  1. How did William Monroe Trotter overcome obstacles to become a tireless civil rights activist?
  2. What can we do today in our words or actions to carry on the legacy of abolition and civil rights activists?
  3. Can you think of recent examples of protest through words? In the 19th and early 20th century this meant newspapers, but now it could include social media, movies, or songs.


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Further Reading

Fox, Stephen R., The Guardian of Boston: William Monroe Trotter. New York: Atheneum, 1971.

Gray, Susan, and Bestor Cram, dirs. Birth of a Movement. Boston: Northern Lights Production, 2016. Premiered February 6, 2017, on PBS.

Greenidge, Kerri K., Black Radical: The Life and Times of William Monroe Trotter. New York: Liveright Publishing, 2020.

Lehr, Dick, The Birth of a Nation: How a Legendary Filmmaker and a Crusading Editor Reignited America's Civil War. New York: PublicAffairs, 2014.

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