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William Monroe Trotter Was Perhaps the Most ‘Rude’ African American Journalist This Nation Has Produced

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Twenty-three members of the Trotter Group contributed to this August Press collection published in 2006.
Twenty-three members of the Trotter Group contributed to this August Press collection published in 2006.

Black Columnists Made Agitator Their Namesake

By Derrick Z. Jackson

On November 12, 1914, William Monroe Trotter went to the White House. Trotter, editor of the Guardian newspaper, supported President Woodrow Wilson’s election. But lynching was flaring up. Federal segregation was more rigid than ever. Trotter went to ask Wilson where he stood on racism.

Wilson told Trotter, “Segregation is not humiliating but a benefit . . . Your manner offends me.”

This started a 45-minute argument. Trotter said, “Two years ago, you were regarded as a second Abraham Lincoln . . . Now we colored leaders (who supported Wilson) are denounced in the colored churches as traitors to our race.”

Trotter co-founder DeWayne Wickham published this collection in 1996.

The argument made the front page of The New York Times. The mainstream press called Trotter everything from a poor representative of his race, to possessing “super-abundant untactful belligerency,” to nigger. Many African Americans publicly criticized Trotter’s judgment.

W.E.B. Du Bois praised Trotter for his fearlessness and his unselfish devotion to the higher interests of the Negro race. Oswald Garrison Villard, a grandson of William Lloyd Garrison, said that perhaps “one has to be rude to get into the press and do good with a just cause!”

Trotter was perhaps the most “rude” African-American journalist this nation has produced. The first African-American Phi Beta Kappa graduate of Harvard, Trotter was uncompromising. He attacked both racists and African-American accommodationsits. He and DuBois drafted the Declaration of Principles for the Niagara Movement of leading African-American opinion makers, saying:

“Persistent manly agitation is the way to liberty. . . . We black men have our own duties . . . to respect ourselves, even as we respect others. But in doing so, we shall not cease to remind the white man of his responsibility. We refuse to allow the impression to remain that the Negro-American assents to inferiority, is submissive under oppression and apologetic before insults.”

Trotter’s legacy of lone wolf protest, which included upsetting the president of the United States, cannot be forgotten. Thus, we the African-American columnists who met December 8 and 9 [1992] at Trotter’s alma mater of Harvard call ourselves The Trotter Group.

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