Racial tensions in Danville, Virginia, a town of eight thousand with a slight black majority, were on the rise during the state election of 1883. Early in the campaign, several newspapers ran an editorial cartoon depicting white school children being paddled by an African American schoolmaster.¹ The cartoon played on the fears of the white community, which had lost some political control to the African American community in the previous election. In 1882, blacks had gained both a majority in the city council and a healthy share of the law enforcement positions, and had begun to dominate the public market...

A few weeks after T. Thomas Fortune’s strong rejoinder to Atlanta Constitution editor Henry Grady, the Afro-American agitator’s quest to create a national civil rights organization finally came to fruition. The importance of the founding meeting, as Fortune noted, could neither have been easily estimated nor come at a more opportune time. The country was continuing upon its rapid course of obliterating the civil rights legislation of the Reconstruction period. While the situation had not yet reached the “nadir,” the nation was well on its way toward fully “betraying the Negro.” Southern states were steadily passing discriminatory legislation and were...

While the Afro-American League collapsed on the national stage the reasons for its existence—the spread of disfranchisement, segregation, and racial violence—did not disappear. In fact, during the 1890s, the social and political forces that created the need for the Afro-American League actually became more enveloping. During the decade, lynchings rose to an average of more than one hundred per year, and segregation gained national legal sanction with the Supreme Court’s Plessy v. Ferguson decision. With this unceasing growth of a national white supremacy African Americans continued to attempt to organize to secure and protect their citizenship rights, but...

According to the editor of the Richmond Planet, John Mitchell, Jr., the conclusion of the Afro-American Council’s first national convention marked the “beginning of a new era.”¹ Most involved with the convention and those who read of the proceedings in the nation’s black newspapers concurred. Wielding strong symbolic value, the meeting demonstrated that the race was coming together in a firm and organized manner, taking matters into its own hands, and agitating for change. Built on the same principals as its predecessor the Afro-American League, those associated with the Council wanted to create a permanent national civil rights association that...

As the twentieth century dawned, African Americans found themselves in a precarious situation. Throughout the country, black civil and political rights were being violated systematically while white vigilantes murdered roughly a hundred individuals annually. This growing system of Jim Crow and unmitigated racial violence was reinforced by, among other things, the increasing number of “scientific” studies of race and ethnicity—often categorizing the world according to its different ethnic groups and ranking them in terms of superiority—that suggested racism was justified.¹ African American activists responded to this white supremacy in numerous ways, but only one organization, the Afro-American Council,...

Surpassing the lifespan of its predecessor, the Afro-American Council entered its fourth year of existence in 1902. The organization had successfully instituted national and local suits aimed at protecting the rights of African Americans, but as with the Afro-American League, it struggled for financial security as it sought to gain a larger mass following. Despite this situation the organization continued to push forward, focusing on its legal and legislative agenda. Such action was increasingly vital as states and local municipalities continued to pass and strengthen segregation laws, including the increasing number of cities passing legislation creating Jim Crow cars on...

Members of the Afro-American Council were determined that the tempests of 1903 would not become the hurricane of 1904. Despite the fact that the organization had been successful in instituting national and local suits aimed at protecting the rights of African Americans, the failure to achieve quick or significant victories in those cases prevented the group from gaining the respect and backing of a large segment of the community. Furthermore, the public presence of Booker T. Washington among the Council’s ranks had made a great number of activists uneasy. These issues plagued the Council in late 1903 and early 1904...

Building on the momentum of the final months of 1905, the Afro-American Council entered 1906 full of energy and primed to have a successful year. The Constitution League and the Niagara Movement also entered the New Year focused and ready to organize. Such determination and concentration was necessary for, despite the best efforts of these organizations, it seemed they were only slowing the steamroller of white supremacy. Whites continued to violate and rewrite the rights of African Americans with impunity. Moreover, racial tensions, which often lead to violence, continued to increase with the proliferation of sensationalized scare stories about black...

Immediately following T. Thomas Fortune’s death in 1928, the Amsterdam News published an extensive obituary praising the fiery journalist and civil rights activist for his long career and tireless devotion to the race, social uplift, and equal rights. The tribute to his life and work acknowledged his pioneering efforts in organizing the Afro-American League, an organization that the Amsterdam News editors referred to as “the parent of the Niagara Movement, the National Association for the Advancement of Colored People, and all similar organizations since.”¹ Eight years later, W. E. B. Du Bois acknowledged Fortune and his Afro-American League for laying...