William Monroe Trotter

Place: Chillicothe

Born: 1872

Death: 1934

Biography:

William Monroe Trotter was an African American journalist and vocal advocate of racial equality in the early 20th century. He was born on April 7, 1872, in Chillicothe, Ohio, to James Monroe Trotter and Virginia Isaacs Trotter. Trotter earned his graduate and post-graduate degrees at Harvard University, becoming the first man of color to earn a Phi Beta Kappa key there. He founded the Boston Guardian, an independent African-American newspaper, in 1901, and was an early opponent of the accommodationist race policies of Booker T. Washington. Trotter was an activist for African-American civil rights and was involved in protest movements for civil rights throughout the 1900s and 1910s. He contributed to the formation of the National Association for the Advancement of Colored People (NAACP) and was involved in the Niagara Movement. Trotter's style was often divisive, and he ended up leaving the NAACP for the National Equal Rights League. He died on April 7, 1934, in Boston, Massachusetts.