On April 17, 1872, William Monroe Trotter—an uncompromising voice for Black equality—was born in Boston, Massachusetts. A Harvard graduate and trailblazing journalist, Trotter founded The Boston Guardian, a radical newspaper that fiercely challenged racial injustice. He co-founded the Niagara Movement alongside W.E.B. Du Bois, which later evolved into the NAACP. Trotter was also a vocal critic of Booker T. Washington’s accommodationist approach, advocating instead for immediate civil rights and full equality. In 1915, he famously led protests against the racist film The Birth of a Nation, one of the first major demonstrations against media racism in American history.
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