ARTICLES

Politics, Rights, and Spatiality in W.E.B. Du Bois’s“Address to the Country” (1906)

Robert W. Williams

Published online: 11 August 2009# Springer Science + Business Media, LLC 2009

Abstract Organized in 1905, the Niagara Movement opposed racial discriminationin the U.S.A. and promoted its goals and means for racial uplift. During its secondmeeting in 1906 at Harpers Ferry, W.E.B. Du Bois wrote the “Address to theCountry,” which set forth a series of demands for political and civil rights, and alsocalled for Congressional intervention to secure those rights. This paper explores thecritical spatiality of race, politics, and rights that inheres within the “Address” so thatone can better understand the nationalizing strategy advocated by the NiagaraMovement. Such a strategy implicated spatiality both as an end goal that supportedcivil and political rights via dismantling segregation and other discriminatory spatialstructures, and also as a means—a politics of scale—that expanded the scope ofpolitical struggles to national arenas.

Keywords Race . Civil rights . Niagara movement . Political rights .

Geographical scale

Introduction

The Niagara Movement, when created in 1905, was intended to establish anationwide organization to oppose racial discrimination and to promote its ownspecific goals and strategies for racial uplift. By so doing, it directly challenged theleadership of Booker T. Washington. At the second meeting of the NiagaraMovement in 1906 at Harpers Ferry, W.E.B. Du Bois wrote the “Address to theCountry” (ATTC), which is also cited as “Address to the Nation” (Du Bois 1906a;New York Times 1906). The “Address” articulated a set of demands for political andcivil rights, and also called for Congressional intervention to secure those demands.

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R. W. Williams (*)Political Science, Bennett College, 900 East Washington St., Greensboro, NC 27401, USAe-mail: rwilliams@bennett.edue-mail: drrobtwms@yahoo.com

Underlying the political arguments of the “Address” was an implicit and criticalconception of the spatiality of politics. This paper will interpret Du Bois’s 1906“Address” in terms of space, place, and scale—intertwined concepts often used bygeographers to study the spatiality of society. Space, from a critical-geographicperspective, is not merely a measurable distance; it is not a geometric plane in whichall points are of equal significance; and it is not a neutral container in which humansact and interact (Curry 1996). Space arises from social relations and social practicesthat are constituted in the multiform dimensions of the world. In its dialectical waysspace is produced by human actions and social relations, and in turn space influenceshumans via the constraints and opportunities induced by those same spatialstructures.

Although Du Bois in the “Address to the Country” did not specify authors orworks of geography, he was aware of the importance of space and place ininterpersonal situations (e.g., in his The Souls of Black Folk, 1903) and ofgeographical factors in history (e.g., in his John Brown, 1909, The Negro, 1915,and The World and Africa, 1947), to mention only a few examples of the spatialdimensions of his thought (also see Du Bois 1935). In addition, Du Bois in his localstudies, like “The Negroes of Farmville, Virginia” (1898) and The PhiladelphiaNegro (1899a) examined particular locales so as to better understand the specificityand diversity of African American lives and conditions—all with the intention ofchallenging White supremacist ideas of supposed African American uniformity andalleged inferiority. In such studies Du Bois suggested solutions to end racialdiscrimination that involved both Black and White efforts, including Blackeducational attainment and moral uplift as well as White tolerance and Christianfellowship. The ATTC is significant in that context because of its explicit emphasison what I have called herein its critical spatiality. Thus, although many of his social-scientific works were localized in scope, Du Bois’s politics, especially via theNiagara Movement, increasingly included a national scalar orientation.

My intention in this essay is to reconstruct the arguments of the “Address” via ageographical framework, clarifying its inherent critical spatiality of race, politics,and rights. By exploring the spatiality of politics implicit within the ATTC one canbetter understand the nationalizing strategy advocated by Du Bois and the NiagaraMovement. That particular strategy implicated spatiality in terms of both an end goalto dismantle myriad cases of discriminatory spatial structures (e.g., segregatedfacilities) across the nation, and also a means to expand the scope of the politicalstruggle to national arenas via a politics of scale. For a critical concept of spatiality,such as can be inferred from Du Bois’s overall ideas and the “Address” itself, spacesof discrimination had been constructed and legitimated via discourses and acts, bothofficial and unofficial. However, as the ATTC strongly implied, a critical spatialityalso might be used to inform and create liberatory tools for the fight against racialand social injustice. The insights found therein thus help us to better grasp, asexemplified in the ATTC, how space, place, and scale have intersected historicallywith race in U.S. society and its political movements.

Considering the “Address” in terms of critical spatiality will augment otherstudies that have examined race with regard to spatial structures and their implicitracialized social relationships. Such other studies include research on specific areas,like the notable Black Metropolis (Drake and Cayton 1945), on apartheid and

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segregation (Jackson 1989; Johnson 1944), and on social movements and protests(Dwyer 2000; Peake and Schein 2000; Self 2000). Also investigated are geographicprocesses, such as spatially related human behavior in inner cities (Harvey 1972;Rose 1971), and rural-to-urban migration (Drake and Cayton 1945; Tolnay 2003;Woodson 1918). Accordingly, with their emphases on dynamic processes, suchstudies have theoretically helped to undermine past works that had stressedenvironmental determinism with its focus on naturalizing racial differences in termsof climatic zones or other geographical factors (Peet 1985). Also of spatialimportance are the interpretations of the “Black Nation” thesis which holds notonly that African Americans are an oppressed community, or nation, within a racistU.S.A., but that they should have the right to self-determination within their ownterritory, whether defined within extant U.S. borders or abroad (Delany 1852;Forman 1984; Haywood 1948; Muhammad 1997; also see Dawson 2001). Adding tothe previous works are the few studies that have examined the spatial dimensions inDu Bois’s thought (e.g., Miller 1989; Wilson 2002). Nonetheless, his 1906“Address” has not received scholarly attention from a spatial perspective, therebywarranting further scrutiny.

Various African American organizations existed prior to the founding of theNiagara Movement. Annual conferences at Tuskegee Institute and HamptonUniversity as well as the National Negro Business League primarily emphasizedself-help as a way to racial uplift, rather than political activism for equality andfreedom (Meier 1966: Ch. VIII). Other organizations were created in the late 19thand early 20th centuries that focused on political tactics and goals, such as theNational Afro-American Council and the Committee of Twelve for the Advancementof the Interests of the Negro Race (Adams 1902; Mebane 1900; Meier 1966: 70–71,128–130; National Afro-American Council 1898). The National Association ofColored Women sought both to promote self-help and to politically challenge JimCrow laws (Terrell 1898: 13). Despite the presence of such organizations andbecause of what they deemed to be the accommodationist influences of Booker T.Washington, Du Bois and a few others, such as Freeman Murray and MonroeTrotter, took an independent course (Lewis 1993: 310; Norrell 2009).

In 1905, Du Bois planned the first meeting of what was to become the NiagaraMovement. The participants convened in a hotel at Fort Erie, Ontario, Canada. Itwas the first such meeting of African Americans in the new 20th Century orientedtowards political solutions to the political and social problems confronting AfricanAmericans (Du Bois 1905; Du Bois and Trotter 1905; also see Lewis 1993 andRudwick 1957). The first meeting set up committees in various states in order tofacilitate the Movement’s organizational strategy and to challenge segregationistpolicies (McMurry 2000: 278). Subsequently, Northern state chapters wereencouraged to pursue civil rights legislation in their particular states (Rudwick1957: 189). In mid-August 1906, the second meeting of the Niagara Movement washeld in Harpers Ferry at Storer College (Barber 1906). The numbers had increasedand women were allowed to participate in a few of the meeting’s sessions; womenalso held their own “auxiliary” sessions (Lewis 1993). Moreover, “the Movement’sconstitution made no gender distinction” (Giddings 2008: 453)—a point illustratedin two documents on “Women and the Niagara Movement” (Niagara Movement1906a, b). Women indeed participated actively over time in various ways, such as in

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promoting membership and in mobilizing for reforms against segregation (Nahal andMatthews 2008; Rice 2005). Nonetheless, women apparently did not occupy directroles in influencing the movement at the highest leadership levels (Giddings 2008:453). Such gender biases limited the definition of citizenship promulgated by theATTC, as will be discussed below.

Three more annual meetings of the Niagara Movement were held; the fifth andlast conference was convened in 1909. Over time the state organizations of theMovement did meet with a few successes: e.g., the D.C. branch helped to opposeJim Crow railroad cars in both the courts and Congress (Hershaw 1908; also NiagaraMovement 1908). The Movement eventually ended in the months following the fifthmeeting, but its weaknesses had become increasingly evident over its short life span.According to Rudwick, the Niagara Movement “was plagued by its ownorganizational inexperience and by harassed by the accommodationist TuskegeeMachine” (Rudwick 1957: 177; also see Nelson 2002: 161–2). In addition, otherfactors seriously weakened the Movement, such as internal disagreements, thediminishing interest of some members, a paucity of financial resources, and the lackof a mass base of working-class support (Du Bois 1907a, b; Lewis 1993: 375–377;Nelson 2002: 161; Rudwick 1957: 192–198). After the formation of the NAACP in1909, Du Bois requested that Niagara Movement members support the newassociation (Lewis 1993: 439).

This paper initially examines the “Address” in terms of the idea of rights in U.S.political thought and history. This section ends by posing three questions about thespatial scale of rights and about the governmental arenas best able to secure thoserights. The next sections provide a spatial interpretation of the “Address” in terms ofscale and place. Finally, the paper analyzes the nationalizing strategy proposed in theATTC, including its caveats and limitations.

Of Rights and Politics in the United States

In the history of U.S. political thought on rights, one major perspective holds thatnatural rights are not given by government, but rather are conferred by a divinepower. Natural rights pre-exist government. In the social contract tradition ofpolitical thought, governments are designed and created to protect those naturalrights and the subsidiary but still important rights called positive rights (Levy 1999: 7).Various political movements within U.S. history, including those seeking rights forwomen and persons of color, have used the language of natural rights.

The “Declaration of Independence” is of course the locus classicus for thearticulation of natural rights in the U.S.A.—a point made by the free AfricanAmerican Benjamin Banneker when he referred to slavery as a denial of basic rightsin a 1791 letter to Thomas Jefferson (Latrobe 1845: 15). Life, liberty, and happinessare natural rights—as fundamental to the U.S. founders as to their intellectualprecursors (e.g., John Locke 1963; see also McDonald 1985). Natural rights alsoinclude the right to travel and to marry (Levy 1999: 250–254). Positive rights arethose rights derived as a way to promote the natural rights. Governments areintended to protect individuals via creating and enforcing positive rights. Positiverights include the right to vote, the right to hold office, the right to avoid having

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troops quartered in personal homes during times of peace, the right to bail, and theright of presumed innocence in legal cases (Levy 1999: 17, 254).

In the “Address to the Country” Du Bois demanded the natural and positive rightsthat were enjoyed by other “Americans,” especially by White males. He wrote:

“First, we would vote; with the right to vote goes everything . . . .”

“Second. We want discrimination in public accommodation to cease.”

“Third. We claim the right of freemen to walk, talk, and be with them that wishto be with us.”

“Fourth. We want the laws enforced against rich as well as poor; againstCapitalist as well as Laborer; against white as well as black.”

“Fifth. We want our children educated.” (Du Bois 1906a: 368)

For Du Bois, the securing of those rights for African Americans would also benefitthe U.S.A. as a whole because then the country would be adhering to its politicalideals (Du Bois 1906a: 367).

In the five sets of rights demanded in the “Address,” Du Bois did not seem tochallenge the classical liberal perspective that informed much of the American politicalthought on rights. However, Du Bois emphasized voting rights as the first right to besecured when he wrote: “with the right to vote goes everything: Freedom, manhood, thehonor of your wives, the chastity of your daughters, the right to work, and the chance torise, and let no man listen to those who deny this” (Du Bois 1906a: 368). This emphasison voting rights, a positive right, raises an interesting observation. John Locke in hisSecond Treatise on Government, considered a major philosophical influence onAmerica’s founding (McDonald 1985: 60), had elaborated first on natural rights, laws,and liberties before discussing government and its role (Locke 1963). Du Bois,however, strongly emphasized the political means needed to safeguard people and theexercise of their natural rights. The inequalities and constraints on freedom generatedby actual discrimination were real experiences and not part of a philosopher’shypothetical state of nature. Du Bois’s ideas on rights had more in common with thetradition of Thomas Paine. Paine wrote in 1795: “The right of voting for representativesis the primary right by which other rights are protected. To take away this right is toreduce a man to slavery....” (Paine 1908: 267). Du Bois surely would have agreed.

Du Bois did not create his own elaborate theory of natural and positive rights.Nevertheless, he did provide a philosophical grounding which can be found inseveral essays written at approximately the same time as the ATTC. Therein, DuBois justified a definition of African Americans in terms of their fundamentalhumanity, which would mean that as humans they would possess the natural rightsenjoyed by other races. A crucial essay to examine in this regard is Du Bois’s “TheDevelopment of a People” (1904b). He set forth four overlapping phases of “humanadvancement historically considered” (1904b: 294). He wrote:

The average American community of to-day has grown by a slow, intricate andhesitating advance through four overlapping eras. First, there is the struggle forsheer physical existence.... Above this comes the accumulation for futuresubsistence—the saving and striving and transmuting of goods for use in days

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to come.... Then in every community there goes on from the first, but withlarger and larger emphasis as the years fly, some essay to train the young intothe tradition of the fathers.... And, finally, as the group meets other groups andcomes into larger spiritual contact with nations, there is that transference andsifting and accumulation of the elements of human culture which makes forwider civilization and higher development. These four steps of subsistence,accumulation, education and culture-contact are not disconnected, discreetstages. (Du Bois 1904b: 295)

He then provided descriptions of what he designated as typical examples of the“worst” and the “best” African American households. The so-called best householdmanifested the indicators of social progress—especially those in the United States—and thereby provided the foundation of humanness upon which rights could bejustified. In his words:

What the figures of Negro advancement mean is, that the development hasbeen distinctly and markedly in the right direction, and that, given justice andhelp, no honest man can doubt the outcome. The giving of justice means therecognition of desert wherever it appears; the right to vote on exactly the sameterms as other people vote; the right to the equal use of public conveniencesand the educating of youth in the public schools. (Du Bois 1904b: 309)

By possessing the capacity to develop and progress socially African Americans possessedthe natural rights inherent in humans and the positive rights derived therefrom.

Du Bois’s social-scientific research of those early years documented manyadvances defined according to the prevalent social indicators of the time: literacy,property, wealth accumulation, educational attainment, etc.. But lest some of DuBois’s fellow Americans hold that all or most African Americans advance to acertain level before being considered fully citizens with the rights of citizens DuBois argued that rights should not be withheld because of, in his elitist wording, any“lack [of] the breeding and culture which the most satisfactory human intercourserequires” (Du Bois 1911: 362). In his contemporaneous essay “The Future of theNegro Race in America” he demonstrated that the exercise of rights and socialimprovement were mutually reinforcing: indeed, the protection of rights for allAfrican Americans greatly facilitated their opportunities for achievement (1904a:16–18). That point could be inferred also from the overlapping stages of humanprogress that he had discussed in “The Development of a People.” It should be notedthat such a position seems at odds with Du Bois’s earlier view that voting rightscould be limited justifiably to Whites and Blacks who possessed what he quoted assufficient “civilization and intelligence” (1899b: 3227).

Although in the “Address” Du Bois was demanding only extant rights that hadalready been secured for Whites (and especially White males), his demands weredirected at the national government, specifically Congress (Du Bois 1906a: 368).The demands in the ATTC also highlighted the spatiality inhering in rights, or morepointedly the spatiality inhering in the practice and enforcement of rights. One wayto understand this spatiality of rights is to relate it to the Fourteenth Amendment. DuBois implicitly invoked the Fourteenth Amendment (ratified in 1868) and its equalprotection and due process clauses. But Du Bois’s interpretation of those clauses did

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not agree with the conventional jurisprudence of the Fourteenth Amendment in1906.

The Fourteenth Amendment addressed two crucial facets of African Americanexistence since emancipation. First, the Fourteenth Amendment defined citizens asthose who were born or naturalized in U.S. territory (thereby overturning the DredScott case of 1856, which held that Blacks were not citizens and had no rights thatwould be recognized). The Fourteenth Amendment was a constitutional way toreinforce what the Civil Rights Act of 1866 (14 Stat. 27) had previously done, whichwas to define citizenship in terms of birth within U.S. territory. Second, the Plessy v.Ferguson case of 1896 decided how and, crucially for the purposes of this essay,where the Fourteenth Amendment was to apply to African Americans. The equalityin the equal protection clause was to be construed as a right to equal condition, notas a right to occupy the same places or to utilize the same institutions as Whites.According to the Supreme Court in its Plessy decision, African Americans were notbeing denied equal protection to the extent that the Black facilities were(supposedly) equal to the White facilities.

Du Bois’s push for the recognition and enforcement of rights in the “Address”both continued and extended the points that he put forward in other published works.For example, in The Philadelphia Negro Du Bois had expressed deep concern overthe denial of basic rights to Black Philadelphians (Du Bois 1899a). He alsoemphasized the individual moral and cultural developments that he deemednecessary for African Americans to be worthy U.S. citizens (Schäfer 2001). In1903 he argued forcefully for political and civil rights in The Souls of Black Folk(1903). In 1905 Du Bois and William Trotter wrote the “Declaration of Principles”for the first Niagara Movement meeting (Du Bois and Trotter 1905). In both the“Declaration” and the ATTC the cultural/moral dimensions were paramount,including personal hard work and family well-being. Yet both the “Declaration”and the “Address” stressed, indeed demanded, more of a political solution than didThe Philadelphia Negro, probably because the latter in Du Bois’s own view was amore neutral social-scientific work.

According to Du Bois, the need to protect the rights of African Americans andothers in the numerical minority was a necessity because of the way that U.S.democracy was practiced. In a later work Du Bois wrote of the often extremereverence for majorities in American politics (Du Bois 1920). He criticized thearrogance of what he called the “divine right of majorities:” those in the majority,which we could reasonably infer were Whites, did not need to listen to those in theminority (Du Bois 1920: Ch. VI). He argued that some groups could not become amajority, including pointedly, African Americans and, in the era before the passageof the Nineteenth Amendment, women in general. Such demographic groups therebyfaced difficult challenges when seeking to obtain equal opportunities or to expresstheir political voices. Majority rule without protection for the rights of numericalminorities only made a sham of U.S. democracy.

The “Address” conveyed a multidimensional understanding of rights: rights wereconstitutive of humans per se; rights secured the personal expression of individualcitizens; and rights justified the protection of citizens from the oppression of others,including any oppression from governmental units, like states. Crucially, the ATTCwas to challenge, via an implicit spatial vocabulary, the geography of citizenship

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derived from the Fourteenth Amendment and its interpretation via the Plessy case.Although the Fourteenth Amendment defined citizenship in a way that “constituted”it in national terms, the Supreme Court’s ruling in Plessy allowed the states to defineand even to delimit the practical, day-to-day application of citizenship on matters ofwhere citizens were permitted to be.

As can be readily observed, Du Bois in the ATTC did not incorporate gender in histreatment of citizenship and its rights (Fletcher 2006; Keiter 2006; Schecter 2001: 132–133). Overall, Du Bois is acknowledged for his support for women’s suffrage andhigher education. Yet his pro-feminism on certain issues did not preclude Du Bois’suse of what has been called his masculinist bias (James 1996). Some scholars arguethat Du Bois often conceptualized African American women as passive and in need ofrescue by Black men (e.g., Carby 2000). A case in point is his 1906 “Address to theCountry.” As indicated above, women participated in the Niagara Movement but werelimited in their leadership roles within the entire organization itself. Within the text ofthe ATTC, Du Bois exemplified a masculinist bias, very noticeably in the scope ofwhat the exercise of rights would protect (e.g., “manhood, the honor of your wives,the chastity of your daughters”). The implication of the ATTC within the historicalcontext of early 20th Century America is that women were not fully agentic citizenslike men. Women’s concerns and experiences were less valuable than those of men(Fletcher 2006). Consequently, such a diminution of women tended to privilege menin the roles of citizens. This ultimately points to a major contradiction within the ideaof rights as spatially delineated by the ATTC.

The spatial dimensions of rights, as implied within the “Address,” pose threequestions. (A) Was the spatial scope, or scale, for the practice of political rights to benational or subnational? (B) Was there a particular governmental branch (orbranches) that was best suited to secure rights? Examining those questions in thefollowing sections will raise the debate over whether a state or the nationalgovernment is a more appropriate territorial unit for protecting citizens’ rights. Thethird question asks: (C) What are the consequences of the masculinist biases in theATTC as they relate to a critical spatiality of rights, most specifically to a politics ofscale? Examining that question will illustrate the extent of the emancipatorypotential in the Niagara Movement itself.

The Politics of Scale in the “Address to the Country”

The “Address” was a militant document. The securing of rights would require apolitical movement and a specific strategy, specifically a politics of scale to combatthe discriminatory spatial structures of White supremacism. Du Bois in the ATTCsupplied pertinent examples of oppressive spatial structures that arose from Whitesupremacism, including segregated public transportation; discriminatory access anduse of public spaces; and segregated and decrepit educational facilities (Du Bois1906a: 368). Those spatial structures involved the “how” by which the effects of un/official discrimination came to be articulated in particular places. Such effectsentailed the segregation of people and activities into certain areas as well as theexpectation of certain behaviors in interpersonal settings (Johnson 1944). Byanalyzing spatial structures created via socio-political practices and discourses we

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can better understand how social power and inequalities persist over time regardlessof whether the policies were legitimated via authoritative political processes.

Scale conceptualizes how we make sense of multiple social processes as they arearticulated spatially for the individual, community, national state, global region, andthe world itself. Scale does not refer to discrete layers nested together (Howitt 2002).Rather, the scales at which individuals, communities, countries, etc. experiencesocial processes, and by which they as agents relate to each other, are interconnecteddynamically. Scale is produced via social struggles over how to resolve societalproblems (Herod 1991). The production of scale implicates a politics of scale. In thework of E.E. Schattschneider (1975) the places where a group gained resources andallies are intertwined with how a group conceived and publicized the nature of asocial issue. A group with more local support or resources might seek to narrow thescope of conflict, as Schattschneider termed it, to subnational areas, and thereby castan issue as more local in scale. A contending group, perhaps with fewer localresources, might wish to broaden the scope of conflict so as to incorporate actors andgovernmental institutions at the national level. Crucially, there is no natural scale—no local, state, national, or international level—pre-given in the nature of an issue.Rather, struggles between groups define, and thereby fundamentally constitute, thescale of the issue being contested.

Du Bois was advocating a politics of scale when he demanded that the nationallegislature secure the rights of African Americans. The “Address” conveyed animplicit politics of scale in at least two ways: (a) as an understanding of “where”rights were to be secured within a political structure; and (b) as a strategy of apolitical movement. The politics of scale articulated in the ATTC consisted of anexpansion of the scope of conflict as a political strategy as well as an assertion thatthe national government was the level at which rights were to be protected.

Because natural rights in U.S. political thought were considered pre-political,governments did not confer them. Nevertheless, following the social contracttradition, governments in general were intended to protect the rights from violation.Many early American political debates revolved around the question of which unitof government was to secure those rights. In an American context this pittedsubnational units like states against the national government. Those debates posed acentral question. Was there a “natural” governmental level that best secured thenatural and positive rights? To phrase it differently, did a particular government unitor configuration of units help to secure rights?

During the ratification period for the U.S. Constitution the so-called anti-Federalists engaged in a vigorous debate with the Federalists in the burgeoningpublic sphere of the new country. Federalists, who supported the ratification of theU.S. Constitution, argued for the necessity of a national government that couldprotect the country from foreign attack and domestic turmoil, and that could fosterthe development of a national economy (Federalist Papers 1987: Nrs. 4, 5, 9, 10, 11,12, 41; see also McDonald 1985).

The anti-Federalists, on the contrary, expressed deep concerns that the authorityof the national government, as specified in or construed from the proposedConstitution, could lead to tyranny (Main 1974). The Anti-Federalists typicallybelieved that communities and states were the protectors of rights and the ways oflife within those subnational units. They believed that more localized governments

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were the best promoters of personal rights and accordingly were the best guardiansagainst an overbearing national government. For the anti-Federalists the larger theextent of a territory, the more distant was the government from the citizens, bothphysically and emotionally, and thereby the more likely such a national governmentcould become tyrannical (e.g., “Agrippa” 1787: 235; “Brutus” 1787: 114). As oneanti-Federalist, using the pseudonym of the “Federal Farmer,” wrote:

The state governments will exist, with all their governors, senators,representatives, officers and expences [sic]; in these will be nineteen-twentieths of the representatives of the people; they will have a nearconnection, and their members an immediate intercourse with the people;and the probability is, that the state governments will possess the confidence ofthe people, and be considered generally as their immediate guardians.(“Federal Farmer” 1787: 41–2)

Interestingly, the Federalists tended to agree with their foes on the importance ofcommunities and states to the people themselves: people have “natural attachments”to state governments rather than to a national government (Federalist Paper 1987:Nr. 46; also see Nr. 17). They emphasized that the U.S. Constitution wouldsafeguard vital rights via establishing the “correct balance” between state andnational governmental levels. The Federalist Papers also indicated that distancebetween the national government and the state governments and localities wouldinduce vigilance on the part of all concerned (Federalist Paper 1987: Nr. 84). Thenational government could protect liberties and rights by protecting states fromforeign invasion and from domestic unrest, while the state governments wouldrepresent and secure the rights of those within their borders. The anti-Federalistsremained skeptical (e.g., “Brutus” 1787: 116; “Federal Farmer” 1787: 41; also see R.H. Lee 1914: 487; 507–9). Despite Federalist arguments against a listing of rights(Federalist Paper 1987: Nr. 84), a compromise was struck in order to ensure thepassage of the Constitution. A set of amendments known as the Bill of Rights waseventually passed to protect individuals from a potentially oppressive nationalgovernment.

The compromises represented by the U.S. Constitution and its Bill of Rights,however, did not preclude later controversies. In effect, a scale politics of rights hascharacterized the debates. The “appropriate” scale of natural and positive rights wasneither self-evident nor pre-given. It was not to be found in the extent or size of theterritory. Rather, the particular institutional configurations of federalism that werecreated over the course of U.S. history emerged via the struggles betweencontending groups, such as between the Federalists and anti-Federalists, and stilllater, between states’ rights advocates of the mid-19th and mid-20th Centuries andtheir opponents in the civil rights movements.

Views on states’ rights have varied over time but they are predicated in general onthe Tenth Amendment, which reserves power to the states or to the people.Supporters of states’ rights typically have considered that the U.S. Constitution wasa compact between states to form a new country and national government (Calhoun1831). Accordingly, the Constitution was not a compact among or betweenindividuals within the whole of the United States. The states were the primaryactors ostensibly securing the rights of those dwelling within their respective

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borders. Historically, Americans wielding the weapon of states’ rights have used it todefend against a national government that they believed had overreached itsconstitutional authority.

States’ rights became a rallying cry on issues of importance to the antebellum South,including tariffs and slavery. John C. Calhoun sought to provide philosophical supportfor the pre-Civil War South. Calhoun was concerned that the interests of a numericalminority could conflict with numerically larger states in the national political arenas. ForCalhoun SouthernWhites were a numerical minority which often clashed with Northernpoliticians in Washington. Calhoun proposed nullification of national policies bySouthern states who would interpose themselves between their citizens and the nationalgovernment (Calhoun 1851). Calhoun’s solution did not materialize and ultimately theantebellum South decided that secession from the Union was the course of action tofollow (Hofstadter 1989; von Holst 1892).

During the civil rights era of the 20th Century, the issue of states’ rights came tothe fore when and where Whites considered that the conventional racial order wasbeing transgressed. In reaction to national government actions and the activism ofnumerous civil rights groups, much support for the old order was expressed. To putit more strongly, the states’ rights advocates responded quite vigorously andsometimes violently in their opposition to equal rights and societal opportunities forAfrican Americans.

In addition to the extralegal actions of White Citizens Councils, racist lawenforcement officers, and the night riders of the KKK, those opposing civil rights useda variety of political and legal devices in their attempt to define rights, and thereby topursue a scalar politics, in terms favorable to the subnational units. Legal means includedstate-level litigation that opposed desegregation in public schools and publicaccommodations. There were also pronouncements by Southern state and nationalpoliticians on the alleged unconstitutionality of various national policies or legaldecisions. For example, the “Southern Manifesto” was issued in 1956 by severalSouthern U.S. Senators to oppose the Supreme Court decision on Brown v. Board ofEducation (Southern Manifesto 1956). Also, President Kennedy’s proposed civil rightsbill was attacked on constitutional grounds, such as by a Virginia anti-civil rightsorganization in 1963 (Virginia Commission on Constitutional Government 1963).

Printed materials widely distributed across the South often depicted the civil rightsgroups as outside agitators and the national government as an invading force seeking tooverturn both the U.S. Constitution and “Southern heritage.” During electoral racesmany Southern politicians at all levels of government used states’ rights as a campaignposition. Even national politicians, such as President Nixon and his reelection strategyof 1972, incorporated themes from the South in order to woo White voters. In thosemany examples, the state’s rights proponents argued that rights and interests weregrounded in the communities of the state and should not be controlled or “attacked” bythose from outside the states or from Washington, D.C. itself.

In the “Address to the Country” Du Bois demanded that Congress resolve manyof the abiding forms of racial discrimination (Du Bois 1906a: 368). For Du Bois andthe other members of the Niagara Movement, the state governments and hegemonicWhite communities were not willing to solve the country’s race problems in thepolitical terms deemed necessary to achieve racial justice. The physical proximity ofthe people of the state to the subnational government was no guarantee of their

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protection, whether for their physical bodies or for their equally important rights.Accordingly, Du Bois had directed the political message of the ATTC at nationalgovernmental arenas. The rights of the U.S. Constitution must be secured by thenational government, specifically Congress, which presumably possessed theresources to bring a recalcitrant White supremacism under some sort of control.Blacks were citizens and citizenship was not essentially grounded in a state; rather,citizens were first and foremost members of the national political community, even ifalso residents of a particular state. Therefore, the ATTC advocated and promoted ascalar politics of rights, interpreting rights in ways which removed states and localgovernments from defining—indeed, diminishing—them.

The nationalizing strategy of the Niagara Movement and its “Address to theCountry”was not without some risk of failure. Heretofore many politicians and officialsin national governmental institutions, like the U.S. Supreme Court and the presidency,had not been stalwart supporters of civil rights. The Supreme Court over time hadsupported numerous laws that harmed African Americans (e.g., the Dred Scott andPlessy cases, among other cases; Kluger 1976). Addressing Congress was necessaryfrom a strategic perspective because the U.S. Supreme Court had already decided thatseparate public transportation facilities were constitutionally equal. As a consequence,only the national legislature could tackle the disfranchisement of African Americansand in principle could craft legislation that would render Jim Crow laws illegal (seeGiles v. Harris in 1903). Moreover, U.S. Presidents had not been strong defenders ofAfrican American political and civil rights, often being more willing to providepatronage jobs for Blacks than to stand up for policies supporting their rights.

Accordingly, Du Bois needed to convince Congress to take up the case andtherefore he cast the issue of rights as national in scope. Yet did Congress have thepolitical will? Over time, Congress has generated a mixed record of support for civilrights. Congress on occasion promoted pro-civil rights Constitutional amendments(especially post-Civil War), but it also had passed legislation like the Fugitive SlaveAct in 1850. At the end of the Reconstruction era Southern Democrats began tooccupy crucial Congressional positions from which to hinder civil rights legislation.Nevertheless, short of armed revolution or the creation of separatist enclaves, thelegislative arenas of the national government offered, as the ATTC suggested, somechance of success because those arenas could directly assault racial discrimination.

The Significance of Place in the “Address to the Country”

The concept of place further expresses the spatiality of politics implicit within the“Address.” Place is intimately related to space in so far as particular spots, locations,or areas within a larger tapestry of space can be discerned, not only by geographersbut also by non-geographers (Tuan 1977). Places embrace the meaningfulness of lifefor individuals, groups, communities, societies, polities, and arguably for all ofhumanity. Du Bois stressed two dimensions of place in the ATTC. First, “place” waswhere quotidian life occurred; places embodied the richness and complexity ofhuman experiences and aspirations. Second, historically important activities andpeople were commemorated in the spots where significant events had occurred. Inboth senses, the ATTC emphasized the meaningfulness of place.

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The first dimension of place in the “Address” involved the significance ofeveryday places for people. Du Bois characterized quotidian life in terms of thedignity that anyone had a right to expect in the normal conduct of one’s dailyactivities, especially in public spaces and public accommodations (Du Bois 1906a:368). The briefness of this critique in the ATTC was amplified in other works: e.g.,Du Bois’s personal experiences in public spaces were recounted in The Souls ofBlack Folk, such as when his accidental bump into a White woman on a city streetprompted her to respond with a racially charged tirade (1903).

The second dimension of place in the “Address” focused on the symbolism ofplace. Indeed, the second meeting of the Niagara Movement in 1906 wasintentionally held in an historic spot, Harpers Ferry. Harpers Ferry well illustratedthe importance of place for the social struggles that sought to emancipate theenslaved. It was there that John Brown the abolitionist planned to strike bothsymbolic and practical blows against slavery. Abolitionist words were to be matchedwith abolitionist force: mortal men were inspired to act by religious principles ofdivinely ordained human freedom. Leading an interracial group of men, Brownwished to gather weapons from the U.S. arsenal and then to conduct a guerilla-stylewar against slave-owners. The geographical position of Harpers Ferry in the far-reaching mountain chain would allow Brown and his forces to penetrate into theheartland of the slave-holding South (Du Bois 1909). John Brown and his men failedin their attempt, yet Harpers Ferry became a hallowed place symbolizing for manythe beginning of the end of slavery (Quarles 2001). Harpers Ferry in later decadesbecame a place of pilgrimage for those supporting racial justice; the NiagaraMovement’s 1906 meeting hence was only one of many commemorations held inthat small city, including one by Frederick Douglass (Douglass 1881).

During the course of the 1906 Niagara Movement meeting the participants tookan early morning walk fraught with emotional and political import (Lewis 1993).They went to the site of the physically relocated fire house, the building whereBrown had made his last stand. Approaching it, they took off their shoes and circledthe building. In the “Address” Du Bois described the meaning of that morning walk:“here on the scene of John Brown’s martyrdom we reconsecrate ourselves, ourhonor, our property to the final emancipation of the race which John Brown died tomake free” (Du Bois 1906a: 369). “On this rock we have planted our banners” (DuBois 1906a: 369). The inspiring commemoration also included powerful speechesdelivered later in the day by Du Bois and by Reverdy Ransom, whose “The Spirit ofJohn Brown” was particularly noteworthy (Barber 1906: 408; Ransom 1906; alsosee Quarles 2001: Ch. 1).

The literal and figurative invocation of place connects with the politics of scale,for humans are implicated in more than one geographical scale. We are embodiedbeings and thereby create and recreate a bodily scale through our daily activities.With regards to Harpers Ferry, one relatively small area encapsulates the heart of avigorous and unrelenting commitment for abolition, support of which extended toother places, North and South, within the U.S.A. As such, a specific area becomesinterwoven with other places, all of which are unified behind an ideal of basichuman rights that sought to embrace the whole of the country with its practice.

From the perspective of the “Address,” if rights were to mean anything, and ifrights were to be exercised at local or statewide levels, then they needed to be

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framed in national terms and safeguarded nationally. Here, place as particularity—the individual in a specific locale—was theoretically and philosophically integratedwith scale. Within the context of U.S. race relations the rights of an individualperson in a particular place were meaningless unless rights were secured bynationally based laws to protect whole categories of specific places, like publictransportation and public accommodations. The ATTC therefore importantlyconnected scale and place in terms of rights within the space of the entire UnitedStates.

In keeping with the symbolism of place and the nationalizing scalar politics ofcitizenship, the 1906 Niagara Movement meeting was remembered on its centennial.Seemingly in accord with the national/local orientation of the original meeting, theU.S. National Park Service’s Harpers Ferry National Historical Park in cooperationwith the local Harpers Ferry Historical Association sponsored a series ofcommemorative events in August 2006. Local citizens and visitors, academics andinterested lay persons, and Blacks, other persons of color, and Whites attendednumerous activities that offered music, crafts, historical lectures, and scholarlysymposia—all intended to present the enduring import of the Niagara Movement andits democratic values in the historic place that had inspired the original participants(Harpers Ferry Centennial Commemoration 2006).

Discussion: Caveats to Du Bois’s Politics of Scale

In the “Address to the Country” Du Bois mixed the politics of scale with his politicsof place in order to tackle the unjust spatial structures of racial oppression and JimCrow. In general, the spatiality of politics has been an important part of socialprotests in the U.S.A. For the ATTC, the politics of scale was evidence in theattempts to bypass the state governments. Because various state governments werereluctant to make changes, then Congress as a national governmental arena would bea major focus for the Niagara Movement. This section raises three caveats to thenationalizing strategy of the ATTC’s politics of scale: (a) the practical effects of thegeographically varied constituencies of the Congresspersons; (b) the practical effectsof rural-to-urban migration; and (c) the theoretical lacuna resulting from the ATTC’smasculinist biases with regard to the spatial structures of gender oppression.

Through a direct call for Congress to act Du Bois’s demands in the “Address”encountered a serious limitation to the politics of scale within the American polity:the territorial units in which politicians run for office were spatially differentiated.Such is part of the U.S. government’s separation of powers that divided overallauthority into three main branches. In order to protect against any single branch frombecoming too powerful each shared some of the responsibilities for governance,thereby providing both oversight and in principle a way to counterbalance the otherbranches (Federalist Papers 1987: Nr. 51). Congress was authorized to legislate; thepresident to execute the laws; and the Supreme Court (in the aftermath of theMarbury v. Madison case) to decide the constitutionality of governmental policies.

Crucially for this institutional configuration, the Congress and the presidencywere to be based on different constituencies with varying geographical expressions(Federalist Papers 1987: Nrs. 10, 39, 60). U.S. Senators spanned their state, while

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Representatives were located in districts within the state. Although Presidents inprinciple encompassed the entire nation, the Electoral College that directly voted onthe President was composed of Electors from the individual states. It was assumed inthe Federalist Papers that all such constituencies were rooted in particular places, andthat any “dangerous” commonality of purpose (e.g., to gain control overgovernment) would be undermined by divergent self-interests in the various areasof the country (Federalist Papers 1987: Nrs. 10, 37, 51, 60; also see John Dickinson1801: “Letter VII,” 141–142). Interests were assumed to be so diverse across solarge an area as the United States that, in the words of Federalist Paper Nr. 51, “anunjust combination of a majority of the whole [was] improbable, if notimpracticable” (see James Madison 1840: 806 for his comments on 6 June 1787).

According to the Federalists, to the extent that population demographics change,then presumably the interests of constituencies would change, and thereby politicalissues might also change. The Federalists held that the different levels ofgovernment, in addition to the particular interests of different regions, would makeit difficult to dominate the Congress and thereby difficult to dominate the entirecountry (Lowi 1984). Danger could arise if a commonality of interest was found orcreated. A region or even the whole country then might be gripped, as the Federalistsindicated, by the “mischiefs of faction” (Federalist Papers 1987: Nr. 10), or as theanti-Federalists strongly argued, by the so-called tyrannies of the majority.

Although the “Address” was not explicit about the political-geographicaldimensions of the U.S.A., I believe that Du Bois well understood the spatialdifferentiation of constituencies within the overall American polity. The interests ofdifferent constituencies may vary in particulars, but what presumably would unitethem would be an appeal to that which all held in common, especially with regard tothe rights of Americans. In that way, Du Bois could try to persuade the entirecountry as well as Congress to act in the interests of all Americans, and by doing so,also incorporate African Americans in the country’s political life.

In his attempt to gain the widest possible support in as many areas of the countryas possible, Du Bois framed the words and symbolism of the “Address” to raiseissues and concerns that the Whites of the era, especially White men, probablywould find compelling. Implicitly he asked whether White men would suffer to havetheir votes removed or their families put in jeopardy. Rights therefore were notabstractions debated by philosophers, but were the stuff of flesh-and-blood people.The ATTC conveyed the underlying message evocatively: African Americans wereno different from those of other races in the love for their families and in the desireto be honest, hard-working citizens.

That Du Bois’s words in the “Address” did not fully convince Whites will comeas no surprise. Indeed, the difficulties in achieving equality of rights have beenevident in the long history of struggles from 1619 onwards. The struggles not onlyhad to contend with enduring White supremacism, but also with particular politicalinstitutional configurations. Under conditions of widespread racial oppression andanimosity, the federalist arrangement of state and national governments, as well asthe spatially differentiated constituencies of elected officials within national andsubnational governments, did not conduce easily or quickly to the enforcement ofcivil and political rights. Entrenched interests favoring segregation and relatedpolicies could and did hinder efforts at reform.

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Because of the many institutional obstructions, support for political changeswould seem to require a more broadly based movement across the U.S.A. Inhindsight one can examine whether the Niagara Movement had a sufficiently strongbase of support that could have allowed a nationalizing politics of scale to besuccessful. The Movement’s membership was composed primarily of elites:educated, middle-class African Americans, often professionals, who would standtheir ground against the White elites in Washington, D.C. and in the state housesaround the country. The Movement’s highest leadership ranks were confined to elitemales. One could argue that the Niagara Movement’s base of support was not broadenough to sustain a nationwide movement (Rudwick 1957: 199). Certainly, theMovement cooperated with an interracial organization called the ConstitutionLeague, which increased their reach and resource base (although there was someoverlap of membership: Rudwick 1957: 190). Nonetheless, membership in theNiagara Movement and in attendance at its annual and other special meetingsfluctuated. The numbers varied over time: from a reported 170 members in 1906 (DuBois 1906b: 44) to “nearly 400 members” recorded in 1908 (Niagara Movement1908), and from attendance at Thanksgiving Day events sponsored by theMovement listed as “10,000” (Du Bois 1906b: 44) to attendance at the third annualmeeting measured at about 800 (Lewis 1993: 339) to later annual meetings withmuch fewer in attendance (Lewis 1993: 375). The fluctuations in membership andattendance were understandable because large attendance at events did notnecessarily bespeak similar levels of support for the sponsoring organization itself.Ultimately, the Niagara Movement had difficulties gaining and maintaining a widegrass-roots base that could cut across the spatially differentiated constituencies of thegovernmental branches.

In the decades following the Niagara Movement’s demise, the struggles over civilrights increasingly intensified. A national push for governmental action on rightshistorically has been conjoined with more widespread, localized actions that reinforcedefforts in the national institutional arenas. Here arises the second caveat to Du Bois’snationalizing strategy posed in the ATTC: the practical effects of African Americaninternal migration. Du Bois was quite aware of the rural-to-urban movements of Blacksfrom the South to the North (e.g., 1899a; 1901). Although not explicitly examined inthe ATTC, the rural-to-urban migrations would come to characterize one avenue fornational political changes. A politics of scale should take into account the ways thatthe spatial concentration of African Americans into particular places, like cities, couldinfluence national politics (Rose 1971), or to use the language of this essay, couldinfluence a nationalizing politics of scale on issues of civil and political rights. Fromroughly the 1930s onwards local politics yielded one way that slowly pressurednational political arenas: African Americans began to be elected for Congressionalpolitical offices for the first time since the last one was elected in 1901 (U.S. Congress2008: 234–239). As a vital lesson for a nationalizing scalar politics, local conditionsand political institutions can be influential at a national level, once political rights areenforced. Indeed, the ATTC had not examined the political effects of a spatialconcentration of Blacks in cities. But, in fairness to Du Bois, quite possibly the lack ofacknowledgment within the “Address” arose because of the ongoing repression of thefranchise by various states (U.S. Congress 2008: 154) and because of the mercenaryaspects of “party machine” politics in some cities (Du Bois 1899a: Sec.55).

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Over the course of the 20th Century numerous local activities occurred contempo-raneously with the campaigns to pass national legislation and with the legal actions inthe state or federal judiciaries. Such local activities were many and varied, such as voterregistration drives to empower the disfranchised, literacy campaigns to broaden theintellectual horizons, Freedom Rides to challenge segregated bus stations, sit-ins toconfront segregated lunch counters, and community organizations to provide food andhealth care (Branch 1999; Draper 1970; Newton 1974; Powledge 1991; Ture andHamilton 1992). Country-spanning organizations, like the Congress of RacialEquality, the NAACP, and the National Urban League pursued both nationallyoriented legal and political strategies as well as more localized actions in the states andcommunities. The grassroots efforts of such varied activists as Ella Jo Baker, JamesFarmer, Fanny Lou Hamer, Floyd McKissick, James Meredith, Bob Moses, RosaParks, and Robert F. Williams were synergistically coupled with the efforts oforganizations like the Black Panther Party, the Nation of Islam, and the StudentNonviolent Coordinating Committee among others. Thus, for the U.S. civil rightsmovement as a whole a politics of scale has historically entailed multi-scale strategiesfrom a plethora of sometimes independent, sometimes allied organizations.

The formal institutions of government did not necessarily occupy the roles thatDu Bois had envisioned or implied in the “Address”. Repeated attempts to craft civilrights legislation failed in the Congressional sessions convened throughout the firsthalf of the 20th Century (Mann 2007). However, Congress ultimately did come topass the Civil Rights Acts of 1957, 1960, 1964, and 1968, as well as the VotingRights Acts of 1965. The U.S. court system eventually became a vital arena forfostering civil rights and freedoms for African Americans. Various litigation effortsin state or federal district courts were used by civil rights organizations to reach thenational judicial institution of the Supreme Court. The U.S. Supreme Court decidedvarious cases that chipped slowly away at the edifice of White supremacism inpublic and commercial spaces, ranging from Sweatt v. Painter (1950), whichinvalidated segregated law schools to Brown v. Board of Education (1954), whichdismantled segregated public schools, to Shelley v. Kraemer (1948), which held thatrestrictive covenants on housing could not be legally enforced by state courts, toHeart of Atlanta Motel v. United States (1964), which overturned segregated publicaccommodations, thereby upholding portions of the Civil Rights Act of 1964.Interestingly, the presidency—a national institution not directly addressed in theATTC—became a crucial, often hesitant, weapon in the nationalization of the civilrights agenda. Presidents Franklin Roosevelt, Harry Truman, and Dwight Eisenhowerprovided important steps along the roads leading to civil rights. President JohnKennedy typically pursued a behind-the-scenes and sometimes reluctant approach topromoting civil and political rights (Branch 1989, 1999). After Kennedy’sassassination, President Lyndon Johnson shepherded various civil rights billsthrough Congress, helping them to become the laws of the land (Mann 2007;Schulman 1995). The occupant of the White House hence can “nationalize” an issueby embodying the concerns of the American public and the ethos of Americandemocracy. Yet for all of the potential to unify the country presidents must bepolitically determined to act.

As regards the third caveat to Du Bois’s politics of scale, the masculinist biases ofthe “Address” did not challenge the spatial structures of gender oppression because

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the ATTC did not emphasize women as conscious, political agents and because theATTC did not attack directly the public/private dichotomy that historically hastypified women’s roles in U.S. society. Perhaps this reflected some measure ofcompromise with fellow Niagarite Trotter and others who held anti-feminist views.Nonetheless, Du Bois himself used masculinist language similar to the ATTC invarious other writings (Carby 2000). Accordingly, the ATTC tended to reinforce theconstruction of gender on scales that limited women to (solely or perhapspredominantly) to private, domestic spheres.

Some might argue that various African American women themselves oftenconsidered the home to be a crucial place to promote racial uplift (e.g., see Cooper1892). Yet for intellectuals and activists like Anna Julia Cooper and Ida B. Wells-Barnett the world outside the home proved a useful battleground for their efforts tocombat racial and gender oppression. Notwithstanding such national and interna-tional activities by Black women, the public/private split was used not merely toreinforce the roles women played in the private realm, but also to hinder them fromoccupying other roles in the public sphere, including voting, holding elected office,etc. (McDowell 1999: 73). The point to note as regards the scalar politics espousedby the ATTC is that by failing to address gender issues the ATTC provided onlypartial, albeit important, support for racial uplift and social justice (Fletcher 2006;Keiter 2006; Schecter 2001). Hence, by omitting gender aspects in a politics of scale,the ATTC and the Niagara Movement in general were limited in their emancipatorypotential to liberate and empower oppressed African American men and women.

For the elder Du Bois the political successes of the modern civil rights movementwere yet to come. By the 1930s his disillusionment with the effectiveness of anationalizing politics of scale resulted in writings like “A Negro Nation Within theNation” (1935). In keeping with the more explicit, rather unorthodox socialisticperspective of his later years, Du Bois advocated that Blacks self-segregate intodemocratically controlled economic cooperatives. Gone was a politics of scale thatfocused on U.S. national institutions; in its stead Du Bois promoted a different scalarpolitics, one oriented to fostering democracy and racial uplift within AfricanAmerican communities across the country.

Remarks in Closing

The “Address to the Country” helped to illuminate a paradox in the application ofrights within U.S. history. For political rights to be exercised at state and local levels,the rights of U.S. citizens needed to be mutually constituted and secured at thenational level. The restrictions that subnational governments placed on citizens, andindeed on the very definition of who was a citizen, demanded that a conception ofrights be framed in national terms. The perseverance of the women’s movements andtheir varied successes like suffrage also has illustrated that the struggle for genderrights incorporated a national dimension.

After the mighty efforts of those committed to promoting civil and political rights,some of the goals sought in the “Address to the Country”much later became the law ofthe land, such as an end to de jure segregation, even if there has been no end to thenegative effects of de facto, or structural, discrimination. The three branches of the

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U.S. national government became crucial institutional arenas for myriad struggles. Noone governmental arena was solely or best suited for protecting political rights. Eachof the branches played a role because each had the opportunity to promote racialjustice at particular historical junctures. Each branch, following its own proceduralways and institutional will, reinforced the idea that civil and political rights werenational in scope and that citizenship fundamentally was constituted in national terms.

The “Address” was a manifesto speaking to those committed to the ideals of DuBois and others, as well as a call to open-minded Americans of all races. Itsdefinition of citizens’ rights as national in scale and its support for a nationalizingstrategy of political action will be remembered as vital to the struggles for furtheringdemocracy in America. Likewise, its lacunae on the issues of gender and women’srights should inspire us to critically scrutinize any reasons offered as to why somemight be excluded from the equal protection of the laws and from a full social andpolitical participation in our American commonwealth.

Acknowledgments I appreciated the useful suggestions made by Dr. Anthony J. Lemelle, Jr. and theanonymous reviewers. I also wish to thank Dr. Mona Basta for her helpful comments on the draftmanuscript.

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