Du Bois & Niagara Movement Presentation by Robert W. Williams (2006)

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

Presentation by Dr. Robert W. Williams, Political Science, Bennett College, For the Symposium "The Niagara Movement and the Dawning of 20th Century Civil Rights, 1906-2006", 18 August 2006. Sponsors: Harpers Ferry National Historical Park and Harpers Ferry Historical Association.

Contact Details: Dr. Robert Williams rwilliams

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bennett.εdυ http://www.webdubois.org © Robert W. Williams

RW's Lectures

Comments, Reflections, Notes

1. The Project: Before starting my research on W.E.B. Du Bois, I had researched the spatiality of politics, including the politics of scale as it related to environmental justice issues. From that earlier research I began to study Du Bois and the spatial dimensions of this thinking and activism. Du Bois is well known for his anti-colonial critiques—after all, the "color line" as he argues, implicated the inherent spatiality of globally entangled countries and continents within relations of exploitation and domination. Du Bois's "Address to the Country" (ATTC) and the activities of the participants at the 1906 Niagara Movement meeting allowed me to study more closely the spatial facets of the the multi-scaled battles for civil rights in the United States.

2. The Event: The Harpers Ferry National Park Service and the Harpers Ferry Historical Society organized a wonderful conference to commemorate the centennial of the 1906 meeting of the Niagara Movement at Harpers Ferry, WV. The participants and audience were energized by the presentations and the activities. We learned much about the arsenal and John Brown's raid. We walked where Du Bois and his colleagues walked, at the places where Brown and his men struggled in the name of equality, freedom, justice. And we learned about Storer College, an important Historically Black College in West Virginia (1865–1955).

3. The Article: This online version of the presentation is for informational purposes only. I revised it and subsequently published it under the same name, "Politics, Rights, and Spatiality in W.E.B. Du Bois's 'Address to the Country' (1906)", in the Journal of African American Studies, 14:3 (September 2010): 337-358. • For potential scholarly uses, please refer to the published version and its pagination. (In my draft versions I use paragraph numbers for easier referencing, especially because page numbering in a printed version may not correspond to content when that content is heavily changed. On the Internet, an online document—like this one—may only be a single page.)

4. Du Bois's "Address" Online: The document is accessible online. My website provides links to it and other resources on the Niagara Movement, including DuBoisian primary sources, as well as secondary sources.

5. Digital Humanities: I use the ATTC in a DH project that I created. Called "Retextualizer", it is a browser-based application for digital humanities research that seeks to facilitate new interpretations of a document by rearranging its sentences into a different sequence, whether in reverse or random order. Here are the internal links: the retexualized 'Address to the Country', and the Retextualizer project page.

6. Here Online: Years ago, I created an html version of the 2006 presentation. After recently recovering it, I added these notes, and posted it online for the 1 November 2020 update of the webdubois.org site. • This html version may contain a few errors, including typos. Not all words requiring italics may be italicized.

7. Thank you.

— Robert W. Williams, Ph.D.

I. Introduction

[1] The Niagara Movement, when begun in 1905, was intended to establish a nation-wide organization to oppose racial discrimination and to promote its own specific goals and strategies for racial uplift. By so doing, it directly challenged the leadership of Booker T. Washington. At the second meeting of the Niagara Movement in 1906 at Harper's Ferry, W.E.B. Du Bois wrote the 'Address to the Country' (sometimes cited as 'Address to the Nation'). The 'Address', hereafter cited as the ATTC, articulated a set of demands—not merely suggestions or requests—for political and civil rights, and also called for Congressional intervention to secure those demands. [2] Underlying the political arguments of the 'Address', I suggest, was an implicit conception of the spatiality of politics. The proposed paper will interpret Du Bois' 1906 'Address' in terms of space, place, and scale: these intertwined concepts are often used by geographers to study the spatiality of society. Although Du Bois in the 'Address' did not specify authors or works of geography, he was aware of the importance of space and place in social relations (e.g., in his The Souls of Black Folk, 1903) and of geographical factors in history (e.g., in his The Negro, 1915, and The World and Africa, 1947). My intention is to reconstruct the arguments of the 'Address' via a spatial framework and vocabulary, clarifying its inherent ideas of a critical spatiality of race, politics, and rights. [3] By exploring the critical spatiality of politics inhering within the 'Address to the Country' we can better understand the nationalizing strategy advocated by Du Bois and the Niagara Movement. That particular strategy implicated spatiality in terms of both an end goal (e.g., to dismantle myriad cases of discriminatory spatial structures across the nation), and also a means (e.g., via a politics of scale seeking to expand the scope of the political struggle in specific ways to national arenas). Space was not to be conceptualized as a neutral container, one pre-given before political and social practices. Rather, for a critical concept of spatiality—such as can be inferred from Du Bois' overall ideas and the 'Address' itself—spaces of discrimination had been constructed and legitimated via discourses and acts, both official and unofficial. However, as the ATTC strongly implied, a critical spatiality also might be used to inform and create liberatory tools for the fight against racial and social injustice. The insights found in the 'Address' thus help us to better grasp how space, place, and scale have intersected with race in American society and its political movements. [4] The paper will unfold as follows. First, the idea of rights in American political thought will be briefly outlined. Second, the paper will discuss the conceptual framework of spatiality. Third, the history of the Niagara Movement will be sketched. Next will come three sections that geographically interpret the 'Address' in terms of, respectively, space, scale, and place. Then, I will discuss the caveats of the nationalizing strategy proposed in the ATTC and in the Niagara Movement itself. II. Of Rights and Politics in the United States

[5] In the history of American political thought on rights, there is a major perspective holding that natural rights are not given by government, but rather are conferred by a divine power. Natural rights pre-exist government. In the social contract tradition of political thought, governments are designed and created to protect those natural rights and the subsidiary, but still important rights called positive rights (Levy 1999: 7). [6] The "Declaration of Independence" is of course a classicus locus of this view. Life, liberty, happiness, all of which are tied up with English philosopher John Locke's idea of property, are natural rights (Locke 1713; see also McDonald 1985). Natural rights also include the right to travel and to marry, both which presumably could be done in a state of nature, a hypothetical realm of society that existed before government was constructed (Levy 1999: 250-254). Positive rights are those rights derived as a way to promote the natural rights. Governments, contracted to protect individuals, create and enforce the positive rights. Such positive rights include the right to vote, the right to hold office, the right to avoid having troops quartered in personal homes during times of peace, the right to bail, and the right of presumed innocence in legal cases (Levy 1999: 17, 254). [7] In the 'Address to the Country' Du Bois put forward the natural and positive rights enjoyed by "Americans", especially by White males. He wrote: • "First, we would vote; with the right to vote goes everything...." (ATTC: ¶ 4) • "Second. We want discrimination in public accommodation to cease." (ATTC: ¶ 6) • "Third. We claim the right of freemen to walk, talk, and be with them that wish to be with us." (ATTC: ¶ 7) • "Fourth. We want the laws enforced against rich as well as poor; against Capitalist as well as Laborer; against white as well as black." (ATTC: ¶ 8) • "Fifth. We want our children educated." (ATTC: ¶ 10) For Du Bois, the securing of these rights for African Americans would also have the benefit of assisting the U.S.A. to comply with and to live up to its ideals (ATTC: ¶ 2). [8] In the five sets of rights demanded in the 'Address', Du Bois did not seem to challenge the classical liberal perspective that informed much of American political thought on rights. However, Du Bois emphasized voting rights as the first right to be secured: "with the right to vote goes everything: Freedom, manhood, the honor of your wives, the chastity of your daughters, the right to work, and the chance to rise, and let no man listen to those who deny this." (ATTC: ¶ 4) This emphasis on voting rights, a positive right, raises an interesting observation. John Locke in his Second Treatise on Government, considered a major philosophical influence on America's founding (McDonald 1985: 60), had elaborated first on natural rights, laws, and liberties before discussing government and its role (Locke 1713). Du Bois, however, foregrounded the political means to safeguard people and the exercise of their natural rights. The inequalities and constraints on freedom generated by actual discrimination were real experiences and not part of some philosopher's thought experiment. [9] Although Du Bois was demanding only extant rights that had already been secured for Whites (and White males), his demands were directed at the national government, in particular, Congress (ATTC: ¶ 8, 10). The demands in the ATTC also highlight the spatiality inhering in rights, more particularly the spatiality inhering in their practice and enforcement. One way to understand this spatiality of rights is to situate it with regard to the Fourteenth Amendment. Du Bois implicitly invoked the 14th Amendment (ratified in 1868) and its equal protection and due process clauses. But Du Bois' interpretation of those clauses did not seem to agree with the conventional jurisprudence of the Fourteenth Amendment in 1906. [10] The Fourteenth Amendment addressed two crucial facets of African Americans since emancipation. First, the Fourteenth Amendment defined citizens as those who were born or naturalized in U.S. territory (thereby overturning Dred Scott case in 1857, which held that Blacks were not citizens and had no rights that would be recognized). The Fourteenth Amendment was a constitutional way to state what the Civil Rights Act of 1866 (14 Stat. 27) had previously done, which was to define citizenship in terms of birth within the U.S.A. Second, the Plessy v. Ferguson case of 1896 decided how—and crucially for the purposes of this paper—where the Fourteenth Amendment was to apply to African Americans. The equality in the equal protection clause was to be construed as a right to equal condition, not as a right to occupy or utilize the same places as Whites. As the U.S. Supreme Court had decided the Plessy case, to the extent that Black facilities were (supposedly) equal to White facilities, then African Americans were not being denied equal protection. [11] Du Bois' push for the recognition and enforcement of rights in the 1906 'Address' was a continuation, but also an extension of the points put forward in his other published works. For example, in The Philadelphia Negro (1899) Du Bois had expressed deep concern over the denial of basic rights to Black Philadelphians (Du Bois 1899). Yet he also emphasized the moral and cultural development he deemed necessary for African Americans to become worthy citizens of the U.S.A. (see also Schafer 2001). In The Souls of Black Folk in 1903 Du Bois put forward the notion of double consciousness, which involved the refracted recognition of self amidst the fracturing, inhuman treatment of African Americans. Du Bois and William Trotter wrote the "Declaration of Principles" for the first Niagara Movement meeting in 1905. In both the "Declaration of Principles" and the ATTC we see that the cultural/moral dimension (e.g., hard work was important, as was the wish to protect the family) was still present, yet a political solution was stressed by Du Bois more than in The Philadelphia Negro—probably as a result of the manifesto quality of the 'Address to the Country'. [12] According to Du Bois, the need to protect the rights of African Americans and others in the numerical minority was a necessity because of the way that U.S. democracy was practiced. In a Darkwater essay of 1920 Du Bois wrote of the often extreme reverence for majorities in American politics. He criticized the arrogance of what he called the "divine right of majorities": those in the majority, which we could reasonably infer were White males, did not need to listen to those in the minority (Du Bois 1920). He argued that some groups like African Americans and women in general could not become a majority (he was writing before the passage of the Nineteenth Amendment in August 1920). They thereby faced difficult challenges in having their voices heard and in obtaining equal opportunities. As professors of U.S. Political Science might say it now: majority rule without protecting the rights of numerical minorities would only make a sham of the democratic promises of America. [13] The ATTC posed several dimensions of rights: (a) What were the rights of citizens? (i.e., what was the content of the rights)? (b) Who were to be included in the personal expression of those rights? (c) Who was to be protected from the tyranny of others and from government? This paper will explore the spatial dimensions of rights, which as implied within the ATTC raised these questions: (d) What was the spatial scope of the practice of political rights (national and subnational)? (e) Was there a particular governmental unit (or set of units) that was best suited to secure rights? Addressing this latter question below will probe the idea of a "naturally" appropriate governmental unit. III. Spatiality: Space, Place, and Scale

[14] Spatiality provides the conceptual apparatus of this paper. Spatiality involves the mutual, or dialectical constitution, of society and space. Space in its broadest conceptualization is not separate from history, for time and space are intimately connected in human and social experiences [15] Geographers study the dimensions of spatiality: space, place, and scale. Understanding the differences between space, place, and scale as dimensions of spatiality is as much a function of the definitions of social scientists as it is social practices in, and experiences of, everyday life (see Henri Lefebvre 1991). The space of society is social space, complete with all of the attendant implications of human agency, structure, and political-economic power (Peet 1998). By understanding the conceptual and practical nuances of space in social terms, spatiality tackles a prevalent view of space as an isotropic plane with each part or point functionally equivalent to and essentially the same as every other part or point. This definition of space is the conventional mathematical/physical science view of Newtonian space (for other conceptions, see Curry 1996). [16] Related to the conventional mathematical conception of space is the assumption of space as pre-given before social and political praxis. Space conceived as pre-given has serious limitations when studying social relations of power. Specifically, space considered as pre-given is deemed natural and thereby exists before society. A crucial ramification of space framed as pre-given is that relationships of domination are essentially hidden and cannot easily be criticized. If certain spaces are associated with particular groups then their spatial location—and their associated social position—are deemed natural and thus are not to be changed. One does not tamper with what is natural. I will illustrate this with several other examples. [17] For geographers certain configurations of the society/space nexus are known as spatial structures. Spatial structures, established via formal laws and informal social codes of conduct, reinforce not only what can be done, but also who can do (or not do) something where. An important example is the public/private spatial structure (Bonnin 2000; Landes 1998; McDowell 1999). Some persons could legitimately function in public spaces, while others were viewed as supposedly better fitted for private spaces. According to a common Western example, gender has been analyzed in terms of public/private structures, wherein the so-called private spaces of the home is supposedly proper for females. Women are defined primarily as wives and mothers, not necessarily as fully autonomous agents in their own right. Males, however, have autonomy and can freely move between the public and private realms. [18] Other demographic groupings can be analyzed with regard to spatial structures. For example, in terms of sexuality and sexual orientation, the public spaces of the streets and plazas are coded as heterosexual, relegating homosexual expressions of affection to private spaces (Kirby and Hay 1997; Valentine 1993). [19] As a theoretical response to notions of space as pre-given before politics, many geographers and those with a geographical imagination wish to theorize the social production of space (Lefebvre 1991; see also Harvey 1989). Economic and political relationships are articulated in spatial structures and in turn come to create opportunities and constraints on human actions. Significant to this idea of the social production of space (and spatial structures) is that concerted human actions can challenge, and even modify the structures established. Accordingly, the spatiality of society implicates politics and how politics establishes spatial structures and is also circumscribed by them. Power may be expressed via decisions but the source of that decision-making authority is rooted in one's role and position within social/spatial structures. [20] The concepts of place and scale add further nuances to spatiality. They likewise involve human discourses and practices in vital ways. 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 geographers but also by non-geographers (Tuan 1977). Places embrace meaning in the lives of individuals, communities, societies, polities, national states, and arguably for all of humanity (e.g., as represented in world heritage sites). Home, as many poets tell us, is a place where the heart is located. Individuals and families may attach significance to spots where something wonderful or not so wonderful took place. [21] It is not only individuals who find or create meaning in particular spots. In communities and polities events can be memorialized in the locales where they happened (Lefebvre 1991). Examples abound. In the U.S.A., Philadelphia is linked to the writing of the U.S. Constitution. In recent years other places come to mind: places associated with the terrorist attacks of 11 September 2001 (here the inseparability of time and space is obvious). In memorials the past is not dead, or at least the past is not yet forgotten. Indeed, memorials evoke emotional reactions and recollections. The meaningfulness of places is used in political and social movements in an attempt to solidify their unity. [22] Scale is a concept by which to make sense of the multiple social processes that influence our lives and bodies. There are a multitude of social processes that affect individuals, communities, states, and the world as a whole. Such include the increasing globalization of capitalist socio-economic relations as well as the associated consequences on labor markets, and the production and distribution of raw materials, products, and services. Also included would be the struggles against globalization by various groups. Scale qua concept allows us to theorize the scope of those social processes, as well as to better understand the effects of the operation of social processes on humans. [23] In keeping with spatiality of and by human actions, scale is understood as produced and producing (Herod 1991). Social processes such as capitalism generate effects and redraw political boundaries literally and figuratively. Across the last several hundred years, as more and more localities were integrated into a capitalist economy, production became increasingly oriented to markets beyond the immediate locality. Capitalism became truly global in scale because of the ways that it reconfigured the social and economic dimensions of human existence (Harvey 2000). The consumption of some product or service in one spot would have positive (or negative) repercussions on other households and communities providing that product or service around the world. [24] This points out the following: scale is not nested into discrete layers. Considering scale as nested would bring in an essentialist notion that some layer was not affected by other layers (Howitt 2002; Massey 1994). However, all levels—body, local, national state, global—will influence any given individual and his/her life chances (e.g., her/his opportunities and constraints). Some effects may seem distant, for example, the paucity of rain in a faraway land for cotton crops and the resulting effects on the international price of cotton. But such effects to some extent will be felt by the cotton farmers or textile manufacturers and by the end consumer of the clothing made from the cotton. [25] Yet the production of scale is not without struggle and indeed the production of scale incorporates struggles over the consequences of social processes. Scale is produced via such struggles, both via social protests against the globalizing policies of companies and also via challenges to the actions of government officials and politicians. Political struggles are thus implicated in the production of scale because, through their debates and activities, the issue under contention can create or modify (or perhaps not) some policy and its attendant set of values and world views. Any policy or law establishes spatial structures to implement it—complete with the attendant opportunities and constraints on future actions. Such struggles against those spatial structures engage in what has been called a politics of scale. [26] In the academic discipline of Political Science E.E. Schattschneider addressed the politics of scale. The spatial dimension of politics is evident in Schattschneider's classic treatise on American politics, The Semi-Sovereign People (1975). He recognized that where you practiced politics was integrally connected to your overall political strategy, even your success. For him, it was indeed the essence of politics itself. The political spaces of the governmental institutions at the local, state, or national levels were very important to achieving one's political goals. Your resources of money, assistance, etc. depended on which level you were located or where you might be confined. In his examples, weaker groups sought to gain allies and government support by "socializing conflict," as Schattschneider called it. The scope of conflict (or scale, as he sometimes wrote) would be widened to include others who could offer assistance. Similarly, the stronger groups sought to narrow the scope, even to "privatize" or localize it, so as to deny their opponents more resources. This socialization of conflict is not simply or only about political strategy, coalition building, or institutional arenas. It is also explicitly spatial in the sense that struggles were fought at or across different levels of government. In the language of this paper I can assert: the result of contending groups in effect created the scale(s) at which the contentious issue was to be resolved. Below I will address the specific politics of scale as it pertains to the 'Address'. IV. The Historical Context of the 1906 Niagara Movement Conference

[27] In the decades prior to 1905—the year of the first Niagara Movement meeting—various types of associations and conferences were organized for racial uplift. Most were oriented to improving the skills and knowledge base of African Americans in the areas of the trades, agriculture, and business (Meier 1966: 122-124, and ch. VIII passim). Examples included the annual conference at Tuskegee University and the annual Hampton Conference, both of which sought to foster self-improvement through a pick-oneself-up-by-one's-bootstraps approach combined with distribution of information regarding agricultural and industrial trades. In addition, the National Negro Business League, founded by Booker T. Washington in 1900, focused on promoting entrepreneurial spirit and disseminating business knowledge. [28] In such organizations little or no emphasis was placed on an active pursuit of political rights. However, other groups did form with political goals in mind. Several organizations and committees were intended to cultivate leaders and to combat a range of racial problems in America, including Jim Crow, disenfranchisement, and lynching. Such groups included the Afro-American League, inspired and influenced by T. Thomas Fortune in 1890, and its successor organization in the early 1900s, the Afro-American Council (Meier 1966: 70-71, 128-130). Some organizations, notably the American Negro Academy founded by Alexander Crummell in 1897, sought to cultivate the elite and to promulgate anti-racist research (Meier 1966: 266-267). Others like the Committee of Twelve for the Advancement of the Interests of the Negro Race sought to devise and implement a broader strategy of political action. [29] The Committee of Twelve was established in 1904 with money from Andrew Carnegie to stimulate national resistance and to coordinate legislative and judicial efforts. Du Bois became a reluctant participant (D.L. Lewis 1993). Despite a general agreement on the goals related to higher education and voting rights, Du Bois and a few other members believed that Booker T. Washington dominated the agenda and would dominate how the it was implemented. Eventually disappearing from the agenda of the Committee of Twelve was support for liberal-arts-style higher education; gone also was support for enforcing the African American franchise (D.L. Lewis 1993: 310). [30] Du Bois, who for a few years supported B.T. Washington on various issues, had grown increasingly critical of Washington's policies and his ways of furthering such policies. In the early years of the 20th Century Du Bois had come to believe them to be ineffectual at best, and accommodationist at worst. Moreover, Du Bois believed that B.T. Washington was bribing the Black press to speak out against detractors of the so-called Tuskegee Machine. Du Bois published an essay to that effect in early 1905. His evidence, however, was circumstantial and his charges could not be sufficiently documented for Washington's supporters to accept them (D.L. Lewis 1993: 314). [31] Du Bois may not have been fully aware of some of the behind-the-scenes assistance given by Booker T. Washington on matters that might have softened the criticism of him as accommodationist (e.g., B.T. Washington 1899a). Nevertheless, for Du Bois and some others, Washington did not put forth sufficient vocal support and did not make demands in strong enough terms. Washington's published statements typically criticized oppression like lynchings or disenfranchisement, but they were cast in words deemed as too conciliatory for some like Du Bois (e.g., B.T. Washington 1899b). [32] In this context, Du Bois and a few others decided to create a new organization. In 1905, Du Bois planned the first meeting of what became the Niagara Movement; the participants convened in a hotel Fort Erie, Ontario, Canada. It was the first such meeting of African Americans in the new 20th Century oriented to political solutions to the political and social problems confronting African Americans (D.L. Lewis 1993). Monroe Trotter and Du Bois crafted a "Declaration of Principles" that made specific political demands, many of which were repeated one year later at the 1906 meeting of the Niagara Movement (Rudwick 1957). The first meeting set up committees in various states to help coordinate a national strategy and to formulate issues to address. [33] In mid-August 1906, the second meeting of the Niagara Movement was held in Harpers Ferry at Storer College. The numbers had increased and women were allowed to participate in some but not all activities at the meeting (D.L. Lewis 1993). Subsequently, Northern state chapters were encouraged to pursue civil rights legislation in their particular states (Rudwick 1957: 189). [34] Three more annual meetings of the Niagara Movement were held; the fifth and last conference was convened in 1909. The Movement ended in the months following the fifth meeting, but its weaknesses had become increasingly evident over its short life span. According to Rudwick, the Niagara Movement "was plagued by its own organizational inexperience and by harassed by the accommodationist Tuskegee Machine" (Rudwick 1957: 177). In addition, other factors seriously weakened the Movement: e.g., internal disagreements, the diminishing interest of some members, a paucity of financial resources, and the lack of a mass base of working-class support (D.L. Lewis 1993: 375-377; Rudwick 1957: 192-198). After the formation of the NAACP in 1910, Du Bois requested that Niagara Movement members support the new association. [35] We turn now to a critical spatial analysis of the 'Address.' The next three sections will cover, respectively, how the ATTC tackled discriminatory spatial structures via a politics of scale and place. V. Space in 'Address to the Country': The Spatial Structures of Domination

[36] In a constitutional sense injustice can arise from the particular laws of states, localities, or national government that do not comply with the U.S. Constitution. Unjust practices, policies, and laws are expressed spatially: the landscape, both built and natural, is partitioned in terms of those who are included within a geographical or functional area (and on what terms) or else excluded from it. A person's or group's inclusion provides opportunities for life and work. Similarly, a person's or group's exclusion circumscribes the opportunities available. Space and its attendant spatial structures hence implicate how we live because of the ways that discrimination is manifested in the world in which we live. By analyzing spatial structures created via social and political practices and discourses we can better understand how social power and inequalities persist regardless of whether the policies were legitimated via authoritative political processes. [37] White supremacism at a basic level is a classificatory system, categorizing persons in racial terms by biological heritage and/or physical appearance. The races and ethnicities are arranged in a hierarchy, with some races occupying a higher position than others. Within that hierarchy, all races have a supposedly appropriate and natural place, one to which their biology has positioned them. To protect that hierarchy in society, formal political policies as well as informal social codes of expected conduct are established. Such policies and codes are spatially manifested in various ways, such as via Jim Crow segregation and South African apartheid. [38] The color line has been one of Du Bois' enduring tropes on White supremacism and its consequences within the U.S.A. and across the globe (Du Bois: 1903). The color line was an inherently spatial concept, both geometrically and in the quotidian discourses and practices of society. In addition, the color line involved spatial structures. In The Souls of Black Folk Du Bois discussed the color line implicitly in spatial terms: (a) peoples' lives were separated by formally and informally sanctioned discrimination into different geographical areas (i.e., segregation); and (b) daily encounters between Blacks and Whites in public and private spaces entailed physical proximity, which itself was conditioned by White supremacist codes and practices. [39] Du Bois in the 'Address to the Country' supplied various pertinent examples of oppressive spatial structures: such included segregated public transportation (ATTC: ¶ 6); discriminatory access and use of public spaces (ATTC: ¶ 7); and segregated and decrepit educational facilities (ATTC: ¶ 10). Those examples were the result of a predatory racism based on virulent White supremacism. Those spatial structures were the "how" by which the effects of un/official discrimination came to be located. Such effects would be the segregation of people and activities into particular areas as well as the expectation of certain behaviors in interpersonal settings. [40] The ATTC was a militant document. The securing of rights would require a political movement and a specific strategy: namely, a politics of scale. VI. The Politics of Scale in 'Address to the Country'

[41] By demanding in the 'Address' that the national legislature secure the rights of African Americans, Du Bois was engaging in a politics of scale. The ATTC conveyed an implicit 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 a political movement. As this section will outline, the politics of scale articulated in the ATTC consisted of an expansion of the scope of conflict as a political strategy as well as a debate over the government level(s) at which rights were to be protected. [42] As discussed previously, natural rights in much of the American political tradition have been considered pre-political (and thereby not conferred by government). Social contract thinkers, such as John Locke, argued that government in general was intended to protect (natural) rights. Many early American political debates revolved around the question of which unit of government was to secure and protect those rights. In an American context this pitted subnational units like states against the national government. A central question posed in those debates: Is there a "natural" governmental unit and level that best secured the natural and positive rights? To phrase it differently, did a particular government unit and/or configuration of government units within an overall structure conduce towards the securing of those rights? [43] During the late 1780s and early 1790s the so-called anti-Federalists engaged in a vigorous debate with the Federalists in the burgeoning public sphere of the new country. Federalists argued for the necessity of a national government that could protect the country from foreign attack and could unify the territory in infrastructural ways (e.g., via protection of property and the establishment of a common currency). [44] The anti-Federalists, on the other hand, were concerned that the authority of the national government, as specified in or construed from the Constitution, could lead to tyranny (Main 1974). The Anti-Federalists generally believed that communities and states were the protectors of rights and the ways of life within those subnational units. They believed that more localized governments were the best promoters of personal rights and thereby were best guardians against an overbearing national government. For the anti-Federalists the larger the extent of a territory, the more the government would become tyrannical. As one anti-Federalist 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 near connection, and their members an immediate intercourse with the people; and the probability is, that the state governments will possess the confidence of the people, and be considered generally as their immediate guardians." (Federal Farmer 1787: 267)

[45] Interestingly, the Federalists tended to agree with their foes on the importance of communities and states to the people themselves: people have "natural attachments" to state governments rather than to a national government (Federalist Paper # 46; also see Federalist Paper # 17). They emphasized that the U.S. constitution would safeguard vital rights via establishing the "correct balance" between governmental levels, both state and national. The national government could protect liberties and rights by protecting states from foreign invasion and from domestic unrest, while the state governments would represent and secure the rights of those within their borders. The anti-Federalists remained skeptical (e.g., Federal Farmer 1787: 267) and a compromise was struck in order to ensure passage of the Constitution: a series of amendments known as the Bill of Rights were eventually passed to protect individuals from a potentially oppressive national government. [46] Of course, the compromises represented by the U.S. Constitution and its Bill of Rights did not settle the matter. In effect, a scale politics of rights has characterized the debates. From the theoretical framework of this paper, we can say that the "appropriate" scale of natural and positive rights was neither self-evident nor pre-given; it was not to be found in the extent or size of the territory. Rather, the particular institutional configurations of federalism that were created over the course of American history emerged via the struggles between contending groups, such as between the Federalists and anti-Federalists, and still later, between states rights advocates of the mid-19th and mid-20th Centuries and their respective opponents. [47] States rights positions have varied over time. States rights as a system of thought is supported by the Tenth Amendment which reserves power to the states or to the people. Supporters of states rights typically have considered that the U.S. constitution was a compact between states to form a new country and national government (J. Calhoun 1831). The Constitution was not a compact among or between individuals within the whole of the United States. Historically, Americans wielding the weapon of states rights have used it to defend against a national government that they believed had overreached its Constitutional authority. [48] States rights was a rallying cry on issues of importance to the antebellum South, including tariffs and slavery. John C. Calhoun sought to provide philosophical support for the pre-war South. Calhoun was concerned that the interests—and for our purposes, the rights that supported the exercise of those interests—of a numerical minority could conflict with numerically larger states in national political arenas. For Calhoun that numerical minority was the Southern Whites who contended with Northern politicians in Washington, DC. Calhoun proposed nullification of national policies by Southern states who would interpose themselves between their citizens and the national government. Solutions like Calhoun's did not fully materialize and ultimately the antebellum South decided that secession from the Union was the course of action to take (Hofstadter 1989; Holst 1892). [49] During the civil rights era of the 20th Century, Southern states rights positions came to the fore in opposition to numerous instances where Whites considered that the conventional racial order was being transgressed. In reaction to national government actions and the activism of numerous civil rights groups, much support for the old order was expressed. To put it more strongly, the states rights advocates responded quite vigorously and all too often violently in their opposition to equal rights and opportunities for African Americans. [50] In addition to the extra-legal actions of White Citizens Councils, racist law enforcement officers, and the night riders of the KKK, those opposing civil rights used a variety of political and legal devices in their attempt to define rights—and thereby to pursue a scalar politics—in terms favorable to the subnational units. Legal means included state-level litigation that opposed desegregation in public schools and public accommodations. There were also pronouncements by Southern state and national politicians on the alleged unconstitutionality of various national policies or legal decisions. For example, the "Southern Manifesto" was issued in 1956 by several Southern U.S. Senators to oppose the Supreme Court decision on Brown v. Board of Education (Southern Manifesto 1956). Also, President Kennedy's proposed civil rights bill was challenged on constitutional grounds by a Virginia organization in 1963 (Virginia Commission on Constitutional Government 1963). [51] Printed materials widely distributed across the South often depicted the civil rights groups as outside agitators and the national government as an invading force seeking to overturn both the U.S. Constitution and "Southern heritage". As regards electoral politics, many Southern politicians at all levels of government used states rights as a campaign position. Even national politicians, such as President Nixon and his reelection strategy of 1972, incorporated themes form the South in order to woo White voters. In those many examples, the states rights proponents argued that rights and interests were grounded in the communities of the state and should not be controlled or "attacked" by those from outside the states or from Washington, DC itself. [52] In the 'Address to the Country' Du Bois demanded that Congress resolve many of the abiding racial problems (ATTC: ¶ 8, 10). For Du Bois and the other members of the Niagara Movement, the state governments and hegemonic White communities were not capable of a solution. The physical proximity of subnational government to the people of the state was no guarantee of their protection, whether their physical bodies or the equally important protection of their rights. Accordingly, Du Bois had directed the political message of the ATTC at national governmental arenas. The rights of the U.S. constitution must be secured by the national government, which Du Bois believed possessed the resources 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 if also residents of a particular state. Therefore, the ATTC advocated and promoted a scalar politics of rights, defining rights in ways which removed states and local governments from interpreting them. [53] This nationalizing strategy was not without some danger or risk of failure. Heretofore national governmental institutions had not necessarily supported civil rights. The Supreme Court had under different sets of justices supported numerous laws that had harmed African Americans (e.g., the Dred Scott and Plessy cases). Congress itself had passed a law like the Fugitive Slave Act in 1850. Moreover, U.S. Presidents had not been stalwart defenders of African American political and civil rights. Nevertheless, short of armed revolution or the creation of separatist enclaves, the political arenas of the national government offered some small chance of success for the Niagara Movement. VII. The Significance of Place in 'Address to the Country'

[54] Further expressing the spatiality of politics implicit within the 'Address' is the concept of place. Du Bois stressed two dimensions of place in the ATTC. First, place was where quotidian life occurred in a myriad of ways. Second, historically significant activities and people were symbolized in the spot where something happened. In both senses of the concept, the meaningfulness of place was emphasized. [55] The first dimension of place in the ATTC involved the significance of everyday places for people. Du Bois characterized quotidian life in terms of the dignity that anyone had a right to expect in the normal conveniences of living and in conducting one's activities. As indicated previously, he also spelled out the indignities endured under circumstances of segregation and discrimination. [56] The second dimension of place in ATTC focused on the symbolism of place. This is of course quite obvious: the second meeting of the Niagara Movement in 1906 was intentionally held in an historic spot, Harpers Ferry. John Brown the abolitionist had failed in his attempt to foment an insurrection against slavery by attacking the federal arsenal there (Du Bois 1908). During the course of the meeting the participants took an early morning walk fraught with emotional and political import (D.L. Lewis 1993). Du Bois described the meaning of that morning walk (ATTC: ¶ 13): "here on the scene of John Brown's martyrdom we reconsecrate ourselves, our honor, our property to the final emancipation of the race which John Brown died to make free." [57] The literal and figurative invocation of place connects with the politics of scale, for we do not exist at only one scale. We are embodied beings and thereby create a bodily scale through our daily activities. Yet the opportunities available to us and the influences on our life chances relate to the production of other interrelated scales. [58] Without specifying it by name in the "Address', Du Bois was issuing a direct challenge to the Plessy decision. Addressing Congress was necessary from a strategic perspective because the U.S. Supreme Court had already decided that separate public transportation facilities were constitutionally equal. At that point in time, given the Court's ruling, Congressional legislation would be necessary to write or rewrite a law so as to make Jim Crow laws, like separate public accommodations, illegal. Accordingly, Du Bois needed to convince Congress to take up the case and therefore he cast the issue of rights as truly national in scope. Here, the concepts of spatial structure and place intertwine. [59] If rights were to mean anything, and if rights were to be exercised at a local or state-wide level, then rights needed to be framed in national terms and secured nationally. Here, place as particularity—the individual in a specific place—was theoretically and philosophically integrated with scale. The rights of an individual person in a particular place were meaningless unless rights were secured nationally (i.e., by nationally based laws to protect whole categories of specific places, like public transportation and public accommodations). The ATTC therefore importantly connected scale and place in terms of rights within the spaces of the United States. VIII. Discussion: The Caveats of a Politics of Scale

[60] In the 'Address to the Country' Du Bois mixed the politics of scale with his politics of place (both quotidian and symbolic places) in order to tackle the unjust spatial structures of racial oppression and Jim Crow. In general, the spatiality of politics has been important part of social protests in the U.S.A. A group or organization might wish to expand the scope of conflict to national arenas while opposition organizations may resist such activities. This is all part of the politics of scale. For the ATTC, the politics of scale was evidence in the attempts to bypass the state governments. Because various state governments were reluctant to make changes, then the national government in general would be a major focus for the Niagara Movement, as indicated in the text of the address. In this discussion section, I will raise a major caveat to the nationalizing strategy of the ATTC's politics of scale: namely, the spatially differentiated constituencies of the Congresspersons. I will also sketch the implications of that caveat in terms of the overall civil rights movement of the mid 20th Century. [61] In the ATTC Du Bois directly called on Congress to uphold African American rights. He did not specifically name the president or the U.S. Supreme Court. Perhaps he believed that the Supreme Court in the Plessy case had already decided on the constitutionality of separate conveyances and perhaps because the actions of various presidents had been more willing to provide jobs for some African Americans than to stand up for policies supporting political and civil rights. [62] Yet with this direct call for Congress to act, Du Bois' demands in the 'Address' encountered a crucial caveat to the politics of scale within the American polity: namely, the differentially based and spatially distributed units from which the Congresspersons are elected. Such is part of the American government's separation of powers. The separation of powers divides the overall governmental authority into three main branches. In order to protect against any one functional branch of government from becoming too powerful the responsibilities for governance are shared by each, thereby providing some oversight and a way to check the other branches (Federalist # 51). Congress is constitutionally authorized to legislate, while the president is authorized to execute the laws. [63] Crucial to this institutional configuration is that each of the branches would be based on different constituencies (Federalist Papers # 10, 39, 60). The constituencies of U.S. Representatives, Senators, and Presidents would have different terms of office. In addition, the different constituencies have varying geographical expression: U.S. Senators span their state, while Congresspersons are located in districts within the state. It is assumed in the Federalist papers that such constituencies are rooted in particular places, and that any "dangerous" commonality of purpose (e.g., to gain control over government) would be undermined by divergent self-interests in the different areas of the country (Federalist Papers # 10, 37, 51, 60). Interests are assumed to be so diverse across so large an area as the United States that, in the words of Federalist Paper Nr. 51, "an unjust combination of a majority of the whole [was] improbable, if not impracticable." [64] To the extent that population demographics change, then presumably the interests of constituencies likewise would change, and thereby political issues would (or might) also change. For the Federalists, the different levels of government as well as the particularity of areas or regions would make it difficult, but not impossible, to unite the whole country, and thereby to prevail in Congress and ultimately to tyrannize the entire country (see Lowi 1984). Danger could arise if a commonality of interests was found or created; then, a region or even the whole country might be gripped, as the Federalists indicated, by the "mischiefs of faction" writ large (Federalist # 10), or as the anti-Federalists opined, by the so-called tyrannies of the majority. [65] Although the 'Address' was not explicit about the spatial dimensions of the U.S. polity, I believe that Du Bois understood the spatial differentiation of constituencies within the overall U.S. polity. The interests of different constituencies may vary in particulars, but what presumably would unite them would be an appeal to that which all held in common, especially with regard to the rights of Americans. In that way Du Bois could try to persuade the U.S. in general and the national government (to wit, Congress) to act in the interests of all Americans, and by doing so, also would assist African Americans. [66] To attempt to gain the widest possible support in as many areas of the country as possible, Du Bois framed the words and symbolism of the ATTC to address issues and concerns that Whites, especially White men, would probably find compelling. Implicitly he asked whether White men would suffer to have their votes removed or the families put in jeopardy? Rights therefore were not abstractions debated by philosophers, but were the stuff of flesh-and-blood people. The underlying message of the ATTC was conveyed in evocative words: African Americans were no different from those of other races in the love for their families and in the desire to be honest, hard working citizens. [67] That Du Bois' words in the 'Address' did not fully convince Whites will come as no surprise. More struggle was necessary before some semblance of commonality became apparent to many Whites. Indeed, the difficulties for achieving equality of rights is evident in the long history of struggles from 1619 onwards. The struggles not only had to contend with enduring White supremacism, but also with particular political institutional configurations. Under conditions of wide-spread racial oppression and animosity, the federalist arrangement of state and national governments and the spatially differentiated constituencies of elected officials within national and subnational governments did not conduce easily or quickly to the enforcement of civil and political rights. [68] Because of the many institutional obstructions, support for political changes would seem to require a more broadly based movement across the U.S.A. In hindsight we can examine whether the Niagara Movement had a strong enough basis of support that might allow a nationalizing politics of scale to be successful. The Niagara Movement membership was composed primarily of elites, perhaps useful when dealing with the elites of Washington, whether Booker T., or those in the nation's capital. But one could argue that the Niagara Movement's base of support was not wide enough (Rudwick 1957: 199). Certainly, the Movement had cooperated with an interracial organization called the Constitution League, which increased their reach and resource base (although there was some overlap of membership) (Rudwick 1957: 190). Nevertheless, nationalizing the push for governmental action on rights historically has been conjoined with more wide-spread localized actions. The ATTC did not specify this in its message, and the Niagara Movement itself seemed to have lacked a grass-roots base. [69] In the decades following the Niagara Movement's demise, the civil rights struggles increasingly intensified. For every campaign to pass national legislation and for every court case in the state or federal judiciary, there were numerous local activities, such as voter registration drives, literacy campaigns, Freedom Rides to challenge segregated bus stations, sit-ins to confront segregated lunch counters, and community-organizations to provide food and health care. Country-spanning organizations, like the Congress of Racial Equality (CORE), the NAACP, and the National Urban League, pursued both nationally oriented legal and political strategies as well as more localized actions in the states and communities. In addition, the grass roots efforts of such varied activists as Ella Jo Baker, James Farmer, Floyd McKissick, James Meredith, Bob Moses, and Robert F. Williams were synergistically coupled with organizations like the Black Panther Party, the Student Nonviolent Coordinating Committee (SNCC), and the Nation of Islam, among others. Thus, for the U.S. civil rights movement a politics of scale has historically entailed multi-scale strategies from a plethora of sometimes independent, sometimes allied groups and organizations. IX. Final Remarks

[70] After much and mighty efforts, many of the demands sought in the 1906 'Address' became the law of the land. The three main branches of the U.S. national government became crucial arenas for the struggles. Repeated attempts to craft legislation failed in the Congress across the first half of the 20th Century. Those members of Congress who opposed equal rights for African Americans used various legislative tools to thwart the ultimate passage of various proposed bills. Congress ultimately did come to pass the Civil Rights Acts of 1957 and 1960 as well as the extensive Civil Rights Act of 1964. The Civil Rights Act of 1968 is otherwise known as the Fair Housing Act. Legislative support for the franchise was expressed in the historic Voting Rights Acts of 1965. [71] In addition, the U.S. Supreme Court had become a vital arena for fostering civil rights and freedoms for African Americans. Various litigation efforts in state or federal district courts were used by civil rights organizations to reach the national judicial institution of the U.S. Supreme Court. The Supreme Court decided various cases which chipped slowly away at the edifice of White supremacism in public and commercial spaces. Such cases include: Guinn V. United States, 238 US 347 (1915) [invalidated grandfather clause in electoral contexts]; South Carolina v. Katzenbach, 383 U.S. 301 (1966) [upheld Voting Rights Act of 1965]; Harper v. Virginia State Board of Elections, 383 U.S. 663 (1966) [invalidated poll taxes]; Sweatt v. Painter, 339 US 629 (1950) [invalidated segregated law schools]; Brown v. Board of Education, 347 US 483 (1954) [invalided segregated public schools]; Shelley v. Kraemer, 334 US 1 (1948) [restrictive covenants on housing could not be legally enforced by state courts]; and Heart of Atlanta Motel v. United States, 379 US 241 (1964) [invalidated segregated public accommodations, thereby upholding portions of the Civil Rights Act of 1964]. [72] Interestingly, the presidency—a national governmental institution not specifically addressed in the ATTC—became a crucial weapon in that area. Presidents F.D. Roosevelt, Truman, and Eisenhower provided important steps along the road of civil rights. As the civil rights era heated up, with confrontations escalating in numbers and intensity, President Kennedy typically pursued a behind-the-scenes and often reluctant approach to promoting civil and political rights (Branch 1989). After JFK's assassination, President Lyndon Johnson became instrumental, defining civil rights as part of the American ethos. The Voting Rights Act of 1965, supported strenuously by President Johnson, provided the tools to eventually overcome the hindrances to the African American franchise. Presidents, thus, have come increasingly to embody the wishes, hopes, and concerns of the nation. They can span the country, seeking that sense of unity which joins all citizens together. Yet for all of these accomplishments Du Bois might counsel us to remain vigilant and to reinvigorate efforts to combat any remaining effects, and any abiding spatial structures of, oppression. [73] By exploring the critical spatiality of politics inhering within the 'Address to the Country' we can better understand the nationalizing strategy advocated by Du Bois and the Niagara Movement. That particular strategy implicated spatiality in terms of both an end goal (e.g., to dismantle myriad cases of discriminatory spatial structures across the nation), and also a means (e.g., via a politics of scale seeking to expand the scope of the political struggle in specific ways to national arenas). [74] Space was not to be conceptualized as a neutral container, one pre-given before political and social practices. Rather, for a critical concept of spatiality—such as can be inferred from Du Bois' overall ideas and the 'Address' itself—spaces of discrimination had been constructed and legitimated via discourses and acts, both official and unofficial. However, as the ATTC strongly implied, a critical spatiality also might be used to inform and create liberatory tools for the fight against racial and social injustice. The insights found in the 'Address' thus help us to better grasp how space, place, and scale have intersected with race in American society and its political movements.

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