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168 Z 10 Competing with Niagara New York City, 1906 Until 1905, the Council had faced only minor opposition from poorly organized malcontents, like Trotter. The Niagara Movement, which many believed had spurred Walters to his successful return in Detroit, was an entirely different creature : spirited, seemingly united, and unpredictable. Former Council leaders had defected in small but unprecedented numbers to the far more glamorous ranks of the Du Bois crowd, which yet had the potential to emerge as a more appealing alternative to rank-and-file Council members. How best to blunt the threat? One way lay in improved communications, as corresponding secretary Lewis Jordan wrote in early 1906, proposing an innovative public relations strategy to Tuskegee: “a little semi-monthly paper in the interest of the Council.” Such a project was “almost a necessity,” Jordan told Emmett Scott, if the Council was to compete successfully against the Moon, brand-new “mouthpiece of the Niagara Movement.” W. E. B. Du Bois’s illustrated weekly venture, unveiled in late 1905, seemed destined to “become very readable,” in his opinion. He had “some ideas about a journal along this line that would appeal to readers white and black, north and south” and would happily serve as editor, unless Scott and Richard Thompson wanted to share the job. Such a journal could support itself “with a little effort” and should cost very little to launch. “Could you suggest the feasibility of Mr. Washington taking any interest in such a journal?”1 The journal was a far cry from the national Council newspaper Pledger had once championed, and Jordan a far less likely choice for an editor. The Baptist minister had experience—a decade editing the National Baptist Convention’s Mission Herald—but little clout, just life membership in the National Negro Business League and service on the executive committee. And despite his energy, not ev- competing with niagara 169 eryone had a high opinion of Jordan’s talents; just days later, undercover Tuskegee operative Melvin Jack Chisum bluntly labeled him “a dangerous little tramp.”2 Presumably, Walters knew of Jordan’s proposal, and he encouraged it. The bishop spent much time talking up Council virtues to editors and local audiences alike and relished good publicity, even running signed articles in such places as the Colored American Magazine, which carried his lengthy preconvention article that fall. Yet fewer and fewer opportunities existed. One reliable outlet, Edward Cooper’s Colored American newspaper, had folded in 1904, and the Age, while still helpful, was smaller and less effusive since Fortune left the Council. No record exists of Scott’s reply, or of Washington’s reaction to the proposal. By mid-summer, Jordan’s strongest rationale had vanished, along with the short-lived Moon, which failed to attract readers and stopped printing before the Council met. Washington was more concerned with a far more serious threat—the Voice of the Negro, edited by J. Max Barber, increasingly a Du Bois admirer. The Voice had existed since early 1904, with Washington’s initial support, but its increasingly independent line during 1905 had provoked a fatal retaliation by the Tuskegee Machine, and by 1907 it also was gone.3 If objectionable to the Wizard, the Voice posed no open threat to the Council. But the Niagara Movement was attracting far more attention—favorable or not—among the ranks of black editors, and obscuring the Council in some readers’ eyes. Still, at least one black newspaper, the Freeman, was saying good things about the Council in early 1906. Wetmore and Jordan had plans to fight a segregated railway car running into Washington, D.C., from the Virginia suburb of Alexandria, George Knox noted in an editorial. “It is an outrage to allow that Jim Crow weed to flourish under the very shadow of our national capital. . . . Let the fight go on and let all who are interested in the overthrow of unjust legislation join Secretary Jordan and Attorney Wetmore in their effort for our racial betterment.”4 Jordan’s optimistic suggestion came to naught; no new publication would be dedicated to the Council. If Walters and team hoped to publicize Council accomplishments and burnish its image among Afro-Americans, their path would not run through Tuskegee. Whatever “buzz” they might generate would have to be carried out through a grassroots appeal. To reach the public, the Council needed to prove it could work well with—or outperform —competitors like John Milholland’s biracial Constitution League, which held its well...

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