Trotter, William Monroe (1872–1934)

US civil rights leader. He founded the Guardian (1901) as ‘propaganda against discrimination’. He opposed Booker T Washington, and he helped W E B DuBois in founding the Niagra Movement in 1905. He found the National Association for the Advancement of Colored People too moderate and formed the National Equal Rights League and protested against discrimination. He went to the Paris Peace Conference (1919) and tried to persuade the delegates to outlaw racial discrimination.

Trotter was born near Chillicothe, Ohio. Raised in Boston, he was an honours student at Harvard. Largely unrecognized during his lifetime, he employed methods – notably nonviolent protest – that were adopted by later 20th-century civil rights activists.