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William Monroe Trotter (sometimes just Monroe Trotter, April 7, 1872 – April 7, 1934) was a newspaper editor and real estate businessman based in Boston, Massachusetts, and an activist for African-American civil rights. He was an early opponent of the accommodationist race policies of Booker T. Washington, and in 1901 founded the ''Boston Guardian,'' an independent African-American newspaper, as a vehicle to express that opposition. Active in protest movements for civil rights throughout the 1900s and 1910s, he also revealed some of the differences within the African-American community. He contributed to the formation of the National Association for the Advancement of Colored People (NAACP). Born into a well-to-do family and raised in Hyde Park, Massachusetts, Trotter earned his undergraduate and graduate degrees at Harvard University, and was the first man of color to earn a Phi Beta Kappa key there. Seeing an increase in segregation in northern facilities, he began to engage in a life of activism, to which he devoted his assets. He joined with W.E.B. DuBois in founding the Niagara Movement in 1905, a forerunner of the NAACP. Trotter's style was often divisive, and he ended up leaving that organization and founding the National Equal Rights League. His protest activities were sometimes seen to be at cross purposes to those of the NAACP. In 1914 he had a highly publicized meeting with President Woodrow Wilson, in which he protested Wilson's introduction of segregation into the federal workplace. In Boston, Trotter succeeded in 1910 in shutting down productions of ''The Clansman'' but he was unsuccessful in 1915 with screenings of the movie ''Birth of a Nation,''which also portrayed the Ku Klux Klan in favorable terms. He was not able to influence the peace talks at the end of World War I, and was in later years a marginalized voice of protest. In an alliance with Roman Catholics, in 1921 he did get a revival screening banned of ''Birth of a Nation.'' He died on his 62nd birthday after a possibly suicidal fall from his Boston home. ==Early life and education== William was the third child, and first to survive infancy, of James Monroe Trotter and Virginia (Isaacs) Trotter.〔Fox, p. 9〕 His father James was born into slavery in Mississippi; James' mother Letitia was enslaved, and his father was her white master Richard S. Trotter.〔Fox, p. 3〕 Letitia, her son and two daughters were freed by their master after his marriage and sent to Cincinnati, Ohio, which had a thriving free black community. After working as a teacher, James Trotter enlisted in the United States Colored Troops during the American Civil War,〔Fox, p. 4〕 and was the first man of color to be promoted to lieutenant in the 55th Regiment of the Massachusetts Volunteer Infantry (Colored).〔Fox, p. 5〕 〔Duganne, Erina, ("Black Civil War Portraiture in Context" ), ''mirror of race.org'', April 5, 2012. Retrieved 2015-11-29.〕 Virginia Isaacs, also of mixed race, was born free in 1842 in either Ohio or Virginia. Her mother Ann-Elizabeth Fossett was born into slavery at Monticello, where she was a daughter of Joseph Fossett and Edith Hern Fossett, and granddaughter of Elizabeth Hemings. Virginia's father Tucker Isaacs was free.〔 Tucker Isaacs, a free person of color, purchased the freedom of Ann-Elizabeth Fossett, Virginia's mother.〔(【引用サイトリンク】title=Virginia Isaacs Trotter )〕 The family moved to Chillicothe in the free state of Ohio, where Virginia grew up in its thriving black community. There she met and married James Trotter.〔Fox, p. 8〕 Shortly after the Civil War, the Trotters moved from Ohio to settle in Boston, Massachusetts. After their first two children died in infancy, they returned to the Isaacs farm of Virginia's parents, where their son William Monroe Trotter was born on April 7, 1872. When he was seven months old, the family moved back to Boston, where they settled in the South End, far from the predominantly African-American west side of Beacon Hill. The family later moved to suburban Hyde Park, a white neighborhood. The Trotters had two more children, both daughters.〔 Trotter's father broke through many racial obstacles placed before him, but was often frustrated in his attempts to gain equal treatment or fair consideration. While serving in the Union Army, he protested the inequality of pay between blacks and whites.〔 In Boston he was the first man of color to be employed by the Post Office Department (now the U.S. Postal Service), a job he left after he was repeatedly passed over for promotion because of discriminatory Republican-led federal government policy.〔Fox, p. 10〕 Politically active, the elder Trotter was a leading African-American Democrat in New England. He supported Grover Cleveland for President, and was rewarded in 1886 when Cleveland appointed him Recorder of Deeds for the District of Columbia, the highest federal position filled by black men at the time.〔Fox, p. 12〕〔 Two other prominent men of color of that era, Fredrick Douglass and Senator Blanche Kelso Bruce, also held the post.〔Finkelman, p. 216〕 The job was a lucrative one, and the Trotter family prospered.〔Fox, p. 13〕 The young Trotter (who was usually called by his middle name "Monroe") grew up in this environment, and was introduced to Archibald Grimké, another politically active African American who also lived in Hyde Park.〔Fox, p. 14〕 He excelled in school, graduating from the otherwise all-white Hyde Park High School as valedictorian and president of his high school class.〔Harrison, p. 239〕 He went on to Harvard University, where he continued to distinguish himself academically. He was awarded merit scholarships after his father died, and was the first man of color to be awarded a Phi Beta Kappa key at Harvard. He earned a Bachelor's degree ''magna cum laude'' in 1895 and a Masters in 1896, working a variety of odd jobs to help pay his tuition.〔Fox, pp. 15–19〕 During his years at Harvard, he adopted a number of habits which he maintained for much of his life. He organized and led the Total Abstinence League, a temperance organization; he was a teetotaler and never drank alcohol.〔Fox, p. 17〕 He was active in the Baptist church, in which he had considered becoming a minister.〔Fox, p. 15〕 抄文引用元・出典: フリー百科事典『 ウィキペディア（Wikipedia）』 ■ウィキペディアで「William Monroe Trotter」の詳細全文を読む スポンサード リンク
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