Named for its first meeting place at Niagara Falls, New York, the Niagara Movement formed as an organized response to Booker T. Washington’s policies of accommodation and conciliation. Led by W. E. B. Du Bois, the Niagara Movement aimed to counteract Washington’s influence over the black community and in its manifesto declared its intention to “claim for ourselves every single right that belongs to a freeborn American, political, civil and social.”