William Monroe Trotter, born on this day in 1872, was a newspaper editor and civil rights activist based in Boston, Massachusetts who co-founded the Niagara Movement with WEB Du Bois.

Trotter 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 he used to express that opposition.

Trotter was a key founding member of the "Niagara Movement" with W.E.B. Du Bois and contributed to the formation of the National Association for the Advancement of Colored People (NAACP), although he never participated in the group due to a bitter split with Du Bois.

"My vocation has been to wage a crusade against lynching, disenfranchisement, peonage, public segregation, injustice, denial of service in public places for color, in war time and peace."

- William Monroe Trotter