page_title: Negro Sanhedrin
section_title: Background
hierarchical_section_title: Negro Sanhedrin / History / Background
caption_attribution_description: William Monroe Trotter (1872-1934)
context_page_description: The Negro Sanhedrin was a national "All-Race Conference" held in the American city of Chicago, Illinois, from February 11 to 15, 1924. The gathering was attended by 250 delegates representing 61 trade unions, civic groups, and fraternal organizations in a short-lived attempt to forge a national program protecting the legal rights of African-American tenant farmers and wage workers and extending the scope of civil rights.
context_section_description: The idea for a national conference bringing together representatives of African-American organizations came in the spring of 1923, following Congressional defeat of the Dyer Anti-Lynching Bill. William Monroe Trotter of the National Equal Rights League (NERL) of Boston is credited with originating the idea for assembly of a national council of prominent black leaders. This idea was passed along to president of the NERL, Matthew A. N. Shaw, who issued a formal invitation to five like-minded organizations asking for their support.
  Among the groups initially solicited was the African Blood Brotherhood (ABB), a radical semi-underground organization affiliated with the Workers Party of America. Head of the ABB, Cyril Briggs, took the initiative in coordinating such a gathering, initially touted by him as a "United Front Negro Conference of Civil Rights Organizations." On March 24, 1923, a formal document was signed by representatives of the six organizations pledging their support of the conference. In addition to the ABB and NERL, other groups lending their formal support included the National Association for the Advancement of Colored People (NAACP), the International Uplift League, the Friends of Freedom, and the National Race Congress.
  Dean Kelly Miller of Howard University, formally representing the National Race Congress, was chosen as head of the arrangements committee, with Cyril Briggs of the ABB continuing to handle day to day organizational tasks as secretary. Nearly a year of meetings and organizational outreach followed, with the moderate Miller cementing ties with mainstream community and fraternal organizations. It was Miller who chose the name for the gathering, the "Sanhedrin," a phrase originating in the Biblical first book of Maccabees and referring to a supreme council of the Hebrew people.
caption: William Monroe Trotter of the National Equal Rights League is credited for the idea of the 1924 Negro Sanhedrin in Chicago.
exif: {}