As the first American civil rights organization of the twentieth century, the Niagara Movement arguably influenced all modern civil rights initiatives that followed. Founded in 1905 by W.E.B. Du Bois (1868–1963) and William Monroe Trotter (1872–1934) and comprising the leading African-American intellectuals of the time, the organization was established as a challenge to Booker T. Washington’s accommodationist stance. While the movement disbanded soon after its founding, its commitment to affecting legal change and its efforts to address issues of crime, economics, religion, health, and education were reborn in the NAACP, which many of its members helped to establish.