Emery T. Morris

Emery T. Morris. Public Official and Equal Rights Advocate. , Emery T. Morris was a prominent member of the Niagara Movement, an early civil rights organization., Morris was born in Salem, Massachusetts, on October 9, 1849. He was a nephew of Robert Morris, an African American attorney and abolitionist. His parents left Salem when Emery was five years old, and he grew up near Kendall Square in an African American neighborhood that has been replaced with office buildings., Morris, who was educated in the Cambridge public schools, became active in politics at an early age. In 1905 he joined W.E.B. Du Bois and Clement Morgan, among others, to found the Niagara Movement, a forerunner of the National Association for the Advancement of Colored People (NAACP). The movement represented blacks who advocated political and social freedom and immediate equality for all, in opposition to the accommodationist views of Booker T. Washington., After the breakup of the Niagara Movement in 1907, Morris split from Du Bois and joined William Monroe Trotter to found the National Negro Political League (NNPL), a rival civil rights organization, in 1910. Unlike the NAACP, which was interracial, the NNPL was led and controlled by African Americans., Morris ran for a seat on the Cambridge Common Council in 1907. When it became apparent that he was sure to win, the mayor appointed him deputy sealer of weights and measures, a coveted city position, in exchange for his withdrawal from the race. Around this time he moved from Hampshire Street, where he lived near the Prospect Street home of his friend Morgan, to this house on Parker Street, which was then being settled by middle-class African American families., Although Morris never went to college and worked for most of his life as a druggist, porter, and stationary steam engineer, he assembled one of the most extensive antislavery libraries in New England. Students often visited his house at the recommendation of their professors., Morris died on September 24, 1924, and was buried in Cambridge Cemetery., Related Cambridge African American Trail Markers: , WEB. Du Bois, 20 Flagg Street , William H. Lewis, 226 Upland Road , Clement G Morgan, 265 Prospect Street, Sources: , Boston Evening Transcript, September 25, 1924 , Cambridge Chronicle, August 1903 (photo) and September 7, 1907 , Stephen R. Fox, The Guardian of Boston: William Monroe Trotter 1970, Cambridge Discovery Inc. , Cambridge Historical Commission