William Monroe Trotter (1872-1934), African American newspaper editor and protest leader, was the first prominent challenger of the accommodationist leadership of Booker T. Washington.

William Monroe Trotter was born on April 7, 1872, in Springfield Township, Ohio. His father, James, the son of a Mississippi slaveowner, rose from private to second lieutenant in the all-Black Massachusetts 55th Regiment during the Civil War. His mother, Virginia Issacs, claimed descent from Thomas Jefferson.

James Trotter settled in Massachusetts soon after the war, but after his first two children died in infancy the family decided to give birth to their third child in rural Ohio. At seven months young William and his parents moved back to Boston where they settled on the South End, far from the predominately African American West Side. The family later moved to suburban Hyde Park, a white neighborhood.

The elder Trotter instilled independence and racial pride in his...