Most Niagarites were urban, college-educated professionals, representative of W.E. B. Du Bois’s “Talented Tenth,” a phrase taken from an essay in which Du bois estimated that 1 in 10 blacks could become leaders in society. The founding circle of 29 men from 14 states had increased to about 300 members in 30 branches by 1907. Women were invited to join in 1906, the year the organization was incorporated. Mary White Ovington, a friend of Du Bois, became the only white member in 1908.  Booker T. Washington’s supporters, “The Tuskegee Machine,” undermined the Niagara Movement by suppressing patronage, philanthropy, and publicity in the press. The Niagarites countered by issuing this pamphlet designed to enlist male college students and recent graduates. The author, Mason A. Hawkins, was a young Harvard alumnus and principal of the Colored High School in Baltimore.