Boston Riot occurs.

William Monroe Trotter and others disrupt a speech by Booker T. Washington to some 2,000 people at a meeting of the National Negro Business League at the Columbus Avenue A.M.E. Zion Church. Critical of Washington’s gradualist approach to civil rights, Trotter presents him with a list of nine provocative questions, and is arrested by police with his sister Maude, and others, after which Washington finishes his speech. The national black press devotes extensive coverage to the event, with the Indianapolis Freeman asking, “What is the matter with those Boston Negroes. Has so much learning made them mad?” Trotter serves 30 days in the Charles Street Jail and is released on November 7, 1903.