On January 19, 1901, just one week after Leavenworth, Kansas, witnessed the burning of Fred Alexander, a twenty-two-year-old black Spanish-American war veteran, the "Wichita Searchlight" called for armed self-defense. The brutal murder of Alexander horrified many African Americans throughout the region, who decided that it was time to stand up and let their grievances be heard. Black citizens created a state branch of the country's only national civil rights organization of the period, the Afro-American Council. This article highlights the activities of the Kansas Afro-American Council and its response to the lynching of Fred Alexander. The Council represented the persistence of a protest tradition in post-Reconstruction America and showed the desire among certain individuals for the creation and preservation of a national civil rights organization.