Within its editorial opinion columns, Trotter often assailed the conservative accommodationist ideology of Booker T. Washington, founder of the Tuskegee Institute.
Within the pages of the Guardian, Trotter criticized the slow progress in Negro social advancement in the face of institutional racism, discriminatory practices, and de jure segregation.
The stage production was adapted in 1915 into the film The Birth of a Nation by D. W. Griffith, which also faced a boycott campaign organized by the NAACP in Boston.
[2] With high circulation and substantial advertising revenue, the Guardian enjoyed financial success in addition to crusading for civil rights.
The publication is a neighborhood newspaper serving the Beacon Hill, Back Bay, Fenway, South End, and North End/Waterfront districts of Boston.