Colored Conventions Project

Abstract

From 1830 until well after the Civil War, free and fugitive Blacks came together in state and national "Colored Conventions." Before the war, they strategized about how to achieve educational, labor, and legal justice at a moment when Black rights were constricting nationally and locally. After the war, they continued to convene to discuss local, national, and international possibilities, problems, and challenges.
The delegates to these meetings included the most well-known, if mostly male, writers, organizers, church leaders, newspaper editors, and entrepreneurs in the canon of early African American leadership — and many whose names and histories have long been forgotten. What is left of this phenomenal effort are rare proceedings, scattered newspaper coverage, and petitions that have never before been collected in one place. Since 2012, the Project has made digitally available six decades of Black political organizing that overlapped with and was obscured by the abolitionist movement. This project seeks to not only learn about the lives of these male delegates, the places where they met, and the social networks that they created, but to also account for the crucial work done by Black women in the broader social networks that made these conventions possible. The project has involved over 1,000 students across the country in undergraduate research through a curriculum adopted by national teaching partners. 

http://coloredconventions.org

Gabrielle Foreman

Colored Conventions landing page. http://coloredconventions.org.

Courtesy Colored Conventions Project.

Scenes from the Nicholas Brown Center for Public Humanities and Cultural Heritage’s transcribe-a-thon. Participants at nine locations across the country assisted with transcribing documents collected and digitized by the Colored Conventions Project to commemorate the birthday of Frederick Douglass.

Photo courtesy of Nicholas Brown Center for Public Humanities and Cultural Heritage.

The delegates to these meetings included the most well-known, if mostly male, writers, organizers, church leaders, newspaper editors, and entrepreneurs in the canon of early African American leadership—and many whose names and histories have long been forgotten. What is left of this phenomenal effort are rare proceedings, scattered newspaper coverage, and petitions that have never before been collected in one place. Since 2012, the Project has made digitally available six decades of Black political organizing that overlapped with and was obscured by the abolitionist movement. This project seeks to not only learn about the lives of these male delegates, the places where they met, and the social networks that they created, but to also account for the crucial work done by Black women in the broader social networks that made these conventions possible.

An engraving of the 1876 National Convention of Colored People held in Nashville, Tennessee, printed in Frank Leslie’s Illustrated Newspaper.

Courtesy Colored Conventions Project.

Illustration from Harper’s Weekly of the 1869 National Colored Convention in Washington, D.C.

Courtesy of Harper's Weekly and Colored Conventions Project.

The project has involved over 1,000 students across the country in undergraduate research through a curriculum adopted by national teaching partners.  ColoredConventions.org endeavors to transform teaching and learning about this historic collective organizing effort—and about the many leaders and places involved in it — bringing them to digital life for a new generation of students and scholars across disciplines and for community researchers interested in the history of Black activist church, educational, and entrepreneurial engagement.

Proceedings of the First State Convention of the Colored Citizens of the State of California. Held at Sacramento Nov. 20th 21st, and 22d, 1855 in the Colored Methodist Chuch [sic].

Courtesy of the Samuel May Anti-Slavery Collection, Cornell University.

Project members celebrating at CCP’s annual end-of-year party.

Photo courtesy of Colored Conventions Project.

P. Gabrielle Foreman is the Ned B. Allen Professor of English and Professor of History and Black American Studies at the University of Delaware and the founding faculty director of the Colored Conventions Project. She and her graduate students are currently working on a coedited volume, Colored Conventions in the Nineteenth-Century and the Digital Age, linked to digital exhibits for the public, which will be featured on the website. An award-winning teacher and scholar, Foreman translated her research into a performance piece used in classrooms across the country through collaborations with poets, choreographers, and composers. Foreman's publications include Activist Sentiments: Reading Black Women in the Nineteenth Century, a Penguin edition of Our Nig: or, Sketches from the Life of a Free Black by Harriet Wilson, and a book-in-progress, The Art of DisMemory: Historicizing Slavery in Poetry, Print, and Material Culture. Foreman codirects an NEH Next Generation PhD grant that blends academic and museum training for graduate students of color.