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6 February 1869 Illustration from Harper's Weekly: The National Colored Convention in Session at Washington, D.C.--Sketched by Theo. R. Davis

The Colored Conventions was a series of national, regional, and state conventions held irregularly during the decades preceding the American Civil War. The delegates who attended these conventions consisted of both free and fugitive African American community and religious leaders, businessmen, politicians, writers, publishers, and abolitionists. The minutes from these conventions show that Antebellum African-Americans sought justice beyond the emancipation of their enslaved countrymen: they also organized to discuss issues concerning labor, healthcare, temperance and educational equality. Although the conventions largely subsided following the Civil War, the Colored Conventions of antebellum America are seen as the precursors to larger African American organizations, including the Colored National Labor Union and the National Association for the Advancement of Colored People.

History

Historian Howard H. Bell notes that the convention movement grew out of a trend toward greater self-expression among African-Americans and was largely fostered by the appearance of newspapers like Freedom's Journal. The first documented convention was held at Mother Bethel A.M.E. Church in Philadelphia in September 1830. Delegates to this convention discussed the prospect of emigrating to Canada so as to find refuge from the harsh fugitive slave laws and violent oppression under which they lived in the United States.The first convention elected as president Richard Allen (bishop), founder of the African Methodist Episcopal Church (AME), the first independent black denomination in the United States. The idea of buying land in Canada quickly gave way to addressing problems they faced at home, such as education and labor rights.

Philadelphia was the hub of the Colored Conventions movement for several years before nearby cities such as New York City, Albany, and Pittsburgh also starting hosting conventions. By the 1850s, the conventions were extremely popular and multiple national, state, and local conventions were held every year. Although the majority of these conventions were held in northern, particularly New England states, conventions are documented as taking place in Kansas, Louisiana, and California. The conventions also attracted the most prominent African American leaders from across the country, including Frederick Douglass, Charles Bennett Ray, Lewis Hayden,Charles Lenox Remond, and Mary Ann Shadd.

Following the Civil War, colored conventions began to appear in the southern states as well, with one author noting that "we can not deny that the various conventions of the colored people in the late insurrectionary States compare favorably with those of their white brethren...their reasolutions are of an elevated humanity and common sense to which those of the other Conventions make no pretension."

The post-war conventions culminated with the 1869 National Convention of Colored Men in Washington D.C. The convention delegates wrote a letter congratulating General Ulysses S. Grant for being elected President of the United States, to which Grant responded, "I thank the Convention, of which you are the representative, for the confidence they have expressed, and I hope sincerely that the colored people of the Nation may receive every protection which the laws give to them. They shall have my efforts to secure such protection."

Legacy

As national state, and local colored conventions began to decline, other national organizations popped up. In response to a denial of African American admitance to the National Labor Union, community leaders and others formed the Colored National Labor Union in December 1869. Former Colored Convention delegates Isaac Myers and Frederick Douglass were instrumental in organizing the CNLU.

The last known colored convention took place in Indianapolis in 1887. The convention movement slowed down by the end of the century, and it re-emerged in the early twentieth century as the NAACP.