The Colored Conventions Movement: Black Organizing in the Nineteenth Century

by P. Gabrielle Foreman (Editor), Jim Casey (Editor), Sarah Lynn Patterson (Editor)

Overview

This volume of essays is the first to focus on the Colored Conventions movement, the nineteenth century's longest campaign for Black civil rights. Well before the founding of the NAACP and other twentieth-century pillars of the civil rights movement, tens of thousands of Black leaders organized state and national conventions across North America. Over seven decades, they advocated for social justice and against slavery, protesting state-sanctioned and mob violence while demanding voting, legal, labor, and educational rights. While Black-led activism in this era is often overshadowed by the attention paid to the abolition movement, this collection centers Black activist networks, influence, and institution building. Collectively, these essays highlight the vital role of the Colored Conventions in the lives of thousands of early organizers, including many of the most famous writers, ministers, politicians, and entrepreneurs in the long history of Black activism.

Contributors: Erica L. Ball, Kabria Baumgartner, Daina Ramey Berry, Joan L. Bryant, Jim Casey, Benjamin Fagan, P. Gabrielle Foreman, Eric Gardner, Andre E. Johnson, Cheryl Janifer LaRoche, Sarah Lynn Patterson, Carla L. Peterson, Jean Pfaelzer, Selena R. Sanderfer, Derrick R. Spires, Jermaine Thibodeaux, Psyche Williams-Forson, and Jewon Woo.

Explore accompanying exhibits and historical records at The Colored Conventions Project website: https://coloredconventions.org/

Product Details

ISBN-13:	9781469654263
Publisher:	The University of North Carolina Press
Publication date:	03/22/2021
Series:	The John Hope Franklin Series in African American History and Culture
Pages:	392
Product dimensions:	6.12(w) x 9.25(h) x 1.00(d)

About the Author

P. Gabrielle Foreman is the Paterno Chair of Liberal Arts and professor of English, African American studies, and History at the Pennsylvania State University.

Jim Casey is assistant professor of African American studies, history, and English at the Pennsylvania State University.

Sarah Lynn Patterson is assistant professor of African American literature and culture at the University of Massachusetts Amherst.

What People are Saying About This

From the Publisher

With its historical heft and excellent prose, this book deserves to be the reference book for all things related to nineteenth-century Black activism.—Erica Armstrong Dunbar, Rutgers University

This collection of essays offers an exciting, original rethinking of nineteenth-century Black political thought that resonates with the justice movements of our own time.—Sharla Fett, Occidental College

Editorial Reviews

Through these essays, the editors masterfully portray the CCP's aim to realize the linkages of Black intellectual work and social activism that the conventions represented, individually and sequentially, in the 19th century. . . . A must for all students, researchers, and general readers with an interest in Black lives, this essential overview of the CCP's legacy offers fresh understanding of the history of organized Black activism and commitment to community efforts for equal rights. Highest recommendation."—Library Journal, starred review

This collection captures an important piece of African American history. . . . Given that African American history is often difficult to research through conventional resources, the contributors are to be commended for successfully mining unconventional resources, such as the Conventions' minutes and African American periodicals and their advertisements. . . . Highly recommended."—Choice Reviews

The [Colored Conventions] project serves as a brilliant example of scholarly crowdsourcing. . . . CCP allows us finally to do justice to the overdetermined and multidimensional legacy that nineteenth-century Black activism bequeathed the twentieth and twenty-first centuries."—Early American Literature

From the Publisher

★ 02/01/2021

From the 1830s through the 1890s, Black leaders in the United States convened in regional and national meetings. At the start, they opposed slavery and colonization, but their agenda expanded to local and universal human and civil rights goals. Records of their proceedings have offered a treasure trove of the thinking and organizing behind what became known as the Colored Conventions Movement. Founding director of the Colored Conventions Project (CCP) Foreman (English, Penn State Univ.), and cofounders Casey (African American Studies, Penn State Univ.) and Patterson (English, UMass Amherst) have advanced reclamation of the records with a dynamic database at Penn State's Center for Black Digital Research. The essays in this volume are refined papers first presented at a 2015 symposium on the seven decades of the Conventions. Through these essays, the editors masterfully portray the CCP's aim to realize the linkages of Black intellectual work and social activism that the conventions represented, individually and sequentially, in the 19th century. VERDICT A must for all students, researchers, and general readers with an interest in Black lives, this essential overview of the CCP's legacy offers fresh understanding of the history of organized Black activism and commitment to community efforts for equal rights. Highest recommendation.—Thomas J. Davis, Arizona State Univ., Tempe

Library Journal