The Colored Conventions movement was one of the most sustained political movements in the nineteenth-century United States. It represents what some historians have described as the U.S.’s first civil rights movement. Black organizers held the first National Convention of Free People of Colour in 1830 in Philadelphia, PA, in response to white mob violence and anti-Black legislation in Ohio and other states. Subsequent national and state conventions would focus on the breadth and depth of issues facing Black citizens, including access to education, economic improvement, voting rights, mutual aid and protection, and emigration outside of the United States. Organizers across the United States consistently and vocally claimed citizenship and its associated rights for Black Americans. As Black New Yorkers proclaimed in 1840, “The possession of the franchise [voting] right is the life blood of political existence,” and disenfranchisement amounted to a form of political violence.

While ending enslavement remained a key issue for Black activists before the Civil War, the Colored Conventions Movement demonstrates the wide range of other issues affecting free Black people across the northern, midwestern, and western United States. After the Civil War, the conventions exploded across the South. Tennessee, Mississippi, Alabama, South Carolina, and Georgia all held conventions as early as 1865 that featured a who’s who of Black organizers, including the first Black U.S. Congressmen and Senators, Black lieutenant governors, and Black secretaries of state. Colored conventions were an intergenerational training ground for well-known activists (e.g., Richard Allen, Frederick Douglass, Henry Highland Garnet, Henry McNeal Turner, Mary Ann Shadd Cary, Martin R. Delany) and many other less-prominent figures. To date, scholars working with the Colored Conventions Project (coloredconventions.org) have documented over 500 events organized by Black activists across at least 29 states and Washington, D.C., between 1830 and 1905 at the state, regional, and national levels. At least 23 Colored Conventions were held in New York State, most in the Central New York region.

Terminology: In these documents, “colored American” refers specifically to people of African descent. Scholars use “Colored Conventions” and “Colored Conventions Movement” to describe these documents today, because Black Americans used “colored convention” and “convention of the people of color” to refer to these events for much of the mid-1800s.

Minutes and Proceedings of the Second Annual Convention for the Improvement of the Free People of Color in these United States. Philadelphia: Benj. Paschal, Thos. Butler, and Jas. C. Matthews, Publishing Com. Martin & Boden, Printers, 1832.

Minutes and Proceedings of the Third Annual Convention, for the Improvement of the Free People of Colour in these United States. New York: Published by Order of the Convention, 1833.

The third national colored convention was held in Philadelphia, PA, on June 3-13. In addition to continued protests of the American Colonization Society, the convention called for establishing and supporting moral reform and literary societies, like New York’s Phoenix Society.

Samuel J. May Anti-Slavery Pamphlet Collection.

Transcribed minutes courtesy of the Colored Conventions Project

Minutes of the Fourth Annual Convention for the Improvement of the Free People of Colour, in the United States. New York: Published by Order of the Convention, 1834.

Minutes of the Union Temperance Convention of the Colored Citizens of Pennsylvania, Delaware, New Jersey, Maryland and the District of Columbia. Philadelphia: Martin Heim, 1843.

The temperance movement was an international phenomenon that caught fire in the early nineteenth century. Temperance societies called on people to abstain from drinking alcohol and other harmful activities. Black activists saw temperance as its own good and as a way to counter racist stereotypes about African-descended people.

Samuel J. May Anti-Slavery Pamphlet Collection.

Transcribed minutes courtesy of the Colored Conventions Project

Minutes and Address of the State Convention of the Colored Citizens of Ohio, convened at Columbus, January 10th, 11th, 12th, & 13th, 1849. Oberlin, OH: J.M. Fitch, 1849.

Black Ohioans held the first state-level colored convention as early as 1837 to organize around the state’s anti-Black legislation and white mob violence against Black communities. Black women threated to boycott the 1849 convention: “We the ladies have been invited to attend the Convention, and have been deprived of a voice, which we the ladies deem wrong and shameful.”

Samuel J. May Anti-Slavery Pamphlet Collection.

Transcribed minutes courtesy of the Colored Conventions Project

Proceedings of the Colored National Convention, Held in Rochester, July 6th, 7th, and 8th, 1853. Rochester: Printed at the Office of Frederick Douglass’ Paper, 1853.

The 1853 Convention’s “Address of the Colored National Convention” proclaims, “By birth, we are American citizens; by the principles of the Declaration of Independence, we are American citizens; within the meaning of the United States Constitution, we are American citizens; by the facts of history, and the admissions of American statesmen, we are American citizens.”

Transcribed minutes courtesy of the Colored Conventions Project

Proceedings of the National Emigration Convention of Colored People Held at Cleveland, Ohio. Pittsburgh: A.A. Anderson, 1854.

Arguments, Pro and Con, on the Call for a National Emigration Convention: To Be Held in Cleveland, Ohio, August, 1854. Detroit: George E. Pomeroy, 1854.

Emigration movements continued to be a contentious issue among Black organizers throughout the nineteenth century. Frederick Douglass, William J. Watkins, James Monroe Whitfield, and M. T Newsom issued this pamphlet arguing against holding the 1854 National Emigration Convention.

Samuel J. May Anti-Slavery Pamphlet Collection.

View Cornell's copy fully digitized

Proceedings of the First State Convention of the Colored Citizens of the State of California. Held at Sacramento Nov. 20th 21st, and 22d, in the Colored Methodist Church. Sacramento: Democratic State Journal, 1855.

Proceedings of the State Convention of Colored Men of the State of Tennessee: Held at Nashville, Tenn., August 7th, 8th, 9th and 10th, 1865. Nashville: Daily Press and Times, 1865.

Equal Suffrage: Address from the Colored Citizens of Norfolk, Va., to the People of the United States: Also an Account of the Agitation among the Colored People of Virginia for Equal Rights: with an Appendix Concerning the Rights of Colored Witnesses before the State Courts. New Bedford: E. Anthony & Sons, 1865.

Equal Suffrage: Address from the Colored Citizens of Norfolk, Va., to the People of the United States: Also an Account of the Agitation among the Colored People of Virginia for Equal Rights: with an Appendix Concerning the Rights of Colored Witnesses before the State Courts. New Bedford: E. Anthony & Sons, 1865.

“We do not come before the people of the United States asking an impossibility; we simply ask that a Christian and enlightened people shall, at once, concede to us the full enjoyment of those privileges of full citizenship, which, not only are our undoubted right, but are indispensable to that elevation and prosperity of our people, which must be the desire of every patriot.”

Transcription courtesy of the Colored Conventions Project

Convention of Colored Citizens of New England. “To the Colored Citizens of Massachusetts and New England.” Boston: 1872.

While Reconstruction is most often associated with Southern states, the period saw renewed advocacy in Northern states, where Black citizens in Massachusetts and elsewhere had long advocated for basic civil rights. The Convention of Colored Citizens of New England met on September 5, 1875. They subsequently issued this broadside, which includes an address to Black New Englanders, a “Letter from the Convention” to President Ulysses S. Grant, and a series of resolutions the Convention adopted.

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