Colored Conventions Movement

rdf:langString Colored Conventions Movement

rdf:langString The Colored Conventions Movement, or Black Conventions Movement, was a series of national, regional, and state conventions held irregularly during the decades preceding and following the American Civil War. The delegates who attended these conventions consisted of both free and formerly enslaved African Americans including religious leaders, businessmen, politicians, writers, publishers, editors, and abolitionists. The conventions provided "an organizational structure through which black men could maintain a distinct black leadership and pursue black abolitionist goals." Colored Conventions occurred in thirty-one states across the US and in Ontario, Canada. The movement involved more than five thousand delegates. The minutes from these conventions show that Antebellum African Americans sought justice beyond the emancipation of their enslaved countrymen: they also organized to discuss labor, health care, temperance, emigration, voting rights, the right to a trial by jury, and educational equality. The Colored Conventions Movement antedated the founding of any formal anti-slavery movement in the United States. The conventions significantly increased in number following the Civil War. The Antebellum and postwar colored conventions are seen as the precursors to larger African-American organizations, including the Colored National Labor Union, the Niagara Movement, and the National Association for the Advancement of Colored People (NAACP).