The Colored Conventions: A Buried History (West)
Starting in 1830 and continuing until well after the Civil War, free, freed, and self-emancipated Blacks gathered in state and national political conventions. A cornerstone of Black organizing in the nineteenth century, these “Colored Conventions” brought Black men and women together in a decades-long campaign for civil and human rights. The first “Colored Convention” was in Philadelphia.
Both murals visually demonstrate the continuous struggle for freedom and rights which African Americans in Philadelphia have articulated, demanded, and secured. These Black men and women, their movements, and communities continue to carry on the work of the conventions over generations and into the future.
The mural at 351 Washington Avenue commemorates historical figures, places and documents relevant to the movement’s history. Thirty years before the Civil War, dozens of African American Philadelphians gathered at Mother Bethel AME in response to a call by founding Bishop Richard Allen of Bethel AME to launch a national movement for Black civil rights, voting rights, education, abolition, and freedom from racial violence. Over the course of 70 years, tens of thousands of African American men, women, and children engaged in political organizing, with Philadelphia hosting at least eight conventions and generations of Pennsylvanians representing the state in conventions across the country. This mural honors and remembers the movement’s Philadelphian origins and recognizes activists today who are the legacy of the movement, especially those who call this city their home. Included in the mural are:
1. William Still. When he wasn’t conducting for the Underground Railroad or working for the PA Society for the Abolition of Slavery, he attended conventions and his family ran a boarding house where delegates stayed.
2. John Bathan Vashon. A barber, businessman, and abolitionist, Vashon was also a seaman aboard the U.S.S. Revenge and a delegate who paved the way for the 1867 Soldiers and Sailors National Convention in Philadelphia.
3. Frances Ellen Watkins Harper. An internationally renowned writer, traveling lecturer, and activist, Harper attended and spoke at several conventions. She moved to Philadelphia in 1851 and lived with William Still, then in 1870 she moved to the Bella Vista neighborhood where she stayed until 1911; her historic home still stands there.
4. William Whipper, who attended six Colored Conventions in Philadelphia, and was an abolitionist, businessman, and founder of many morality and reform societies.
5. La Pierre House sits at the northwest corner of Sansom St., circa 1869, in this photo by photographer John Moran. This hotel welcomed African Americans and was advertised in Black newspapers for traveling delegates.
6. Mary Ann Shadd Cary, an educator, emigrationist, and one of the first Black women newspaper editors in North America, frequently stayed in Philadelphia to give public speeches and to fundraise for her newspaper and Black Canadian resettlers.
7. A page is from the “Proceedings of the State Convention of the Colored Freemen of Pennsylvania” in 1841, which named many Philadelphian delegates in attendance.
8. Jabez Pitts Campbell, a Philadelphian, pastor at Mother Bethel, AME Bishop, and editor for the Black newspaper, the AME Christian Recorder.
9. Frederick Douglass, famous writer and abolitionist, was president of the 1855 National Convention in Philadelphia and his newspaper was named the organ of the movement.
10. Mother Bethel AME, the first African American denomination organized in the United States and home church of Bishop Richard Allen, who called delegates from across the region to come there for the first convention in 1830.
11. A sketch of “The National Colored Convention in session at Washington, D.C. 1869” is one of the few printed drawings of a Colored Convention, and is unique because it features women and children participants in the pews.
Learn more about the Colored Conventions project at: https://coloredconventions.org