The First National Convention: The Meeting that Launched a Movement

Although tradition regards Hezekiah Grice and Bishop Richard Allen as the primary movers of the early Convention movement, many people, events, and documents also contributed to its formation. The establishment of the early convention movement was not the result of an  individual's efforts, but rather a simultaneous collective sense for the need to cultivate a strong national union of African Americans in the face of continuous assaults on their rights, institutions, efforts and bodies.

Freedom's Journal was the first newspaper in the United States to be owned and operated by African Americans. It began circulating in 1827 in New York. John Russwurm and Samuel Cornish served as the paper's editors. In its first issue, they argued "too long have others spoken for us, too long has the public been decieved by misrepresentations" [1]. The Colored Conventions movement also asserted the need for self-representation. If not directly inspired by, this movement is clearly in conversation with, Freedom's Journal, which had multiple subscribters in Philadelphia and throughout the country. In 1827, years before Grice's call for a convention, this paper outlined plans for Black organizing on the state-level and also detailed a vision for national organizing.

Also before the 1830 convention took place in Philadelphia, a delegation of Black citizens from Cincinnati met with leaders in New York to discuss emigration to Canada, and the Black community in Boston proposed this move to emigrate even before the riots in Cincinnati [2]. Hezekiah Grice’s outreach should be placed in context of these other consequential events.

David Walker’s appeal, formally titled, “Walker's Appeal, in Four Articles; Together with a Preamble, to the Coloured Citizens of the World, but in Particular, and Very Expressly, to Those of the United States of America, Written in Boston, State of Massachusetts, September 28, 1829 “ is one of the most significant and earliest radical antislavery documents. In it, Walker discusses the damaging effects of slavery and calls for African Americans to engage in collective resistance to oppression. He also refutes assertions of black inferiority, arguing, “America is more our country than it is the whites – we have enriched it with our blood and tears”[3]. Many abolitionists considered Walker’s appeal to be too radical, opting instead for a more patient approach to abolition. Over time, however, scholars have come to recognize the appeal as a foundational element in Black Nationalist thought [4]. For this reason, Walker’s appeal is deeply connected to the colored convention movement. It was published in Freedom’s Journal only several months before Hezekiah Grice’s initial call. The delegates to the 1830 meeting and future conventions likely would have been familiar with Walker’s words and ideas.

Walker specifically targets the American Colonization Society. Philadelphia had organized a local convention 12 years earlier to discuss the same subject [4]. This convention was attended by many of the same delegates present at the 1830 convention including Richard Allen. Walker's appeal was published in September 1829, the same month that Freedom's Journal discussed the race riots in Cincinnati. Walker's Appeal was read from pulpits in Black chruches by convention leaders such as Amos Beman. Like Freedom's Journal, David Walker's ideas in these works anticipate the convention movement.  

Sarah Allen was an abolitionist who was deeply involved with the founding of the AME church. She was married to the church’s first minister Richard Allen, and helped purchase and manages their properties and investments. She is regarded as Mother Bethel church’s “founding mother.” Allen founded a sewing circle consisting of the women of her congregation to help provide adequate clothes for African American ministers [6]. While this kind of work is often overlooked in historical scholarship, the colored conventions movement was in large part focused on cultivating a prideful, free Black community on a national scale. Providing clothes, shelter, and food are fundamental and essential elements in community building. Sarah Allen’s sewing circle is an early example of this type of organizing.

A contingent of abolitionists in New York were also preparing to develop a convention meeting in 1830. The Philadelphia convention occured before the New York one was fully organized, and so New York did not host a national convention until 1834. Some scholars argue that this timing was by design. In Freedom's Prophet: Bishop Richard Allen, the AME Church and the Black Founding Fathers, Richard Newman writes, 

"(Richard Allen) could be shrewd, as in 1830 when he maneuvered the first black convention to be held in Philadelphia rather than let New York City's or Baltimore's black reformers claim the honor of hosting the event"[7]. 

There is a sense of competition among antebellum free Black communities, and Newman later remarks that Black New Yorkers formed "one of the most fearsome reform communities in Antebellum America"[7]. Richard Allen appears to have wanted the 1830 convention to serve as a testament to the community he had formed in Philadelphia. The printed minutes of the 1830 convention follow the form of the United States Constitution, with a preamble, Articles, reiterations of the phrase "we as people," etc. Perhaps these allusions indicate a regional pride and boastfulness; the U.S. constitution had, after all, been authored in the city Philadelphia. Given that Richard Allen advocated mass emigration to Canada in his address, it is interesting that he displayed this advocacy for his city of Philadelphia in bringing this convention together. 

Sources:

[1] "Freedom's Journal; The First U.S. African American Owned Newspaper." Wisconsinhistory.org. accessed May 14.  

[2] Howard Holman Bell. 1957. “Free Negroes of the North 1830-1835: A Study in National Cooperation.” The Journal of Negro Education 26 (4). Journal of Negro Education: 447–55.

[3] Walker, David. "Walker's Appeal, in Four Articles; Together with a Preamble, to the Coloured Citizens of the World, but in Particular, and Very Expressly, to Those of the United States of America, Written in Boston, State of Massachusetts, September 28, 1829" University of North Carolina.

[4] Asukile, Thabiti. 1999. "The All-Embracing Black Nationalist Theories of Devid Walker's Appeal." The Black Scholar.

[5] Cromwell, John Wesley. The Early Negro Convention Movement. Washington, D.C.: Academy, 1904.

[6] Nancy Sanders. America's Black Founders: Revolutionary Heroes and Early Leaders with 21 Activities. Chicago Review Press.

[7] Newman, Richard S. Freedom's Prophet: Bishop Richard Allen, the AME Church, and the Black Founding Fathers. New York: New York University Press, 2008.