What Did They Eat? Where Did They Stay? Black Boardinghouses and the Colored Conventions Movement

Scroll down to explore an interactive map.

The interactive map below incorporates more than fifty advertisements for boardinghouses published in a variety of nineteenth-century African American newspapers. It's important to recognize that these advertisements are not representative of all nineteenth-century boardinghouses. Rather, they comprise just a small portion of the kinds of boarding and lodging houses in operation during the Colored Conventions movement. Despite these limitations, advertisements like the ones featured here provide important information about what boardinghouses were like and what types of services they offered their customers. Click through the map below to learn more. 

Researched and written by Anna Lacy. Edited by Dr. P. Gabrielle Foreman.