MURAL EXHIBIT: THE COLORED CONVENTIONS MOVEMENT AND BEYOND IN PHILADELPHIA

BIOGRAPHIES

The first mural depicts several historical figures, places, and conventions. Below are snippets about each one of them. Click on their names for further reading.

1 Bishop Richard Allen convened the first Colored Convention at Philadelphia’s Mother Bethel AME Church in 1830. His vision and leadership were integral to the creation of the Black intellectual activist movement which predates the abolitionist movement and created the foundation for the long battle for civil rights in America.

2 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.

3 John Bathan Vashon, a barber, businessman, and abolitionist, was also a seaman aboard the U.S.S. Revenge. He was a convention delegate who paved the way for the 1867 Soldiers and Sailors National Convention in Philadelphia.

4 Frances Ellen Watkins Harper, internationally renowned writer, traveling lecturer, and activist, attended and spoke at several conventions. She moved to Philadelphia in 1851 and lived with William Still. In 1870, she moved to the Bella Vista neighborhood where she stayed until 1911. Her historic home still stands there today.

5 William Whipper attended six Colored Conventions in Philadelphia, and was an abolitionist, businessman, and founder of many morality and reform societies there.

6 La Pierre House sits at the northwest corner of Sansom St, circa 1869 in this photo by John Moran. It was one of the premier hotels in Philadelphia with a multifaceted history, having been the site of escapes by enslaved persons, visits by Black leaders, and a meeting place for politicians.

7 Mary Ann Shadd Cary, educator, emigrationist, and one of the first Black women newspaper editors in North America. Shadd Cary frequently stayed in Philadelphia to give public speeches and fundraise for her newspaper, Provincial Freeman, and Black Canadian settlers.

8 This page is from the “Proceedings of the State Convention of the Colored Freemen of Pennsylvania” in 1841, which named many Philadelphian delegates in attendance.

9 Jabez Pitt Campbell was a Philadelphian, pastor at Mother Bethel AME Church, an AME bishop, and editor for the AME newspaper, Christian Recorder.

10 Frederick Douglass, famous writer and abolitionist, was president of the 1855 National Convention in Philadelphia. His newspaper, The North Star, was named the organ of the movement.

11 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.

12 This sketch of “The National Colored Convention in session at Washington, D.C. 1869” is one of the few printed drawings of a Colored Convention. It is unique because it features women and children participants in the pews.