STAKE CLAIM OR TAKE FLIGHT: THE BIRTH OF SOUTHERN CONVENTIONS AFTER THE CIVIL WAR

Ideas About Emigration

Mary Ann Shadd Cary (1823-1893), a delegate to the 1855 national convention, was born in Wilmington, DE. Shadd Cary was the first Black female editor of a North American newspaper, the Provincial Freeman, and the second black female lawyer in the U.S.

Mary Ann Shadd Cary, a prominent emigration advocate before the Civil War.

Martin Delany, a leader of the emigration movement and prominent Black nationalist.

Daguerreotype of Jane Waring Roberts, taken between 1851 and 1860

Jane Waring Roberts emigrated to Liberia with her family in 1824 at the age of six, and eventually married the first president of Liberia, Joseph Jenkins Roberts, in 1836.

Daguerreotype made of Joseph Jenkins Roberts ca. 1851

Roberts emigrated to Liberia in 1829. He was elected as the first president of the independent nation of Liberia.

Many antebellum Colored Conventions dealt with the question of emigration, as delegates frequently walked a fine line between demanding their rightful place in American society and seeking an escape from the increasingly oppressive restrictions of the 1840s and 1850s. Many conventions and Black leaders condemned the exploitative and racist efforts of the American Colonization Society to settle African Americans in Liberia. Some offered support and encouragement to individuals who expressed a sense of agency and self-determinism by making new homes for themselves in Canada, Haiti, Liberia, and other destinations. Prominent African Americans such as, Martin Delany and Mary Ann Shadd Cary were strong proponents of emigration. Though Shadd Cary immigrated to Canada, she eventually moved with her family back to the United States during the Civil War.

Recognizing the antecedents of postbellum debates is a necessary precursor to understanding the attitudes that southern convention attendees expressed about emigration after the Civil War.