September 20, 1830 – First National Meeting of Blacks

This meeting was notable not least because it was organized by a free Black sixteen-year-old from Baltimore named Hezekiel Grice. He was reacting to the uptick in anti-Black riots and oppressive anti-Black laws.

In response to Grice’s outreach, Bishop Richard Allen, who was Senior Bishop for the Philadelphia African Methodist Episcopal Churches, agreed to chair a national convention. Black organizations from seven northeastern states elected 40 men to represent them at meetings that would address Black concerns.

The delegates, representing seven northeastern states, initially met for closed session meetings beginning September 15, 1830, but opened them to the public on September 20, in spite of the mobs assembled to break up the meeting. Rev. Allen presided over the meetings as President. During this time, they produced a Constitution and addressed the organizations that sent them.

The group launched the Colored Conventions Movement, also called the National Negro Convention Movement.

The Mother Bethel AME Church has been located on the same site, 6th and Lombard Streets, since 1794 to the present. Image courtesy of Mother Bethel African Methodist Episcopal Church, Richard Allen Museum and Archives, Photograph Collection, Philadelphia, PA.

The Zinn Education Project reports that in the Colored Conventions Movement’s Constitution, published that year, Rev. Allen addressed the “Free People of Colour of these United States.” He began his address by invoking the philosophical groundings of the United States’ own Constitution. He wrote:

Impressed with a firm and settled conviction, and more especially being taught by that inestimable and invaluable instrument, namely, the Declaration of Independence, that all men are born free and equal, and consequently are endowed with unalienable rights, among which are the enjoyments of life, liberty, and the pursuits of happiness.

Viewing these as incontrovertable facts, we have been led to the following conclusions; that our forlorn and deplorable situation earnestly and loudly demand of us to devise and pursue all legal means for the speedy elevation of ourselves and brethren to the scale and standing of men.”

Two websites in particular follow the evolution of the Black organization movement. The Colored Conventions Project features online exhibits. The Colored Conventions Project Digital Records site provides access to hundreds of collected documents of the Colored Conventions movement, spanning from the 1830s through the 1890s.