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How black Americans viewed the critical issues facing their people in the years following the war
Proceedings of the Black State Conventions, 1865-1900
Volume I
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edited by Philip S. Foner and George E. Walker
In reaction to the American Colonization Society’s efforts to send free blacks to Liberia, black American leaders like Frederick Douglass, Henry Highland Garnet, William Howard Day, and Bishop Henry M. Turner convened a series of state and national conventions, assembled in a total of over thirty states, in the years following the Civil War to promote the goal of the full freedom and equality of black Americans in the United States. The reader is offered a rich and varied presentation of how black Americans, both the newly-emancipated slaves and those previously free, viewed the critical issues facing their people in the years following the war. The first volume is especially important in presenting the ideas and programs of black Americans in relation to Reconstruction from the plans presented by Abraham Lincoln, Andrew Johnson, and the Radical program of Reconstruction adopted by Congress in 1867 to the ratification of the Fifteenth Amendment in 1870.
Like its great counterpart before the Civil War—the National Negro Convention Movement—these meetings sought to influence public opinion on a nationwide scale in advancing the civil, social, political, and economic conditions of black Americans in this country. Calling into play the instruments of the press, pulpit, and platform, the leadership endeavored to forge a program that would lead to full liberation. In serving to inculcate among blacks the need for group unity and solidarity, its efforts led in part to the establishment of such permanent organizations as the N.A.A.C.P.
About the Author(s)
Philip S. Foner is Professor Emeritus of History at Lincoln University.
George E. Walker is Associate Professor at George Mason University.