Colored Conventions and the Black Press

• In Event: Colored Conventions in the Nineteenth Century and the Digital Age

Abstract

This presentation explores the interrelated research and teaching of Colored Conventions and black newspapers. I focus in particular on the debate surrounding the establishment of a “National press” that occurred during the 1847 National Convention of Colored People, held in Troy, New York. The debate engaged many now-familiar nineteenth-century black activists. Delegates such as James McCune Smith, Henry Highland Garnet, and Alexander Crummel argued in support of the project, while Frederick Douglass, William Wells Brown, and Thomas Van Rennselaer spoke out against the idea. The Convention delegates debated what, exactly, constituted a “national” press and the practical problems of producing and supporting such a publication. Ultimately, the Convention adopted a report, written by McCune Smith, that advocated the creation of a national newspaper. Looking closely at McCune Smith’s report, my paper explores the imagined contours of a national black press, and by extension the contours of the black nation that that press ostensibly spoke to and for.

My paper will also share my experience teaching such material. In the fall of 2016 I incorporated the 1847 Convention into a graduate class on Early African American Print Culture, taught at Auburn University. A group of students then created a digital exhibit drawing connections between that convention and black newspapers of the period. Overcoming the limited resources of a large public institution, and the uneven digitization of early black print, these students performed exciting research and produced a wealth of original content interpreting their findings for a general readership. Their exhibit exemplifies the potential of digital resources and platforms to share often-neglected histories of African American life and culture with a wide audience. By offering not only a reading of the 1847 Convention’s relationship to the black press, but also an account of how that work develops in the classroom, this presentation highlights the crucial interplay between researching and teaching the Colored Conventions.

Author

• Benjamin Fagan, Auburn University