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Title: The Early Negro Convention Movement
The American Negro Academy, Occasional Papers No. 9

Author: John W. Cromwell

Release Date: February 19, 2010 [EBook #31328]

Language: English

Character set encoding: ASCII

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The American Negro Academy.

OCCASIONAL PAPERS NO. 9.

The Early Negro
Convention Movement.

BY JOHN W. CROMWELL.

PRICE FIFTEEN CENTS.

WASHINGTON, D. C.:
Published by the Academy.
1904.

The Early Negro Convention Movement.

With the period immediately following the Second War with Great Britain,
begins a series of events which indicate a purpose of the nation to make
the condition of the free man of color an inferior status socially and
politically. That this was resisted at every step, revealed the national
aim and purpose.

The protest against prescription in the Church which had asserted itself
in several instances as at St. James P. E. and Bethel in Philadelphia,
Zion in New York, culminated in the organization of two independent
denominations--in 1816 at Philadelphia, in 1820 at New York.

The American Colonization Society was organized in 1816 with the hidden
purpose of strengthening slavery by ridding the country of its free black
population. In 1820 the passage of the Missouri Compromise permitted the
westward extension of slavery and as far north as 36 deg. 30'.

Local legislation, harmonizing with this national action against extending
the domain of freedom and making the country undesirable for the colored
freeman, followed. Two years after the enactment of the compromise, "the
martyrs of 1822" went bravely and heroically to their fate in South
Carolina. In 1827, the Empire State completed its work of emancipation of
the slave began 28 years before, and saw the birth of "Freedom's Journal,"
the first Negro newspaper within the limits of the United States, edited
by John B. Russwurm and Samuel E. Cor