Making the MexiRican City
To commemorate National Hispanic Heritage Month, this week's review analyzes the community-building and activist practices Mexican and Puerto Rican migrants employed in 20th-century Michigan.
Posted on in Review of the Week
The Colored Conventions Movement
This week's review delves into the Colored Conventions movement, revealing how Black activism in the 19th century encompassed more than abolitionism.
Posted on June 19, 2023 in Review of the Week
The Colored Conventions Movement: Black Organizing in the Nineteenth Century
ed. by P. Gabrielle Foreman, Jim Casey, and Sarah Lynn Patterson North Carolina, 2021
392p bibl index, 9781469654256 $95.00, 9781469654263 $29.95, 9781469654270 $24.99
This collection captures an important piece of African American history, examining the previously understudied Colored Conventions movement, an aspect of African American civil activism that preceded the NAACP and the Urban League. Although the title does not fully convey their significance, Colored Conventions were a feature of the 19th century beginning in the 1830s. Activist leaders convened these gatherings to address issues of race, citizenship, education, and abolition, among many other topics. The essays document the Conventions and discuss related aspects of note, such as the development of a digital Conventions archive that will assist scholars to come. Chapters also explore women’s roles in the Conventions and issues of travel and lodging in a nation that was too often hostile to freedmen, much less slaves. The authors highlight the contributions of a host of African Americans who have often been overshadowed by Frederick Douglass and the stalwarts of abolitionism. Given that African American history is often difficult to research through conventional resources, the contributors are to be commended for successfully mining unconventional resources, such as the Conventions’ minutes and African American periodicals and their advertisements.
Summing Up: Highly recommended. Advanced undergraduates through faculty.
Reviewer: T. F. Armstrong, formerly, Ministry of Higher Education and Scientific Research, UAE
Interdisciplinary Subjects: African and African American Studies, Racial Justice
Subject: Social & Behavioral Sciences – History, Geography & Area Studies – North America
Choice Issue: Jan 2023
Enjoy this week’s review? Check out more reviews of related titles:
- Half American: The Epic Story of African Americans Fighting World War II at Home and Abroad
- We’re Not Ok: Black Faculty Experiences and Higher Education Strategies
- Seeing Like an Activist: Civil Disobedience and the Civil Rights Movement
- They Knew They Were Pilgrims: Plymouth Colony and the Contest for American Liberty
- A Black Women’s History of the United States
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