Cincinnati's Political History
March 21, 2018
In partnership with the Cincinnati Museum Center’s Lecture Series and in recognition of Black History Month, Dr. Christine Anderson(Associate Professor of History and Gender & Diversity Studies), recently hosted the on-campus lecture, “Conflict on the Ohio 1858 ‘Colored’ Convention.” Central to the presentation and discussion was the celebration of the resilient leaders and activists of Cincinnati’s 19thcentury African-American community that helped shape the culture of the current day Queen City.
During the lecture, Dr. Anderson highlighted a recently discovered historic document created by the members of the African Episcopal Church, Allen Temple AME, which dictated direct opposition to an 1854 colonization plan put forth by local white Methodist Episcopalians. According to Anderson,
“…the white church created a colonization society that proposed to send African Americans ‘back’ to Africa. The Allen Temple hosted an ‘indignation meeting’ objecting very strenuously to this plan. Many Blacks in Cincinnati had family and friends held in bondage; they did not wish to leave them. There was intense debate within the Black community about whether or not African Americans should separate themselves from a country that protected slavery by law; they believed that the United States would never grant them equitable treatment. Others did not wish to leave the country their labor had helped to build. There was general agreement that the purposes of white plans for colonization were offensive.”
This lecture also involved students from Dr. Anderson’s “African American Struggle for Equality” course co-presenting with public historian Nancy Yerian by conducting an online tour of the Colored Conventions website. These students, guided by Yerian’s expertise in textual editing and digital media, had earlier contributed research to this award-winning website. This resource, developed by the University of Delaware’s Digital Humanities Program, houses transcriptions from all the proceedings of Colored Conventions around the country between 1830 and 1900.
Anderson offered this final reflection:
“My students are proud to be doing original research and sharing the results with the public. They have been very creative in finding out about little-known individuals and organizations that illustrate the contributions of nineteenth-century African Americans to the city and the country.”
