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Help us learn about the Black men & women who made the Colored Conventions possible.
Learn moreTranscribe Conventions has two activities. You can select a button that begins with "Transcribe" to help transcribe a page from a Colored Convention. Or you can select a button that begins with "Find the names" to help identify the names of Black men & women who participated in these historic meetings—with extra emphasis on the important but hard-to-find names of Black women!
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This work helps us learn about the longer history of Black political organizing!
douglassdayAbout Transcribe Colored Conventions
This project is working to rediscover the vast history of an early movement for civil rights in the United States and Canada.
Our team has spent the last decade collecting records about the Colored Conventions. The Colored Conventions were state and national meetings held by free and formerly enslaved African Americans to debate their collective struggles. We estimate that more than 10,000 delegates attended more than 600 Colored Conventions. At these meetings, delegates talked about voting rights, education, labor, business, and a whole lot more. The conventions were highly democratic spaces at a time when Black people were denied access to the voting booth or the jury box.
Black women played important roles in this historic movement, but they rarely show up in the thousands of surviving records. Over 98% of the currently identified delegates are men. With your help, we can identify the names that might be Black women. That info will help revive the memory of their fascinating lives, brave leadership, and contributions to our collective histories.
For more about the Colored Conventions and where the data from Douglass Day will eventually be available, go to coloredconventions.org