with the honorable Joseph Hopkinson, member of Congress from this city, and likewise to inform him of the sentiments of this meeting, and that the following named persons constitute the committee, and that they have power to call a general meeting, when they, in their judgment, may deem it proper:  Rev. Absalom Jones, Rev. Richard Allen, James Forten, Robert Douglass, Francis Perkins, Rev. John Gloucester, Robert Gorden, James Johnson, Quamoney Clarkson, John Summersett, Randall Shepherd.

    JAMES FORTEN, Chairman.

    RUSSELL PARROTT, Secretary.

In 1827, in New York, was begun the publication of Freedom’s Journal, the first Negro newspaper in the United States.  The editors were John B. Russwurm and Samuel E. Cornish.  Russwurm was a recent graduate of Bowdoin College and was later to become better known as the governor of Maryland in Africa.  By 1830 feeling was acute throughout the country, especially in Ohio and Kentucky, and on the part of Negro men had developed the conviction that the time had come for national organization and protest.

In the spring of 1830 Hezekiah Grice of Baltimore, who had become personally acquainted with the work of Lundy and Garrison, sent a letter to prominent Negroes in the free states bringing in question the general policy of emigration.[1] received no immediate response, but in August he received from Richard Allen an urgent request to come at once to Philadelphia.  Arriving there he found in session a meeting discussing the wisdom of emigration to Canada, and Allen “showed him a printed circular signed by Peter Williams, rector of St. Philip’s Church, New York, Peter Vogelsang and Thomas L. Jennings of the same place, approving the plan of convention."[2] The Philadelphians now issued a call for a convention of the Negroes of the United States to be held in their city September 15, 1830.

[Footnote 1:  John W. Cromwell:  The Early Negro Convention Movement.]

[Footnote 2:  Ibid., 5.]

This September meeting was held in Bethel A.M.E.  Church.  Bishop Richard Allen was chosen president, Dr. Belfast Burton of Philadelphia and Austin Steward of Rochester vice-presidents, Junius C. Morell of Pennsylvania secretary, and Robert Cowley of Maryland assistant secretary.  There were accredited delegates from seven states.  While this meeting might really be considered the first national convention of Negroes in the United States (aside of course from the gathering of denominational bodies), it seems to have been regarded merely as preliminary to a still more formal assembling, for the minutes of the next year were printed as the “Minutes and Proceedings of the First Annual Convention of the People of Color, held by adjournments in the city of Philadelphia, from the sixth to the eleventh of June, inclusive, 1831.  Philadelphia, 1831.”  The meetings of this convention were held in the Wesleyan Church on Lombard Street.