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In this episode, Paul Fess (LaGuardia Community College) explores the connections between Martin Delany and the songwriters Joshua McCarter Simpson and Stephen Foster. Embedded in the mix of Delany's novel Blake; or, The Huts of America are several songs that invoke some of Foster's most familiar melodies, such as those associated with the songs “Oh! Susanna” and “Uncle Ned.” Digging through the archive, scholars have discovered these parodies to be the work of the relatively obscure Joshua McCarter Simpson, an activist in Ohio's Colored Conventions movement, a conductor on the underground railroad, and, with the publication of his Original Anti-Slavery Songs, the first African American to produce a songbook of original compositions. This episode examines how Delany and Simpson strategically repurpose Foster's sentimentalism-infused melodies, navigating the racial complexities of antebellum culture. While Foster aimed to soften the degrading aspects of minstrelsy, Delany and Simpson use these melodies to create a Black abolitionist discourse, challenging sentimental aesthetics. The novel's characters, like Simpson's lyrics, redefine the nostalgic longing in Foster's songs, emphasizing the harsh realities of enslaved life. Delany and Simpson employ music as a tool for political activism, crafting a counterhegemonic discourse and fostering a sense of collective resistance against enslavement. Post-production support provided by DeLisa D. Hawkes (University of Tennessee, Knoxville). Transcript available at https://bit.ly/S07E03Transcript. Additional resources available at https://bit.ly/S07E03Resources.
P. Gabrielle Foreman, PhD, is an award-winning professor of English, African American Studies, and History. A leader in the field of Black digital and public history, Dr. Foreman has been recognized for co-creating projects that build community and institutions while addressing pipeline and equity issues. As a teacher, scholar, and mentor, Dr. Foreman is committed […]
We're re-running some favorite recent episodes this week, and will be back with brand new episodes very soon! It's December 4th. Jody, Niki, and Kellie discuss the Colored Conventions movement, which provided and intellectual and political space for Black leaders in the years before, during, and after the Civil War. Check out the Colored Conventions database at coloredconventions.org Sign up for our newsletter! Find out more at thisdaypod.com And don't forget about Oprahdemics, hosted by Kellie, out now from Radiotopia. This Day In Esoteric Political History is a proud member of Radiotopia from PRX. Your support helps foster independent, artist-owned podcasts and award-winning stories. If you want to support the show directly, you can do so on our website: ThisDayPod.com Get in touch if you have any ideas for future topics, or just want to say hello. Our website is thisdaypod.com Follow us on social @thisdaypod Our team: Jacob Feldman, Researcher/Producer; Brittani Brown, Producer; Khawla Nakua, Transcripts; music by Teen Daze and Blue Dot Sessions; Audrey Mardavich is our Executive Producer at Radiotopia
*** The Radiotopia fundraiser is happening right now! Support this show by becoming a member today: https://on.prx.org/3Ehr3B6 *** It's December 4th. Jody, Niki, and Kellie discuss the Colored Conventions movement, which provided and intellectual and political space for Black leaders in the years before, during, and after the Civil War. Check out the Colored Conventions database at coloredconventions.org Sign up for our newsletter! Find out more at thisdaypod.com And don't forget about Oprahdemics, hosted by Kellie, out now from Radiotopia. This Day In Esoteric Political History is a proud member of Radiotopia from PRX. Your support helps foster independent, artist-owned podcasts and award-winning stories. If you want to support the show directly, you can do so on our website: ThisDayPod.com Get in touch if you have any ideas for future topics, or just want to say hello. Our website is thisdaypod.com Follow us on social @thisdaypod Our team: Jacob Feldman, Researcher/Producer; Brittani Brown, Producer; Khawla Nakua, Transcripts; music by Teen Daze and Blue Dot Sessions; Audrey Mardavich is our Executive Producer at Radiotopia
*** The Radiotopia fundraiser is happening right now! Support this show by becoming a member today: https://on.prx.org/3Ehr3B6 *** It's December 3rd. Jody, Niki, and Kellie discuss the Colored Conventions movement, and how Black leaders found a space for agency and progress before, during, and in the aftermath of the Civil War. Sign up for our newsletter! Find out more at thisdaypod.com And don't forget about Oprahdemics, hosted by Kellie, out now from Radiotopia. This Day In Esoteric Political History is a proud member of Radiotopia from PRX. Your support helps foster independent, artist-owned podcasts and award-winning stories. If you want to support the show directly, you can do so on our website: ThisDayPod.com Get in touch if you have any ideas for future topics, or just want to say hello. Our website is thisdaypod.com Follow us on social @thisdaypod Our team: Jacob Feldman, Researcher/Producer; Brittani Brown, Producer; Khawla Nakua, Transcripts; music by Teen Daze and Blue Dot Sessions; Audrey Mardavich is our Executive Producer at Radiotopia
In this special episode, Professors Kabria Baumgartner and Jim Casey are joined by John H. Muller and I to talk about the colored conventions of the 19th century, and Rhode Island's place in those events. Here is the link to their ongoing project: https://coloredconventions.org/ If you like what you hear please share and subscribe! --- Support this podcast: https://anchor.fm/rihpod/support
P. Gabrielle Foreman and Jim Casey's edited volume The Colored Conventions Movement: Black Organizing in the Nineteenth Century (UNC Press, 2021) is the first to focus on the Colored Conventions movement, the nineteenth century's longest campaign for Black civil rights. Well before the founding of the NAACP and other twentieth-century pillars of the civil rights movement, tens of thousands of Black leaders organized state and national conventions across North America. Over seven decades, they advocated for social justice and against slavery, protesting state-sanctioned and mob violence while demanding voting, legal, labor, and educational rights. While Black-led activism in this era is often overshadowed by the attention paid to the abolition movement, this collection centers Black activist networks, influence, and institution building. Collectively, these essays highlight the vital role of the Colored Conventions in the lives of thousands of early organizers, including many of the most famous writers, ministers, politicians, and entrepreneurs in the long history of Black activism. Explore accompanying exhibits and historical records at The Colored Conventions Project website. Adam McNeil is a Ph.D. Candidate in History at Rutgers, the State University of New Jersey. Learn more about your ad choices. Visit megaphone.fm/adchoices Support our show by becoming a premium member! https://newbooksnetwork.supportingcast.fm/african-american-studies
P. Gabrielle Foreman and Jim Casey's edited volume The Colored Conventions Movement: Black Organizing in the Nineteenth Century (UNC Press, 2021) is the first to focus on the Colored Conventions movement, the nineteenth century's longest campaign for Black civil rights. Well before the founding of the NAACP and other twentieth-century pillars of the civil rights movement, tens of thousands of Black leaders organized state and national conventions across North America. Over seven decades, they advocated for social justice and against slavery, protesting state-sanctioned and mob violence while demanding voting, legal, labor, and educational rights. While Black-led activism in this era is often overshadowed by the attention paid to the abolition movement, this collection centers Black activist networks, influence, and institution building. Collectively, these essays highlight the vital role of the Colored Conventions in the lives of thousands of early organizers, including many of the most famous writers, ministers, politicians, and entrepreneurs in the long history of Black activism. Explore accompanying exhibits and historical records at The Colored Conventions Project website. Adam McNeil is a Ph.D. Candidate in History at Rutgers, the State University of New Jersey. Learn more about your ad choices. Visit megaphone.fm/adchoices
P. Gabrielle Foreman and Jim Casey's edited volume The Colored Conventions Movement: Black Organizing in the Nineteenth Century (UNC Press, 2021) is the first to focus on the Colored Conventions movement, the nineteenth century's longest campaign for Black civil rights. Well before the founding of the NAACP and other twentieth-century pillars of the civil rights movement, tens of thousands of Black leaders organized state and national conventions across North America. Over seven decades, they advocated for social justice and against slavery, protesting state-sanctioned and mob violence while demanding voting, legal, labor, and educational rights. While Black-led activism in this era is often overshadowed by the attention paid to the abolition movement, this collection centers Black activist networks, influence, and institution building. Collectively, these essays highlight the vital role of the Colored Conventions in the lives of thousands of early organizers, including many of the most famous writers, ministers, politicians, and entrepreneurs in the long history of Black activism. Explore accompanying exhibits and historical records at The Colored Conventions Project website. Adam McNeil is a Ph.D. Candidate in History at Rutgers, the State University of New Jersey.
P. Gabrielle Foreman and Jim Casey's edited volume The Colored Conventions Movement: Black Organizing in the Nineteenth Century (UNC Press, 2021) is the first to focus on the Colored Conventions movement, the nineteenth century's longest campaign for Black civil rights. Well before the founding of the NAACP and other twentieth-century pillars of the civil rights movement, tens of thousands of Black leaders organized state and national conventions across North America. Over seven decades, they advocated for social justice and against slavery, protesting state-sanctioned and mob violence while demanding voting, legal, labor, and educational rights. While Black-led activism in this era is often overshadowed by the attention paid to the abolition movement, this collection centers Black activist networks, influence, and institution building. Collectively, these essays highlight the vital role of the Colored Conventions in the lives of thousands of early organizers, including many of the most famous writers, ministers, politicians, and entrepreneurs in the long history of Black activism. Explore accompanying exhibits and historical records at The Colored Conventions Project website. Adam McNeil is a Ph.D. Candidate in History at Rutgers, the State University of New Jersey. Learn more about your ad choices. Visit megaphone.fm/adchoices Support our show by becoming a premium member! https://newbooksnetwork.supportingcast.fm/history
P. Gabrielle Foreman and Jim Casey's edited volume The Colored Conventions Movement: Black Organizing in the Nineteenth Century (UNC Press, 2021) is the first to focus on the Colored Conventions movement, the nineteenth century's longest campaign for Black civil rights. Well before the founding of the NAACP and other twentieth-century pillars of the civil rights movement, tens of thousands of Black leaders organized state and national conventions across North America. Over seven decades, they advocated for social justice and against slavery, protesting state-sanctioned and mob violence while demanding voting, legal, labor, and educational rights. While Black-led activism in this era is often overshadowed by the attention paid to the abolition movement, this collection centers Black activist networks, influence, and institution building. Collectively, these essays highlight the vital role of the Colored Conventions in the lives of thousands of early organizers, including many of the most famous writers, ministers, politicians, and entrepreneurs in the long history of Black activism. Explore accompanying exhibits and historical records at The Colored Conventions Project website. Adam McNeil is a Ph.D. Candidate in History at Rutgers, the State University of New Jersey. Learn more about your ad choices. Visit megaphone.fm/adchoices Support our show by becoming a premium member! https://newbooksnetwork.supportingcast.fm/american-studies
P. Gabrielle Foreman and Jim Casey's edited volume The Colored Conventions Movement: Black Organizing in the Nineteenth Century (UNC Press, 2021) is the first to focus on the Colored Conventions movement, the nineteenth century's longest campaign for Black civil rights. Well before the founding of the NAACP and other twentieth-century pillars of the civil rights movement, tens of thousands of Black leaders organized state and national conventions across North America. Over seven decades, they advocated for social justice and against slavery, protesting state-sanctioned and mob violence while demanding voting, legal, labor, and educational rights. While Black-led activism in this era is often overshadowed by the attention paid to the abolition movement, this collection centers Black activist networks, influence, and institution building. Collectively, these essays highlight the vital role of the Colored Conventions in the lives of thousands of early organizers, including many of the most famous writers, ministers, politicians, and entrepreneurs in the long history of Black activism. Explore accompanying exhibits and historical records at The Colored Conventions Project website. Adam McNeil is a Ph.D. Candidate in History at Rutgers, the State University of New Jersey. Learn more about your ad choices. Visit megaphone.fm/adchoices Support our show by becoming a premium member! https://newbooksnetwork.supportingcast.fm/new-books-network
For nearly 100 years, African Americans gathered in cities across the United States to participate in state and national-level political meetings that went far beyond slavery and conventional racial narratives to discuss education, labor, and what true equal citizenship would look like. This rich history went largely unnoticed for decades until P. Gabrielle Foreman and her colleagues formed the Colored Conventions Project to collect and categorize convention records and associated documents.Foreman and Colored Conventions Project Co-Director Jim Casey, both professors at Penn State, join us this week to explain what the Colored Conventions were and how they fit into the larger arc of the Black freedom struggle and the ongoing effort to make the United States a fully-inclusive multiracial democracy. In addition to co-leading the Colored Conventions Project, Foreman and Casey are also co-authors ofThe Colored Conventions Movement: Black Organizing in the Nineteenth Century, released in March 2021 by the University of North Carolina Press.Additional InformationThe Colored Conventions Movement: Black Organizing in the Nineteenth CenturyThe Colored Conventions ProjectP. Gabrielle Foreman on TwitterRelated EpisodesThe long road to a multiracial democracy
Visit: https://coloredconventions.org/about/book/
In the years between the American Revolution and the U.S. Civil War, as legal and cultural understandings of citizenship became more racially restrictive, black writers articulated an expansive, practice-based theory of citizenship. Grounded in political participation, mutual aid, critique and revolution, and the myriad daily interactions between people living in the same spaces, citizenship, they argued, is not defined by who one is but, rather, by what one does. In The Practice of Citizenship, Derrick R. Spires examines the parallel development of early black print culture and legal and cultural understandings of U.S. citizenship, beginning in 1787, with the framing of the federal Constitution and the founding of the Free African Society by Absalom Jones and Richard Allen, and ending in 1861, with the onset of the Civil War. Between these two points he recovers understudied figures such as William J. Wilson, whose 1859 "Afric-American Picture Gallery" appeared in seven installments in The Anglo-African Magazine, and the physician, abolitionist, and essayist James McCune Smith. He places texts such as the proceedings of black state conventions alongside considerations of canonical figures such as Frances Ellen Watkins Harper and Frederick Douglass. Dr. Derrick R. Spires is Associate Professor of Literatures in English at Cornell University. He specializes in early African American and American print culture, citizenship studies, and African American intellectual history. His first book, The Practice of Citizenship: Black Politics and Print Culture in the Early United States (University of Pennsylvania Press, 2019), won the MLA Prize for First Book and the Bibliographical Society/St. Louis Mercantile Library Prize. His work appears or is forthcoming in African American Review, American Literary History, and edited collections on early African American print culture, and the Colored Conventions movement. Dr. Spires was an Albert M. Greenfield Foundation Fellow in African American History at the Library Company in 2008. This chat originally aired at 7:00 p.m. Thursday, February 25, 2021.
In American history most often told, the vitality of Black activism has been obscured in favor of celebrating white-lead movements. In the 19th century, an enormous network of African American activists created a series of state and national political meetings known as the Colored Conventions Movement (https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Colored_Conventions_Movement). The Colored Conventions Project (http://coloredconventions.org) (CCP) is a Black digital humanities initiative dedicated to identifying, collecting, and curating all of the documents produced by the Colored Conventions Movement. In this episode, two of the CCP’s cofounders and co-directors, Jim Casey (https://twitter.com/jimccasey1) and Gabrielle Foreman (https://twitter.com/profgabrielle) are joined by Project Fellow Denise Burgher (https://www.english.udel.edu/people/dburgher) to discuss how the Project mirrors the energy and collective commitments of the Conventions themselves, how to see data as a form of protest, and creating an a set of organizational principles. Museum Archipelago is a tiny show guiding you through the rocky landscape of museums. Subscribe to the podcast via Apple Podcasts (https://itunes.apple.com/us/podcast/museum-archipelago/id1182755184), Google Podcasts (https://www.google.com/podcasts?feed=aHR0cHM6Ly93d3cubXVzZXVtYXJjaGlwZWxhZ28uY29tL3Jzcw==), Overcast (https://overcast.fm/itunes1182755184/museum-archipelago), or Spotify (https://open.spotify.com/show/5ImpDQJqEypxGNslnImXZE) to never miss an epsiode. Club Archipelago
Most people’s image of the American frontier does not conjure anything relating to people of African descent. But, as Anna-Lisa Cox’s points out in her new book The Bone and Sinew of the Land: America’s Forgotten Black Pioneers and the Struggle for Equality (PublicAffairs, 2018), it should. Dr. Cox uncovers not only the presence of black life in the Northwest Territory states of Illinois, Indiana, Michigan, Ohio, and Wisconsin, but also the communities and institutions they built as they strived for equality in a constantly shifting governmental terrain. Their pursuit of freedom coincided with the Abolitionist and Colored Conventions movements that voiced the aspirations of blacks. Dr. Cox weaves an intricate story of black freedom and the triumphs and pitfalls African Americans faced prior to the Civil War. Adam McNeil is a PhD student in History, African American Public Humanities Initiative and Colored Conventions Project Fellow at the University of Delaware. He can be reached on Twitter @CulturedModesty. Learn more about your ad choices. Visit megaphone.fm/adchoices
Most people's image of the American frontier does not conjure anything relating to people of African descent. But, as Anna-Lisa Cox's points out in her new book The Bone and Sinew of the Land: America's Forgotten Black Pioneers and the Struggle for Equality (PublicAffairs, 2018), it should. Dr. Cox uncovers not only the presence of black life in the Northwest Territory states of Illinois, Indiana, Michigan, Ohio, and Wisconsin, but also the communities and institutions they built as they strived for equality in a constantly shifting governmental terrain. Their pursuit of freedom coincided with the Abolitionist and Colored Conventions movements that voiced the aspirations of blacks. Dr. Cox weaves an intricate story of black freedom and the triumphs and pitfalls African Americans faced prior to the Civil War. Adam McNeil is a PhD student in History, African American Public Humanities Initiative and Colored Conventions Project Fellow at the University of Delaware. He can be reached on Twitter @CulturedModesty. Learn more about your ad choices. Visit megaphone.fm/adchoices Support our show by becoming a premium member! https://newbooksnetwork.supportingcast.fm/african-american-studies
Most people’s image of the American frontier does not conjure anything relating to people of African descent. But, as Anna-Lisa Cox’s points out in her new book The Bone and Sinew of the Land: America’s Forgotten Black Pioneers and the Struggle for Equality (PublicAffairs, 2018), it should. Dr. Cox uncovers not only the presence of black life in the Northwest Territory states of Illinois, Indiana, Michigan, Ohio, and Wisconsin, but also the communities and institutions they built as they strived for equality in a constantly shifting governmental terrain. Their pursuit of freedom coincided with the Abolitionist and Colored Conventions movements that voiced the aspirations of blacks. Dr. Cox weaves an intricate story of black freedom and the triumphs and pitfalls African Americans faced prior to the Civil War. Adam McNeil is a PhD student in History, African American Public Humanities Initiative and Colored Conventions Project Fellow at the University of Delaware. He can be reached on Twitter @CulturedModesty. Learn more about your ad choices. Visit megaphone.fm/adchoices
Most people’s image of the American frontier does not conjure anything relating to people of African descent. But, as Anna-Lisa Cox’s points out in her new book The Bone and Sinew of the Land: America’s Forgotten Black Pioneers and the Struggle for Equality (PublicAffairs, 2018), it should. Dr. Cox uncovers not only the presence of black life in the Northwest Territory states of Illinois, Indiana, Michigan, Ohio, and Wisconsin, but also the communities and institutions they built as they strived for equality in a constantly shifting governmental terrain. Their pursuit of freedom coincided with the Abolitionist and Colored Conventions movements that voiced the aspirations of blacks. Dr. Cox weaves an intricate story of black freedom and the triumphs and pitfalls African Americans faced prior to the Civil War. Adam McNeil is a PhD student in History, African American Public Humanities Initiative and Colored Conventions Project Fellow at the University of Delaware. He can be reached on Twitter @CulturedModesty. Learn more about your ad choices. Visit megaphone.fm/adchoices
Race is messy, literally and figuratively, as Professor Brigitte Fielder (Wisconsin-Madison) argues in her project on the non-linear transferability of race in nineteenth-century America. Shakespeare's Othello in America became a minstrel play warning against the dangers of miscegenation -- what does it mean with Othello's blackface makeup begrimes Desdemona? At the 2017 conference of the American Studies Association, PhDiva Xine chats with Brigitte about anti-racist mentoring, pedagogy, and colleagueship in higher ed and their discipline as a dynamic entity. How can we change a field of study and whose shoulders do we stand upon? (Shoutout to work in early Black studies, like the the Just Teach One-Early African American Print Project: http://jtoaa.common-place.org/ and the Colored Conventions project: coloredconventions.org/) More on Brigitte Fielder's work: http://www.brigfield.org/