The University of Delaware's Colored Conventions Project and the Delaware Historical Society will hold a symposium, "Colored Conventions in the Nineteenth Century and the Digital Age," on April 24-25.
The two-day symposium will begin on Friday, April 24, in the University of Delaware Library, in the Reading Room of the Morris Library.
On Saturday, April 25, the symposium will move to the Delaware Historical Society in downtown Wilmington at 505 N. Market Street.
UD faculty, staff, students and community members are encouraged to attend the free event. All those who plan to attend should register online at this website.
The symposium will focus on the history of conventions held by African Americans throughout the 19th century and across North America as a major unknown chapter of American history, as important as the Underground Railroad and the Anti-Slavery movement.
Eighteen nationally recognized scholars will present research on the conventions from a variety of disciplines, including English, history, religious studies, political science, anthropology and more. Abstracts of all of the papers and biographies of all of the participants are available online.
Activities April 25 will feature a poster session with undergraduate students from UD and Pennsylvania State University. An afternoon panel will include Delaware librarians, archivists and national leaders from the African Methodist Episcopal Church to explore and encourage partnerships and learning opportunities across diverse communities.
The Colored Conventions Project is a digital humanities website and research group based at UD that makes available unprecedented digitized collections of historical collections and research on the 19th-century colored conventions movement.
This program is partially funded by a grant from the Delaware Humanities Forum, a state program of the National Endowment for the Humanities.
UDaily article published 4/20/2015
