Turner and the Conventions

Bishop Turner was extremely active during the Reconstruction and post-Reconstruction Colored Conventions movement. Many of the proceedings for those conventions are hard to find, but traces and references to his presence and work survive in newspaper articles and petitions. In 1893, he called a National Colored Convention in Cincinnati, Ohio. He also attended many state Colored Conventions in Georgia and others in the region including in Alabama and Tennessee. That Bishop Turner had the popularity and means to call a National Colored Convention outside of his state of residence in Georgia, speaks to the stature he had in the Black community on a national scale.

This Storymap charts Bishop Turner’s Colored Conventions attendance.