Black Women’s Economic Power: Visualizing Domestic Spaces in the 1830s
This exhibit highlights the contributions of local boarding house hosts and hostesses who provided comfortable spaces for delegates of the 1830s conventions and helped turn their community into a rich hub for activism. It also acknowledges the obscured efforts of women whose livelihoods aided in fostering Black economic mobility—one of the aims of the conventions.
Between 1830 and 1835, five conventions were held in the Philadelphia neighborhood now known as Washington Square West. The role of businesses that supported and promoted the Colored Conventions are often ignored. As we recover and make Colored Conventions materials accessible, we must make sure that we do not disregard the lives of regular individuals who made these conventions and other political meetings possible. The first five Philadelphia conventions tackled and debated collective uplift. Although women are largely unacknowledged in the conventional reading of the minutes, as this exhibit shows, women’s work was crucial in securing the future delegates worked so hard to achieve.
Credits
Curator: Samantha de Vera
Edited by P. Gabrielle Foreman and Sarah Patterson.
Further Acknowledgements: Denise Burgher for her suggestions and improvements; Charline Jao, Cornell University, for contributing to the project (see “Daughters and Gentlewomen: The Later Generation“); and Caleb Trotter for technical assistance.
Cover Image A cartoon of a well-off African American couple in Philadelphia by E.W. Clay. Courtesy of Library Company of Philadelphia.
Additional contributions: Exhibit migration 2025-2026 by Yuchen Xiong, Boston College; Eunice Toh, Penn State University; and Lauren Cooper, Penn State University.
Special thanks to Gale, a Cengage Company, and Accessible Archives Inc.® for granting permission for the use of the materials from 19th Century U.S. Newspapers and African American Newspapers: The 19th Century.
