One of the most rewarding results of tracing Mary Ann Shadd Cary\u2019s life through the Convention Movement is our new sense of the richness and importance of Black political organizing in Canada. Too often, we implicitly frame Black activism in the nineteenth century as an exclusively American phenomenon, and this, too, goes for existing work on the Colored Conventions. However, Shadd Cary and many of her peers saw the future of Black nationalist politics and identities as being grown on Canadian soil. Others envisioned Canada as a place from which to orchestrate and execute important political movements and even violent uprisings in America, from a distance. Rinaldo Walcott describes Shadd Cary as \u201ca figure of the in-between,\u201d whose presence between nations, intersecting identities, and movements, reveals the permeability of borders and that made possible her claims to a Black diasporic belonging unencumbered by the racial and spatial anxieties of nationalist narratives [1]. Through Shadd Cary\u2019s engagement with Canadian organizing, we can make the case that the Colored Conventions were, in fact, a diasporic movement and emigration a centrally important mission.<\/p>\n\n\n\n
\u00bb In the Storymap below, use the left and right side arrows to navigate between pages. Be sure to scroll down each page to read details about each convention and location. <\/p>\n\n\n\n\n