Convention delegates and audience members represented the diversity of the Black population nationally: there were those who were brought to the U.S. by force, those who had been in the United States for several generations, those who were born free, those who purchased their freedom, and those who escaped enslavement and were called fugitives under the law. Singing was a communal, democratic, and unifying activity that expressed the political struggle for liberty: the abolition of slavery, and the attainment and preservation of the human and civil rights of Black people.
William Howard Day, approx 1870, Black abolitionist, editor, educator and minister. guess at 1870 as picture date Source, http://www.witf.org/arts-culture/2015/02/william-howard-day-unsung-abolitionist.php
(October 1871) Ella Sheppard, singer, pianist, arranger of Negro Spirituals, and matriarch of the original Fisk Jubilee Singers. Source: Fisk University Library, Special Collections
Frederick Douglass Portrait, 1855, Source: Frontispiece of Frederick Douglass, My Bondage and My Freedom: Part I- Life as a Slave, Part II- Life as a Freeman, with an introduction by James M’Cune Smith. New York and Auburn: Miller, Orton & Mulligan
This section will highlight the persons who sang during the conventions, and other Black musical artists who careers as musicians ran parallel to the convention movement. In the tabs you will find biographies of The AME Church and Afro-Protestant Leadership, The Convention Delegates and Attendees, The Fisk Jubilee Singers, Black Civil War Soldiers, and Black Choirs.