MUSIC IN THE COLORED CONVENTIONS
WHO WAS SINGING?
Convention delegates and audience members were diverse; self-liberated persons, those who were born free, and freedom seekers. Singing was a communal, democratic, and unifying activity that expressed the political struggle for liberty: the destruction of slavery and the push for 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 in Colored Conventions and other musical artists in the nineteenth century, who continued the Black musical traditions that animated movements for Black equality and liberty. Here you will find biographies of the AME Church and Afro-Protestant Leadership, Colored Convention delegates and attendees, the Fisk Jubilee Singers, Black Civil War soldiers, and Black choirs.
CREDITS
Written by Melissa Benbow.