Friday, October 28 • 4–6pm
Dedication at 4pm
Followed by a block party with a DJ and food trucks
The Michael’s Org Courtyard Apts.
1021 S. 4th Street
Philadelphia
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The Colored Conventions Project and Mural Arts Philadelphia are excited to announce the dedication of “The Colored Conventions Movement and Beyond in Philadelphia” by artist Ernel Martinez. Senior Colored Conventions Project student leaders Brandi Locke and Denise Burgher stewarded this relationship from inception through completion with Director Gabrielle Foreman advising in collaboration with Mural Arts executive director Jane Golden and project manager Phil Asbury. This project is sponsored by the Mellon Foundation and the Penn State Center at Philadelphia.
ABOUT THE PROJECT
Thirty years before the Civil War dozens of African American Philidelphians gathered at Mother Bethel AME in response to a call by founding Bishop Richard Allen of Bethel AME to launch a national movement for Black civil rights, voting rights, education, abolition, and freedom from racial violence. Over the course of 70 years tens of thousands of African American men, women, and children engaged in political organizing, with Philadelphia hosting at least 8 conventions and generations of Pennsylvanian representing the state in conventions across the country. With this mural we honor and remember the movement’s Philadelphian origins and recognize activists today who are the legacy of the movement, especially those who call this city their home today.
MURAL LEGEND
The panels visually demonstrate the continuous struggle for freedom and rights which African Americans in Philadelphia have articulated, demanded and secured. These Black men and women, their movements and communities continue to carry on the work of the conventions over generations and into the future.
- William Still, when he wasn’t conducting for the Underground Railroad or working for the PA Society for the Abolition of Slavery, he attended conventions and his family ran a boarding house where delegates stayed.
- John Bathan Vashon, a barber, businessman, and abolitionist, was also a seaman aboard the U.S.S. Revenge and a delegate who paved the way for the 1867 Soldiers and Sailors National Convention in Philadelphia.
- Frances Ellen Watkins Harper, internationally renowned writer, traveling lecturer, and activist, attended and spoke at several conventions. She moved to Philadelphia in 1851 and lived with William Still, then in 1870 she moved to the Bella Vista neighborhood where she stayed until 1911; her historic home still stands there.
- William Whipper, who attended six Colored Conventions in Philadelphia, and was an abolitionist, businessman, and founder of many morality and reform societies.
- La Pierre House sits at the northwest corner of Sansom St., circa 1869, in this photo by photographer John Moran. This hotel welcomed African Americans and was advertised in Black newspapers for traveling delegates.
- Mary Ann Shadd Cary, educator, emigrationist, and one of the first Black women newspaper editors in North America, frequently stayed in Philadelphia to give public speeches and to fundraise for her newspaper and Black Canadian resettlers.
- This page is from the “Proceedings of the State Convention of the Colored Freemen of Pennsylvania” in 1841, which also named many Philadelphian delegates in attendance.
- Jabez Pitts Campbell was a Philadelphian, pastor at Mother Bethel, AME Bishop and editor for the Black newspaper the AME Christian Recorder.
- Frederick Douglass, famous writer and abolitionist, was president of the 1855 National Convention in Philadelphia and his newspaper was named the organ of the movement.
- Mother Bethel AME, the first African American denomination organized in the United States and home church of Bishop Richard Allen, who called delegates from across the region to come there for the first convention in 1830.
- This sketch of “The National Colored Convention in session at Washington, D.C. 1869” is one of the few printed drawings of a Colored Convention, and is unique because it features women and children participants in the pews.
The mural includes a second wall that commemorates Black political organizing and protests since the convention movement ended in 1900. This wall includes iconic moments from the Civil Rights Movement: the March to Selma from the Edmund Pettus Bridge in Montgomery, the 1963 March on Washington to #Black Lives Matter protests for Breonna Taylor, George Floyd and Walter Wallace — a young man who was killed in Philadelphia. At the center of this 21st century panel is Kendra Van de Water who co-founded with James Aye the Philadelphia-based youth activist group YEAH Philly. YEAH Philly focuses on elevating the experiences of young Black people pushing back against oppressive systems through economic opportunities, conflict resolution, peer mediation, and community investment.