“All Aboard: Bishop Henry McNeal Turner and the 1893 National Negro Convention”

In August of 1893, African Methodist Episcopal (AME) church bishop, Henry McNeal Turner, issued a call to convene a black national convention. This in and of itself was not anything out of the ordinary because there had been black national conventions held since 1830. However, two things made this one special. First, it had been four years since the last national African American convention of any kind during that time, many of the rights blacks gained were nullified.