The Colored Conventions and African American Rhetoric in the 19th Century
Workshop Leaders
Andre E. Johnson, University of Memphis
Denise Burgher, University of Delaware
Foner and Branham in their important anthology of African American speeches Lift Every Voice, wrote that oratory “remains a pervasive and important practice in American political and social life.” They argued that “oratory is still the basic tool of organizing, the crown of ceremonial observance, the currency of advocacy and deliberation.” For them, oratory helps to identify “group interests” and helps those groups “mobilize for action.” It is through oratory; they argued that “profound differences may be understood” and “grievances and dissent may be brought face-to-face with audiences responsible for injustice” (1).
This is no truer than within the African American rhetorical tradition. Since before the founding of this country, African Americans’ use of oratory and public address has been paramount to their survival in a country that has consistently deemed them second-class citizens. Through powerful sermons, speeches, and spoken word performances, African Americans have not only been able to comfort and encourage their own communities but also cast a vision of what America could become.
This workshop seeks to highlight this tradition by paying particular focus on the Colored Conventions of the 19th century. As the Colored Convention website reminds us, the “Colored Conventions reflect the long history of collective Black mobilization before, during, and long after the end of the Civil War. As empowering hubs of Black political thought and organizing, the Colored Conventions provided space for informed public audiences to develop political plans and community-building projects, celebrate racial unity and protest state violence, and work tirelessly to secure Black people’s civil rights.” As we meet at Penn State University for this RSA Institute, we are reminded of Richard Allen, the co-founder of the AME Church; in his address at the very first convention held in Philadelphia in 1830, one of the main reasons they met was to “obviate these evils.” It is this understanding of the Colored Conventions that makes them prime sites for the study of rhetoric.
By examining the speeches of the convention, participants will uncover the rhetorical artistry and dynamism that made up Black nineteenth-century America. In studying the conventions, participants will unpack how delegates constructed and refuted arguments, how they debated with each other, and how they went about establishing what we now understand as the Black rhetorical tradition. We will devote most of the workshop to reading and discussing common scholarship and primary texts, with a focus on the National conventions. In our final session, we will workshop projects in process and consider opportunities for future collaborations.
Note: This workshop has limited space for remote participation.
Andre E. Johnson, Ph.D. is an Associate Professor of Communication, the Scholar in Residence at the Benjamin L. Hooks Institute for Social Change at the University of Memphis. He is also the Andrew Mellon Just Transformation Fellow at the Center for Black Digital Research at Penn State University. Grounded in a transdisciplinary understanding of scholarship, Dr. Johnson studies the intersection of rhetoric, race, and religion and teaches classes in African American public address, rhetorical criticism, religious communication, prophetic rhetoric, homiletics, and rhetoric of social movements. He is the author of the award-winning No Future in this Country: The Prophetic Pessimism of Bishop Henry McNeal Turner and the forthcoming The Speeches of Bishop Henry McNeal Turner: The Press, the Platform, and the Pulpit (2023).
Denise Burgher is a doctoral candidate in the Department of English with a MA in African American Studies from UCLA and a BA in American studies with a minor in Women’s Studies from Trinity College, in Hartford, CT. She is co-director of the global transcribe-a-thon, Douglass Day, co-founder of the Black digital humanities Taught by Literature and is the long-term director of community engagement for the Colored Convention Project where she directs the curriculum committee. Her essay “Recovering Black Women in the Colored Conventions Movement” Legacy: A Journal of American Women Writers, 36.2, 2019, 256-262 is widely taught. It is the only essay, for example, written by a graduate student to be assigned in this year’s History of the Book in America Seminar at the American Antiquarian Society (you can find that draft syllabus here). Her publications also include a widely adopted digital essay/exhibit “Before Garvey! Henry McNeal Turner and the Fight for Reparations, Emigration and Black Rights,” which she co-authored and curated. Her work has a visibility that is particularly rare for graduate students and early career scholars. In addition to invited talks and conference presentations, she has been asked to give keynote addresses at conferences at institutions such as Washington University, University of Pennsylvania, University of North Carolina, Greensboro, and UC Irvine, among others. Denise is also a stand-out teacher and mentor with a particular commitment to first-generation, immigrant, and students of color. She consistently receives evaluations that place her among or above the most highly regarded professors in the department in which she’s teaching and has been the teacher of record for both upper- and lower-division classes at several colleges and universities. Her dissertation is entitled Redeeming the Banished Spirit: Naming the Theological Praxis in Nineteenth Century Black Women’s Writing.