Why Didn't I Know? 19th Century Conventions and the Long History of Black Organizing

This talk was given by Gabrielle Foreman and Jim Casey, co-editors of the first full-length book in 50 years to address the 19th-century Black Convention movement, the precursor to the NAACP, to the Penn State Alumni Association's Virtual Speaker Series. They'll talk about why so few people knew about this early, Black-led movement for Civil Rights. These two co-directors of the Colored Conventions Project will share how this award-winning project came to be housed at Penn State's new Center for Black Digital Research and will discuss the holiday they've resurrected, Douglass Day, which is now a yearly global transcribe-a-thon of Black historical records.