A Committee of the Whole

Abstract

Anti-slavery efforts have long served as the ostensible setting of early struggles for Black freedom and equal rights in the United States, including both the Colored Conventions and the early Black press. Recent collection, digitization, and data curation efforts, however, have made it possible to test that view using social network analysis. Based on this analysis, I show that early Black activist communities cannot be collapsed into the white-led abolitionist circuits. The Colored Conventions and the early Black press operated independently of the anti-slavery societies across six regionally distinct communities. A brief survey of these regional communities points to the wealth of research opportunities among robust, rediscovered, and reassembled archives into areas that speak to enduring questions of rights, resistance, and community-building. These inquiries simultaneously demonstrate the need for careful attention to Black data curation practices, especially with regard to inclusive approaches to scattered archives.