Project:

Colored Conventions Project (https://coloredconventions.org/)

Project Directors & Members:

P.Gabrielle Foreman (https://www.pgabrielleforeman.com/), Penn State University

Jim Casey, (https://jim-casey.com/), Penn State Universiy

Other Project Members (https://coloredconventions.org/about/team/)

Keywords:

American History, Political Events(1830~1890s), Black Movement, Open Education, Record Archiving

Project Reviewer:

Michael C. Lee (The Graduate Center, CUNY)

Project Overview

The Colored Conventions Project (CCP) rediscovers relatively underrepresented political events in American history.  The CCP shows the long journey of American Black communities fighting for educational, labor, and legal justice for seven decades (1830~1890s) through which the project revives the Black political movement and its political implications regarding civil and human rights.

CCP is a website that aims to document and bring the collective organizing efforts of 19th-century Black communities to digital life. The site has been created and operated by diverse researchers – scholars, graduate students, librarians, and undergraduates -, and functions as a research hub for “a new generation of researchers, students, and community scholars.” Plus, CCP provides the public with opportunities to engage with the invaluable resource for understanding the history of Black collective organizing. In this sense, the project is also a cultural hub for the public.

CCP was launched and cultivated at the University of Delaware from 2012 to 2020. The project has received funding from several grantors – Andrew W. Mellon Foundation, National Endowment for the Humanities (NEH), Wallace Posner Family Foundation, Delaware Humanities Forum, and the University of Delaware grants. Also, the project maintains its fruitful contributions to scholarly publications, conference presentations, workshops, and community presentations. Moreover, by providing teaching materials and collecting records from the public, CCP has actively expanded its audience scope.

 Project Review

The CCP site features general information, digital exhibits of scholarship research using Colored Convention records, teaching materials for educators, and CCP newsletters. In addition, their Digital Records site (https://coloredconventions.org/about-records/) provides audiences with many primary sources from the convention movement, including minutes, articles, speeches, letters, pictures, and images.

The website is built on the WordPress platform and uses digital archives technologies to collect, organize, and store historical documents. On the <Exhibits> page, the archives include digitized documents, pictures, images, and graphs explaining the influence of various factors on the Colored Conventions movement. Each exhibit thoroughly explains the events, contexts, people, and its meaning to the whole movement. Also, each page links the related digital records and other relevant exhibit pages; thanks to this, the audience can easily navigate the site and follow their interests through the links.

CCP is a good example of a DH project, as it has certain features:

1. Epistemic Justice & Sovereignty:

The CCP clarifies the principles and goals of its work, that is, rediscovering and understanding devalued and underrepresented Black history and voices. The project highlights the diverse leaders and places involved in the convention movement. This includes well-known figures such as writers, church leaders, editors, and entrepreneurs, as well as those whose contributions to this collective action have been overlooked even by their American Black communities. Especially by affirming “Black women’s centrality to nineteenth-century Black organizing,” the project reshapes epistemic sovereignty: (a) what we need to know, (b) who must be included, and (c) how it should be done.

2. Open online access & Interplay:

All the materials, information, and digital records they use for the project are open to the audience on the website. Plus, CCP encourages users to actively interact with and participate in the project by accepting newly found records that have not yet been featured. (The website specifies the records needed: https://coloredconventions.org/about-conventions/submit-records/)  In addition, each section on the website is closely related, and users can find the contents they need easily as they navigate the site.

3. Pedagogical approaches:

The project offers teaching guides through which users can freely use and teach the materials in K-12/AP/College classes. Each chapter has a separate curriculum for K-12 and AP/College classes using diverse approaches to audiences – 1) Resources, Methods, Questions, and Standards for K-12, and 2) Questions, Class Activity, and Example for AP/College Classes. With this attempt to offer educational support, the CCP links its ongoing work to the present.

One of the great accomplishments of this project is the wealth of data collected through the project website and the possibility of active utilization in various ways, including academic research, educational resources, cultural-digital projects, and even social movements.

What I also noticed from CCP is its localness, narrowing down its research interests and subject. When embracing the localness of a certain community, there could be the danger of sacrificing its interconnectivity with others. However, through the open inquiry, research, and interaction structure, CCP allows users to engage with the project and other participants through the website and the curriculum. By bringing the hidden historical events to today and contributing to an increased understanding of Black communities’ political movements in American history, CCP speaks for everyone regarding ongoing issues, such as the Black Lives Matter movement, discriminatory policing, and structural racism in America’s political landscape.