The National Negro Congress was established in 1936, (in memory of Bishop Richard Allen) to “secure the right of the negro people to be free from Jim Crowism, segregation, discrimination, lynching and mob violence” and to “promote the spirit of unity and cooperation between Negro and white people.”   

It was conceived as a national coalition of churches, labor and civil rights organizations that would coordinate protest action in the face of deteriorating economic conditions for blacks. 

The National Negro Congress was the culmination of the communist party’s Depression-era effort to unite black and white workers and intellectuals in the fight for racial justice and marked the apex of communist party prestige in African-American communities.

In 1815, Pennsylvania Abolition Society supported Richard Allen of the Bethel Baptist Church in their successful battle against takeover by the white Methodist leadership. Pennsylvania Abolition society was listed along with Allen in the certificate that formally transferred ownership of the property on which Bethel stood.

As early as 1688, four German Quakers in Germantown near Philadelphia protested slavery in a resolution that condemned the “traffic of Men-body.” 

By the 1770s, abolitionism was a full-scale movement in Pennsylvania.  Led by such Quaker activists as Anthony Benezet and John Woolman, many Philadelphia slaveholders of all denominations had begun bowing to pressure to emancipate their slaves on religious, moral and economic grounds.

Pennsylvania Abolition Society reorganized once again in 1787. While previously, artisans and shopkeepers had been the core of the organization, PAS broadened its membership to include prominent figures such as Benjamin Franklin and Benjamin Rush, who helped write the society’s new constitution.

PAS became more aggressive in its strategy of litigation on behalf of free blacks, and attempted to work more closely with the free African Society in a wide range of social, political and educational activity.

In 1787, PAS organized local efforts to support the crusade to ban the international slave trade and petitioned the Constitutional Convention to institute a ban.  

The following year, in collaboration with the Society of Friends, PAS successfully petitioned the Pennsylvania legislature to amend the gradual abolition act of 1780. As a result of the 2,000-signature petition and other lobbying efforts, the legislature prohibited the transportation of slave children and pregnant women out of Pennsylvania, as well as the building, outfitting or sending of slave ships from Philadelphia.  

The amended act imposed heavier fines for slave kidnapping, and made it illegal to separate slave families.

In September 1830, black representatives from seven states convened in Philadelphia at the Bethel AME church for the first Negro Convention. A civic meeting, it was the first on such a scale organized by African-American leaders.  

Allen presided over the meeting, which addressed both regional and national topics. The convention occurred after the 1826 and 1829 riots in Cincinnati, when whites had attacked blacks and destroyed their businesses.  

After the 1829 rioting, 1,200 blacks left the city to go to Canada. As a result, the Negro Convention addressed organizing aid to such settlements in Canada, among other issues.  

The 1830 meeting was the beginning of an organizational effort known as the Negro Convention Movement, part of 19th century institution building in the black community. 

Conventions were held regularly on a national level.

Paul A. Ransom is a resident of Valdosta.