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To start the program, we take a broad look at Syracuse s Black history with Syracuse University African American Studies Professor, Dr. Joan Bryant. Dr. Bryant is the custodian of the Black History Preservation Project, a virtual Black history museum that includes photos, documents, and interviews from the region.
Additionally, WAER’s Chris Bolt explores the connections and history between Syracuse’s Black community and the city s music scene. We also hear from organizations that are making a difference in the fight for equity, both in the past and in the present.
Thank you to the Black History Preservation Project for allowing use of sound from interviews it conducted in this episode.
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Bringing seven decades of nineteenth-century Black organizing to digital life is the mission of the Colored Conventions Project (CCP). Co-founded by faculty director P. Gabrielle Foreman, the CCP is a scholarly and community research project focused on digitally preserving Black political activism from the 1830s to 1890s, some of which occurred in this region, near Syracuse University and across Central New York.
P. Gabrielle Foreman
Over the course of these seven decades, Black men and women traveled to attend meetings advertised as “Colored Conventions.” These political gatherings offered opportunities for free-born and formerly enslaved African Americans to organize and strategize for racial justice. Leaders of the abolitionist movement, including Frederick Douglass, took part in some of these assemblies in Central New York and beyond. For instance, the National Convention of Colored Men, held in October 1864, convened leading abolitionists, including Dougla