Lucien Holness is a Ph.D. candidate at the University of Maryland-College Park. His research interests include African American and Atlantic history.
During the antebellum period, when Philadelphia was home to one the North’s largest free African American communities, the city’s Black leaders launched the national Colored Convention movement to address the hostility, discrimination, exclusion, and violence against African Americans by whites in northern cities. The national Colored Conventions held from 1830 to 1864 brought together ...
During the American Civil War (1861-65), Philadelphians raised eleven regiments of the United States Colored Troops (USCT). This division of the United States Army, consisting of Black soldiers led by white officers, provided much-needed manpower for federal forces in the final two years of the war. When the Civil War began, many African Americans across ...
Connecting the Past with the Present, Building Community, Creating a Legacy