We Are American Citizens

A reexamination of the role of the antebellum Colored Conventions that redefines them as part of the Long Civil Rights Movement

We Are American Citizens offers a groundbreaking reexamination of the antebellum national Colored Conventions, demonstrating that these gatherings constituted the first structured civil rights movement in the United States, and examines the emergence of Black transnationalism within this context.

We Are American Citizens offers a groundbreaking reexamination of the antebellum national Colored Conventions, demonstrating that these gatherings constituted the first structured civil rights movement in the United States, and examines the emergence of Black transnationalism within this context. Drawing from an extensive archive of convention minutes, press coverage, and writings by Black activists, Bourhis-Mariotti shows how free people of color used these conventions not only to protest racial injustice but to build a collective political identity and formulate strategies to claim their rightful place as American citizens. Indeed, the conventions functioned as collaborative spaces where diverse voices debated, strategized, and forged solidarity across regional and (trans)national boundaries. These animated discussions gave rise to a diasporic political and social consciousness, shaping the Black community as both a social and political group in the decades leading up to the Civil War. The study reveals how strategies—from respectability to emigrationism—evolved in response to shifting local and federal contexts and how Black activists engaged with American and foreign people of color. Importantly, it challenges the view that Black emigrationism undermined civil rights efforts, positioning it instead as a foundational expression of Black transnationalism. Ultimately, the book restores the conventions to their rightful place at the heart of early Black activism and political thought.