Voices & Votes: Freedom for All Lecture

OHA Curator of History Robert Searing will give a lecture on the National Convention of Colored Men that took place in Syracuse on October 4th, 1864. This event will be held at the Liverpool Public Library on Thursday, May 8, 2025, from 7 pm-8 pm. No prior registration is required.

The National Convention of Colored Men took place almost two years after Lincoln’s Preliminary Emancipation Proclamation, three years after the start of the Civil War, and just a few weeks ahead of the most significant election in the nation’s history. At the time, African Americans could fight in the Union army, and were actively recruited, but could not vote in most regions of the country.

During the convention, A Declaration of Wrongs and Rights was produced, outlining the lack of any liberty and the suffering endured by Blacks, both free and enslaved, over hundreds of years in colonial America and the United States. Participants included Frederick Douglass, who was the convention president, William Wells Brown, and Henry Highland Garnet.

This event is part of a special series presented by the Onondaga Historical Association and the Liverpool Public Library as part of the “A New Agora for New York: Museums as Spaces for Democracy” project that includes the Voices & Votes: Democracy in America exhibit, coming to the Skä•noñh Great Law of Peace Center from April 18 to May 30.

Voices and Votes is a Museum on Main Street (MoMS) exhibition developed by the Smithsonian Institution Traveling Exhibition Service. It’s based on an exhibition by the National Museum of American History. It has been made possible in New York State by the Museum Association of New
York. Support for MoMS in New York State has been provided by the United States Congress and the William G. Pomeroy Foundation.

“A New Agora for New York: Museums as Spaces for Democracy” humanities discussion programs are made possible in part by a major grant from the National Endowment for the Humanities.