Blog Entry #3

           In the second part of Exodus: Religion, Race, and Nation in Early Nineteenth-Century Black America, Eddie S. Glaude, Jr, discussed the concept of “Exodus politics” and the sense of hope of well-being it gave the African American community. African American interpretations of the biblical story Exodus shaped their use of politics; therefore, Exodus politics became “a form of criticism that pressures a given society to live up to its ideals” (111). The Revolutionary Era in the United States brought about discussions of democracy and equality, yet between the black and white populations there was a constructed dynamic of freedom verse unfreedom. Exodus politics helped African Americans combat their constrained rights in a supposedly free nation, and ultimately assisted their desire to achieve greater freedom.

The African American population within the United States was increasing, and by the 1820’s there were over 234,000 freed and 1,500,000 enslaved blacks living in the nation. Although the African Americans in the North were legally free, they suffered from institutional marginalization and violent attacks.

The first national black convention was convened on September 20, 1830 in Philadelphia as a response to the violence used by white mobs against blacks in Cincinnati, OH. It was considered to be the original national civic activity among Northern free African Americans in the United States. The first stage of the convention movement was made up of two features: 1) the consideration of emigration as a political option, which took a position of founding a colony for blacks outside the United States in Canada and 2) the embrace of a politics of respectability. For African Americans, the politics of respectability meant coming up with a “strategy of reform directed at the members of the black community and an effort to sustain conversation among themselves about the problems facing them” (114).

The second stage of the black convention movement, which took place between 1832 and 1833, no longer pursued emigration or the establishment of a colony in Canada as a viable means for the African American community. Instead, the conventions discussed the ways in which African Americans could make efforts to “enhance the life-chances of the black population in [America]” (117). Many of the African Americans delegates believed that self-improvement – in the form of moral living, education, and economic self-sufficiency – would give them respect in the racist society (118). Within self-improvement, the politics of respectability went beyond just issues of how African Americans were perceived and treated by whites, and focused on creating a conversation among blacks about their well-being in the United States.