meeting, when they, in their judgment, may deem it proper: Rev.
Absalom Jones, Rev. Richard Allen, James Forten, Robert Douglass,
Francis Perkins, Rev. John Gloucester, Robert Gorden, James Johnson,
Quamoney Clarkson, John Summersett, Randall Shepherd.

JAMES FORTEN, Chairman.

RUSSELL PARROTT, Secretary.

In 1827, in New York, was begun the publication of _Freedom's Journal_,
the first Negro newspaper in the United States. The editors were John
B. Russwurm and Samuel E. Cornish. Russwurm was a recent graduate of
Bowdoin College and was later to become better known as the governor of
Maryland in Africa. By 1830 feeling was acute throughout the country,
especially in Ohio and Kentucky, and on the part of Negro men
had developed the conviction that the time had come for national
organization and protest.

In the spring of 1830 Hezekiah Grice of Baltimore, who had become
personally acquainted with the work of Lundy and Garrison, sent a letter
to prominent Negroes in the free states bringing in question the general
policy of emigration.[1] received no immediate response, but in August
he received from Richard Allen an urgent request to come at once to
Philadelphia. Arriving there he found in session a meeting discussing
the wisdom of emigration to Canada, and Allen "showed him a printed
circular signed by Peter Williams, rector of St. Philip's Church,
New York, Peter Vogelsang and Thomas L. Jennings of the same place,
approving the plan of convention."[2] The Philadelphians now issued a
call for a convention of the Negroes of the United States to be held in
their city September 15, 1830.