Remaking the Republic. Christopher James Bonner
ideas about their proper position in the country. During the convention, delegates engaged extensively with Buffalonians, delivering speeches in the evenings at meetings in local churches that were “largely attended by the citizens generally.” Those orators included established figures such as Charles B. Ray, as well as a number of young men already celebrated for their oratory, most notably Henry Highland Garnet and Frederick Douglass.56
Amid those imposing personalities and the wide-ranging issues that delegates presented, one person with little experience claimed a central role at the convention by making a direct argument about the nature of citizenship. William C. Munroe traveled to Buffalo from his hometown of Detroit, where he worked as a teacher and minister and had emerged as an important figure in activism around the Great Lakes.57 Munroe had previously served as president of Buffalo’s Union Moral and Mental Improvement Society, and so he must have crossed Lake Erie with some frequency.58 In Detroit, he had led the expansive work of the Colored Vigilant Committee, which encouraged education and uplift among free African Americans in addition to securing their physical freedom.59 And he had joined other activists in pursuing equal suffrage in Michigan.60 While Munroe had not previously attended national conventions, he was experienced with the forms of collective black politics and had been working toward substantive change in African Americans’ legal lives by the time he arrived in Buffalo.
Perhaps because of his reputation in the city, Munroe sat on the convention’s business committee, a group of nine men who drafted resolutions for the delegation’s approval. Typically, conventions centered on those resolutions, deciding which of them should be published and in what language in order to broadcast a protest ideology, condemn specific injustices, and recommend avenues for change. At times, black and white newspapers printed only these resolutions in lieu of other records from conventions.61 Munroe and his fellow committee members directed the 1843 convention through more than thirty proposals, a position from which they shaped the convention’s message to the public and its legacy for free black people’s lives.
On the afternoon of August 16, Munroe stood before his colleagues and presented Resolution No. 10, which was brief and direct: “by the second section of the fourth article of the Constitution of the U.S., we [are] citizens.”62 In so doing, he asked delegates to endorse an explicit claim to national citizen status under the Constitution. As had so many before him, Munroe invoked the Privileges and Immunities Clause, arguing for federal supremacy over restrictive state policy and calling for a legal relationship with the U.S. government. Munroe delivered “a flaming speech” in support of the resolution, rejecting rulings from “inferior courts” that black men were not citizens. “Mr. Munro[e] thought it high time for us to speak out upon this subject, and that the present was this time.”63
Конец ознакомительного фрагмента.
Текст предоставлен ООО «ЛитРес».
Прочитайте эту книгу целиком, купив полную легальную версию на ЛитРес.
Безопасно оплатить книгу можно банковской картой Visa, MasterCard, Maestro, со счета мобильного телефона, с платежного терминала, в салоне МТС или Связной, через PayPal, WebMoney, Яндекс.Деньги, QIWI Кошелек, бонусными картами или другим удобным Вам способом.