Organizing Black America: An Encyclopedia of African American Associations
Afro-American Republican League of Pennsylvania
In 1895, leading blacks in Pennsylvania organized the Afro-American Republican League of Pennsylvania. The league endured until circa 1913. It provided an official political voice for black Pennsylvanians at a time when other minorities had none. Conceptualized as an adjunct to the Republican Party, the Afro-American Republican League represented the highest level of organized black political activity in the state. Political clubs from across Pennsylvania elected representatives to annual county conventions who in turn selected delegates to the state convention. Each year, the league’s state convention met to consider civil rights actions and to pressure the Republican Party to award blacks patronage positions.
Peter C.Blackwell, publisher of the Steelton Press, dominated the league. He was its first president and a high-ranking officer until its demise. Blackwell, along with Robert J.Nelson of Reading, maintained a strong following among African Americans from eastern Pennsylvania.
In 1899, league members from western Pennsylvania seceded and formed the Western Afro-American Republican League of Pennsylvania. Leaders of this group included William Maurice Randolph, a Pittsburgh attorney, and Captain William Catlin, a Civil War veteran from Monongahela, Pennsylvania.
Both groups continued to pressure Republican politicians for civil rights measures and patronage positions. In 1903, Nelson, president of the State League of Pennsylvania, successfully issued a call for a national suffrage convention to address southern disfranchisement. However, the league mainly acted in the State of Pennsylvania.
The decline of the Afro-American Republican League coincided with the resurgence of Democratic power in 1912 when Woodrow Wilson became president. Nevertheless, the league through its extensive organizational apparatus set the stage for the emergence and success of the National Association for the Advancement of Colored People (NAACP) in Pennsylvania.
FURTHER READINGS
Bodnar, John E. “Peter C.Blackwell and the Negro Community of Steelton, 1880–1920.” Pennsylvania Magazine of History and Biography 17 (1973): 199–209.
Lee, Charles Franklin. “Race Men and the Republican Party: The Afro-American Republican League of Pennsylvania, 1895–1913.” Unpublished Seminar Paper, Carnegie Mellon University, 1997.
Smith, Eric Ledell. “‘Asking for Justice and Fair Play’: African American State Legislators and Civil Rights in Early Twentieth-Century Pennsylvania.” Pennsylvania History 63 (1996): 169–203.
Charles Franklin Lee
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