Hey everyone Jody here. Over the next few episodes we're going to bring you some recent favorite conversations

They're worth listening to again if you've already heard them and for many of you you'll be hearing them for the very first time

Look we're giving ourselves a little bit of a break

over the next week or so.

I'm at the TED conference all week,

doing some stuff related to that new series of mine, good sports.

Nicky and Kelly are in the home stretch of the academic year and most importantly our

researcher Jacob Feldman is getting married so a much deserved break and

congratulations to Jacob we're all very excited about that.

Okay, here we go with a recent favorite episode and we will be back very soon with

brand new episodes.

Hello and welcome to this day in esoteric political history from Radiotopia.

My name is Jody Avergan.

This day, well, there isn't a super specific hook here, if I'm being honest, because this episode

we're really looking at a series of events that took place in the mid 1800s, starting in 1830,

and then ongoing through the Civil War into the years after

we're talking about what came to be known as the Colored Conventions Movement.

This was a series of events in which already free and once captive black people came together in

state and national political meetings conventions a critical space in which they

found political and economic power and really set the stage for what would come after emancipation and the Civil War.

Many of the first conventions took place in Philadelphia, but then others took place in New York,

Albany, Pittsburgh, eventually more than 200 state and national colored conventions

...