Page:John Brown (W. E. B. Du Bois).djvu/253

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THE BLACK PHALANX
245

(3) A committee on publication "to collect all facts, statistics and statements; all laws and historical records and biographies of the colored people and all books by colored authors." This committee was further authorized "to publish replies of any assaults worthy of note, made upon the character or condition of the colored people."[1]

The radical stand of this assembly against emigration caused a call for a distinct emigration Negro convention in 1854. This convention was held under the presidency of the same man who afterward presided at the Chatham conclave of John Brown, and with some of the same Negroes present. The account of it continues:

"There were three parties in the emigration convention, ranged according to the foreign fields they preferred to emigrate to. Dr. Delaney headed the party that desired to go to the Niger Valley in Africa, Whitfield the party which preferred to go to Central America, and Holly the party which preferred to go to Haiti.

"All these parties were recognized and embraced by the convention. Dr. Delaney was given a commission to go to Africa, in the Niger Valley, Whitfield to go to Central America, and Holly to Haiti, to enter into negotiations with the authorities of these various countries for Negro emigrants and to report to future conventions. Holly was the first to execute his mission, going down to Haiti in 1855,

  1. Occasional Papers of the American Negro Academy, No. 9, pp. 16–19.