The Colored Conventions Movement was a series of national, regional, and state conventions held irregularly during the decades preceding and following the American Civil War. The delegates who attended these conventions consisted of both free and fugitive African American community and religious leaders, businessmen, politicians, writers, publishers, and abolitionists. The minutes from these conventions show that Antebellum African-Americans sought justice beyond the emancipation of their enslaved countrymen: they also organized to discuss issues concerning labor, healthcare, temperance and educational equality. Although the conventions largely subsided following the Civil War, the Colored Conventions of antebellum America are seen as the precursors to larger African American organizations