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Right Of Suffrage In Michigan--action Of The Colored People

Right Of Suffrage In Michigan--action Of The Colored People image
Parent Issue
Day
5
Month
May
Year
1841
Copyright
Public Domain
OCR Text

It is really inspiring to see the effect of the Albany Convention upon our brethren of other States, and how easily they take fire, from the action of that body. Some of our brethren are for urging a National Convention, with reference to producing some simultaneous movement for our advancement in this country. While so similar is our condition in all the States, that any prominent movement in one State, with respect to the advancement of the people of that State, is readily adopted, if not in its exact formula, in the leading measures, by our brethren of other States, and thus our movements not only become simultaneous, but universal, and superseding the necessity for such an assemblage.

Our people in Michigan, like our people in most of the other States, are a disfranchised body. They have, to some extent, the present season, petitioned the legislature, now in session, to extend to them the right of suffrage. In order to bring the matter more directly before the people, and to operate upon the minds of the Legislature, they called a meeting on the evening of the 23d ult., in the lecture room of the Presbyterian Church, to discuss the subject, and invited the members of the Legislature to attend. The meeting, we are informed, was crowded to overflowing. Our noble, spirited and enterprising friend, Robert Banks, assisted by Wm. C. Munroe, occupied the evening by directing the attention of the audience to their claims and grievances. Taking the ground taken by the fathers of the revolution - the right of the taxed to vote - the natural equality of rights, &c. - and that their fathers waded equally with others, through the revolutionary struggle, and the war of 1812 - that they were now taxed for the support of the government, and the education of the whites- that they had no voice or vote in the arrangements of the government, and their children were thrown out of the schools, and they claimed not social equality, but political.

The addresses, as we are informed by the Detroit Daily Advertiser, were extempore, and were listened to with interest, and often cheered by the audience. The editor speaks of the speeches in the highest terms, and pretends not to have done justice to them.