A convention for the formerly enslaved in Washington DC. Left to right, Lewis Martin, age 100; Martha Elizabeth Banks, age 104; Amy Ware, age 103; Rev. Simon P. Drew, born free. Cosmopolitan Baptist Church, 921 N Street N.W., Washington DC, 1916. In the second photo you have: Annie Param, Anna Angales, Elizabeth Berkeley, and Sadie Thompson.

The convention then in its 54th year opened at the Cosmopolitan Baptist Church in Washington, with many centenarian attendees. One speaker was a preacher named Robert E. Lee a former enslaved man who had been owned by the Confederate general of the same name, and who said he was 103 at the time of the convention.
John Jackson, another formerly enslaved man who was owned by Stonewall Jackson, preached, as well.

It wasn't just a chance for formerly enslaved to connect, it was also a platform for activist goals. The convention attendees requested a universal pardon for married convicts, which followed earlier calls for pensions for the formerly enslaved something that we are still asking for today.

That issue was actively debated at the time. In 1899, about 21 percent of all blacks in America had been born into slavery, and the legal future of pensions or reparations was uncertain. In 1915's Johnson vs. McAdoo, an ex-slave pension association sued the government for $68 million for cotton produced while the members were enslaved. However, the DC Court of Appeals denied the claim, and the US Supreme Court upheld the decision...