Fourth Annual Martin R. Delany Symposium
Schedule
Sat Apr 18 2026 at 09:00 am to 03:00 pm
UTC-04:00Location
Heinz History Center | Pittsburgh, PA
Advertisement
Join the African American Program for the Fourth Annual Martin R. Delany Symposium: Organizing and Activism.The symposium will offer presentations and panels that address organizing and activism rooted in the life, ideas, and legacy of Delany, one the nation’s most influential African American leaders in the 19th century.
Tamika Nunley, Ph.D., William and Sue Gross Professor of History at Duke University, will deliver the keynote address, “At the Threshold of Liberty: Women, Slavery, and Shifting Identities,” followed by a question-and-answer session.
In addition to the keynote address, the symposium will feature three panel discussions with visiting scholars from universities and institutions across the country.
These sessions will explore Delany’s political thought and activism, Black-led emigration movements, journalism and print culture, military service, gender, and debates over freedom, citizenship, and belonging in the 19th century. Please refer to the schedule below to see a full list of presenters and panel topics.
The program also includes a continental breakfast prior to the Symposium academic program.
Admission
Admission to the symposium costs $50 for non-members, $20 for History Center members and $10 for college students with valid ID. The program will be held in the museum’s fifth floor Mueller Center.
Register now: https://www.heinzhistorycenter.org/event/fourth-annual-martin-r-delany-symposium/
Program admission includes full access to History Center exhibitions.
For more information please contact, Samuel W Black, director of the African American Program, at [email protected].
Symposium Schedule
• 8:30 a.m. - Doors open and continental breakfast
• 9 a.m. - Welcome with Samuel W Black, Director of the African American Program
• 9:10 a.m. - Keynote address and Q&A with Tamika Nunley, Ph.D.
• 10:15 a.m. - Panel 1 begins
• “Martin Robison Delany: Unacknowledged and Unappreciated American Political Theorist” with Tunde Adeleke, emeritus professor, Iowa State University
• “Lost Abolitionist Autograph Book from the Little Town that Ignited the Civil War” with Joel Rothschild, collector and historian
• “Cuba, Nevada, and the Uncertainties of Reconstruction in Thomas Detter’s ‘Octoroon Slave of Cuba’” with Maria Windell, University of Colorado
• 11:15 – Lunch
• 12:05 p.m. - Panel 2 begins
• “To Organize a People for Themselves: Martin Delany and the National Emigration Convention of Colored People” with Trey Daniel, Harvard University
• “Journeys to Africa: Emigration as a Black-led Movement”, with Dolly L. Marshall, historian and preservationist
• “Beyond Missionary Limits: Martin Delany’s Vision and Andrew Cartwright’s Religious Organizing in 1870s Liberia” with Edudzi David Sallah, Gettysburg College
• “From Escape to Emigration: Black Organizing and Utopia in Martin Delany’s Blake” with Adam Syvertsen, Northwestern University
• 12:45 p.m. - Panel 3 begins
• “Military Service and the American Identity: The Reconstruction of the Meaning of Masculinity and Service” with Rozey Hill, data curator, Cornell University
• “Enduring in the Spirit of Martin R. Delany’s Black Liberation Journalism” with Donald Scott, Sr., author, historian, journalist
• “Race and the Fight Over Freedom, Citizenship, and Belonging in Southwestern Pennsylvania” with Lucien Holness, Pennsylvania State University
• “Black Women and Black Nationality in the Nineteenth Century” with Selena Sanderfer Doss, Western Kentucky University
• 1:50 p.m. - Book signing and reception
Advertisement
Where is it happening?
Heinz History Center, 1212 Smallman St,Pittsburgh, Pennsylvania, United StatesEvent Location & Nearby Stays:
Know what’s Happening Next — before everyone else does.
