FRANKLIN TURNER¹ Franklin Turner, a Philadelphia abolitionist, headed the Committee of Fifty that invited Douglass to speak in that city in 1854. In 1855, Turner attended and served on the business committee at the national convention of free blacks held in Philadelphia. In 1860, he wrote a public letter condemning emigration; it was used by George T. Downing and Charles L. Reason at a New York City mass meeting considering Henry Highland Garnet’s African Civilization Society (Salem, N.J., 1856), 3, 8; , 46; , 1 December 1854; ., 4 May 1860; , 232-35. TO FREDERICK DOUGLASS

Philadelphia, [Pa.] 13 Oct[ober] 1854.

FREDERICK DOUGLASS:

HONORED SIR:—

For some time, it has been in the minds of many of your friends in Pennsylvania, to request you, as you have been going from post to post, doing battle for freedom, to pay them a visit. They have felt that your coming would do much to harmonize and encourage the oppressed and enable you, at the same time to deal very effective blows against the slave system.

To this end the subject was introduced and considered at three public meetings, held in this city. The result is show[n] in the following resolutions, which were unanimously adopted:

Resolved, That in we recognize a powerful engine to our elevation, and a true defender of our rights.

Resolved, that we acknowledge in Frederick Douglass, a firm and able champion of Human Rights, and one whom we delight to honor, as worthy our warmest support and confidence.

Resolved, That a committee of 50 be appointed to invite Frederick Douglass to visit Philadelphia at such time as may suit his convenience, to address the people on the subject of American Slavery, and on the elevation of the Free Colored People of the United States.

In behalf thereof of the people, we, the committee organized to carry out the last resolve, cordially invite you, dear sir, to Philadelphia, to speak on the great questions appertaining to human liberty, and beg that as early as possible you will communicate to us your decision.²Douglass did not visit Philadelphia in response to this invitation until late January 1855, in the middle of a six-week lecturing tour on the Eastern Seaboard. On that stop in Philadelphia, he spoke at the Israel Church on Gaskill Street on 29 January; Franklin Hall on 30 January; and Union Church on Coates Street on January 31st. FDP, 9 February 1855; Douglass Papers, ser. 1, 3:xxi.

The committee are authorized to say, that all expenses in travelling from and to Rochester, and those necessarily connected with your stay in Philadelphia, will be cheerfully liquidated by the people, through them.

With sentiments of friendship,
and esteem, we are in
the cause of Freedom,

Yours, very respectfully,

FRANKLIN TURNER, Cha’n.
CHARLES L. REASON,³Born in New York City, the son of Haitian émigrés, Charles Lewis Reason (1818-93) was a prominent leader in the black community of his native city and state for over fifty years. From the age of fourteen until his death, he taught in or oversaw black schools in New York City, except for the brief period in the 1850s when he headed the Institute for Colored Youth in Philadelphia, and the few years before then that he spent as professor of belles lettres, French, and mathematics at New York Central College in McGrawville. He was the first black man to hold a professorship in an American college. Reason helped organize the New York Society for the Promotion of Education among Colored Children, a black organization that won from the state legislature in 1847 authority over black schools in New York City. After the Civil War, he helped lead the successful effort to integrate the city school system. Reason was no less active in the antebellum struggle to pressure the New York legislature into abolishing the property qualifications for black voters. In this connection, he served as secretary of the Association for the Political Improvement of the People of Color in 1837 (or 1838) and as secretary of the State Convention of Colored Citizens, which met in Albany in 1840. Reason’s opposition to Negro colonization, moreover, was of long standing, beginning in 1838, when he joined in the call for a “Great Anti-Colonization Meeting” in New York City, and carrying through into the 1850s, when he was outspoken in his criticism of the African Civilization Society, the black colonizationist organization. NASS, 3 May 1849; NS, 27 April, 4, 30 May 1849; FDP, 15 July 1853, 17 February 1854, 21 September 1855; Cleveland Gazette, 5 September 1885; Simmons, Men of Mark, 1105-09; Robert C. Dick, Black Protest: Issues and Tactics (Westport, Conn., 1974), 21, 50, 190; Quarles, Black Abolitionists, 114, 145, 172; Pease and Pease, They Who Would Be Free, 10, 86—87, 148, 175, 258, 270—71; Anthony R. Mayo, “Charles Lewis Reason,” NHB, 5:212—15 (June 1942); Charles H. Wesley, “The Negroes of New York in the Emancipation Movement,” JNH, 24:65—103 (January 1939); Freeman, “Free Negro in New York City,” 41—42, 53, 136, 188, 237, 279, 345, 350, 353, 368. Sec’y.⁴The following were listed as additional signatories to this invitation: I. C. Weir, Charles H. Bustill, Charles Simpson, Henry Gordon, Jonathan C. Miller, Joshua Brown, Samuel H. Barrett, William H. Burley, John C. Bowers, David B. Bowers, Stephen Smith, William Moore, A. S. Driver, E. Black, John Hitchens, Benjamin F. Templeton, Samuel Nickless, John Balden, William Decordever, James McCrummill, S. Van Brakle, U. B. Vidal, Perry Miller, Perry Tillman, Thomas C. Burton, Davis D. Turner, E. J. Adams, Daniel Colly, J. J. Gould Bias, William Douglass, J. P. Campbell, Abraham Licklez, William G. Chapen, Jacob B. Young, John H. Hughes, John C. Cornish, William Whipper, and W. F. Keeling.

PLSr: , 1 December 1854.