Brooklyn, L.I., June, 1851.

I see in the North Star, Impartial Citizen, and other papers, a call for a "State Convention," signed by some half dozen citizens of Albany. Considerable anxiety is manifested in this quarter to know something about this call. For my own part, I don't question the necessity for a united effort, through a Convention of our people. But it should be deliberated upon previously, the various measures discussed, delegates appointed and instructed, the measures and mind of leading individuals made known.—The inquiry is, Has this been done? have the plans been arranged? have measures been discussed; have delegates been appointed and made ready for effective, energetic and practicable action? We fear not. If so, then they will come together strangers, not only personally, but without any defined, understood and adjusted policy. Under such circumstances can we expect harmony? can we expect union? Is it possible that all should think alike, without digressing, or harmonize without concession? We doubtless need to convene in one general council, from one end of the continent to the other.—But let us first enter into a general correspondence, to gather statistics, prepare documents and reports, and such other investigations as the necessities of the case calls for. Still, I am not opposing the Albany Convention. It may do great good: but it seems, to me, unbusiness like to make no general arrangement.

J. M. S.Smith, James McCune

James McCune Smith (1813–65), a prominent black physician, abolitionist, and writer, was born in New York City to an enslaved father and a self-emancipated mother. He attended the New York African Free School, but was denied admission to Columbia University, Geneva Medical College, and the New York Academy of Medicine. He turned to the University of Glasgow in Scotland, where he received a B.A. (1835), M.A. (1836), and M.D. (1837). Upon returning to New York, he opened a pharmacy and medical practice that catered to both blacks and whites. He became involved in the abolitionist movement, serving as an associate editor of the Colored American in 1839, contributed regularly to the Anglo-African Magazine, and wrote correspondence for the North Star and Frederick Douglass’ Paper under the pseudonym “Communipaw.” Smith also wrote the introduction to Douglass’s second autobiography, My Bondage and My Freedom (1855). In 1861, Smith helped finance the revival of the Weekly Anglo-African to oppose black colonization and emigration, and he was a prominent member of the New York City Young Men’s Association, the American and Foreign Anti-Slavery Society, and the New York African Society for Mutual Relief. He was the sole attending physician of the Society for the Promotion of Education Among Colored Children, a member and vestryman of St. Philip’s Episcopal Church, and a trustee of the New York Society for the Promotion of Education Among Colored Children. In 1863 Wilberforce College appointed Smith professor of anthropology, but illness kept him from assuming his post. Lib., 1 June 1838; FDP, 18 May 1855; Douglass Papers, ser. 2:7–19; Miller, Search for a Black Nationality, 243; Pease and Pease, They Who Would Be Free, 90–92, 103, 110; Quarles, Black Abolitionists, 115, 134; Rhoda G. Freeman, “The Free Negro in New York City in the Era before the Civil War” (Ph.D. diss., Columbia University, 1966), 40–42, 177, 186, 195, 200, 247, 276, 286, 325, 353, 393; DAB, 27:288–89.