Free Black Charlestonians in Debate: The Complete Proceedings of the Clionian Debating Society, 1847-1858

The comprehensive, never-before-published records of a debating society run by free Black men

From 1847 until 1858, when ＂political disadvantages＂ prompted its dissolution, the Clionian Debating Society, a group of young free Black men, met regularly in Charleston, South Carolina. Reconstruction-era leaders such as Henry Cardozo, who would serve in the South Carolina legislature, and Simeon W. Beaird, who was elected to Georgia’s state constitutional convention in 1867, were among its membership.

Free Black Charlestonians in Debate brings together the Clionian Society’s minutes in a comprehensive scholarly edition, reuniting the two original handwritten volumes that are now housed in the collections of the Charleston Library Society and Duke University. The annotated transcription is supported by an introduction, appendixes summarizing key features of the society’s membership and operations, recommendations for further reading, and an index. Made easily accessible for the first time, these minutes represent an important piece of Black intellectual history that offers insight into the educational training of young men of the free Black community in pre-Civil War Charleston.

Angela G. Ray is associate professor of communication studies at Northwestern University. She is the author of The Lyceum and Public Culture in the Nineteenth-Century United States.