When Ohio entered the union as a state in 1803, one matter of law was already predetermined: “There shall be neither slavery nor involuntary servitude in the said territory.”1  Despite this requirement from the Northwest Ordinance, however, it was abundantly clear from the outset of Ohio’s formal entry to the United States that people of color who settled in the state would not enjoy the full rights and privileges of citizenship extended to their white neighbors. Just one year following the ratification of Ohio’s state constitution, the legislature enacted a series of laws that were designed to deny rights to people of color and discourage them from future settlement. Known as the “Black Laws,” these antiblack measures were just the first of many laws passed as barriers for people of color in the states carved from the Northwest Territory.2 Despite these laws, free Blacks would continue to arrive in numbers higher than other nearby states. Then, from 1837 through 1886, free Black men and women from throughout the state would organize in nearly twenty conventions to strategize on how to best seek the rights they were denied. These “Colored Conventions” would debate different paths to a quality education, strategies for overturning the Black Laws, the merits of emigration or colonization in comparison to American citizenship, the right to vote, responding to political parties, the question of women’s rights, and how to stifle the hated Fugitive Slave Act. This inquiry aims to trace how the people and issues at the conventions from 1849 to the start of the American Civil War evolved over time in response to both statewide and national factors. Despite substantial diversity of thought, opinion, and experience amongst the hundreds of Black Ohioans who served as delegates in the state's Colored Conventions, their well-argued self interests ultimately yielded to the interests of the group.