File:Four formerly enslaved women at D.C. Convention- 1916.jpg

English: In 1916, these four women — Annie Param, Anna Angales, Elizabeth Berkeley, and Sadie Thompson — were in Washington, DC, for the annual Former Slave Convention.

Each claimed to be more than 100 years old. Though we can't be certain about their ages (Berkeley said she was 125, which seems unlikely), we do know they came together to reflect on the past and act on the future.

The month-long convention — then in its 54th year — opened at the Cosmopolitan Baptist Church in Washington in November 1916, with many centenarian attendees.

One speaker was a preacher named Robert E. Lee — a former slave who had been owned by the Confederate general of the same name, and who said he was 103 at the time of the convention.

John Jackson, a former slave owned by Stonewall Jackson, preached, as well. It wasn't just a chance for former slaves to connect — it was also a platform for activist goals. The convention attendees requested a universal pardon for married convicts, which followed earlier calls for pensions for former slaves.

That issue was actively debated at the time. In 1899, about 21 percent of all blacks in America had been born into slavery, and the legal future of pensions or reparations was uncertain.

Several national associations pressing for pensions for former slaves were formed in the late 1800s to press for passage of a law creating a pension system. However, Congress never seriously took up the issue.

In 1915's Johnson vs. McAdoo, an ex-slave pension association sued the government for $68 million for cotton produced while the members were slaves. 

However, the DC Court of Appeals denied the claim, and the US Supreme Court upheld the decision. The decision left aging former slaves to depend on charity for survival.

--partially adapted from Phil Edwards photo description.

The ex-slave convention was presided over by Rev. Simon P. W. Drew who was described in newspapers as “an able pulpit orator,” who possessed “that kind of magnetism which draws out large crowds to hear him.”

Politically engaged in denouncing racism, under his leadership he launched a movement to create a memorial honoring Booker T. Washington in the nation’s capital. He also later participated in an April 14, 1916 meeting to protest the film “Birth of a Nation.”

In 1928, Drew ran for vice president on Jacob Coxey’s (leader of the 1894 march on Washington bearing his name) presidential run on the Interracial Independent Political Party ticket.

--partially excerpted from Ana Lucia Arauj’s Reparations for Slavery and the Slave Trade.

For more information and related images, see flic.kr/s/aHsmogaH7L

The photographer is unknown. The image is courtesy of the Library of Congress, Reproduction Number: LC-DIG-npcc-31154 (digital file from original)