author
Colored National League
Best known for a powerful 1899 open letter to President William McKinley, this Boston-based civil rights group used print to demand equal protection and speak plainly against racial violence. Its surviving work reads less like a pamphlet and more like a public act of protest.
1 Audiobook
Open Letter to President McKinley by Colored People of Massachusetts
by Colored National League
About the author
The Colored National League appears in the historical record as the credited author of Open Letter to President McKinley by Colored People of Massachusetts, published in 1899. Project Gutenberg and the Library of Congress both list the group as the author or contributor behind the pamphlet, which was created in Boston during a period of intense struggle over civil rights and anti-Black violence in the United States.
The pamphlet itself makes the group’s purpose clear: it was a forceful public appeal to President McKinley after a mass meeting at Charles Street Church in Boston. Library of Congress records also connect the work with Archibald H. Grimké and I. D. Barnett, suggesting that the League worked in conversation with prominent Black activists and organizers of the time.
Very little biographical information about the organization survives in standard modern author profiles, so it is best understood through this document and the cause it served. What remains is memorable: a collective voice insisting on citizenship, justice, and federal attention to racial oppression.