Reason, Charles Lewis

Life Span
to
Full name
Charles Lewis Reason
Place of Birth
Birth Date Certainty
Exact
Death Date Certainty
Exact
Gender
Male
Race
Black
Sectional choice
North
Origins
Free State
No. of Spouses
3
Family
Michiel Reason (father), Elizabeth Reason (mother), Clorice Esteve (third wife)
Education
Other
Other Education
African Free School (NYC), McGrawville College (New York Central College, NY)
Occupation
Educator
Scientist or Inventor
Writer or Artist
Relation to Slavery
Free black
Church or Religious Denomination
Episcopalian
Other Affiliations
Abolitionists (Anti-Slavery Society)
Workingmen’s or Labor

Charles Lewis Reason (American National Biography)

Scholarship
[Charles] Reason was also active politically throughout his life. He was committed to the antislavery cause and worked unceasingly for improvement of black civil rights. In 1837 Reason, Henry Highland Garnet, and George Downing launched a petition drive in support of full black suffrage. He was also secretary of the 1840 New York State Convention for Negro Suffrage. Reason founded and was executive secretary of the New York Political Improvement Association, which won for fugitive slaves the right to a jury trial in the state. In 1841 he lobbied successfully for the abolition of the sojourner law, which permitted slave owners to visit the state briefly with their slaves. He also lectured on behalf of the Fugitive Aid Society. An active reporter on education to the black national convention movement of the 1850s, he was secretary of the 1853 convention in Rochester, New York. He spoke out against the American Colonization Society and Garnet's African Civilization Society. In 1849 Reason, along with J. W. C. Pennington and Frederick Douglass, sponsored a mass demonstration against colonization at Shiloh Presbyterian Church in New York City….During the Civil War, Reason served on New York City's Citizen's Civil Rights Committee, which lobbied the New York legislature for expanded black civil rights. After the conflict, he was vice president of the New York State Labor Union. At a union meeting in 1870, he delivered a paper in which he gave statistical proof that education helped New York City blacks gain prosperity.
Graham R. Hodges, "Reason, Charles Lewis," American National Biography Online, February 2000, http://www.anb.org/articles/15/15-00566.html.
How to Cite This Page: "Reason, Charles Lewis," House Divided: The Civil War Research Engine at Dickinson College, https://hd.housedivided.dickinson.edu/node/15165.