Hezekiah Grice (c. 1801 – 1863) was an American and Haitian activist, machinist, and businessman, noted for his political activity in Baltimore during the early 19th century.

While working as a machinist in Baltimore, he was either the first person or one of the first people to suggest holding a National Negro Convention to discuss the possibility of mass emigration by African Americans away from the United States.

[4] As he grew more politically active, Grice became affiliated with contemporary abolitionist editors like William Lloyd Garrison and Benjamin Lundy.

[2] Grice was an activist and businessman in Baltimore during the beginnings of the Back-to-Africa movement, when large African American organizations first began to consider the prospect of mass immigration from the United States to countries with less restriction on the freedom of Black people.

[5] Around 1830, one proposal that was the topic of national discussion among African American activists was the possibility of emigrating to a region in Canada to which many formerly enslaved people had already escaped.

[7][8] However, Martha S. Jones has written that it is not clear whether Grice was the first person to suggest such a conference, or if he was simply responding to and amplifying a call for a convention that had previously been made by activists in New York.

But Jones writes that what is obvious is that Grice's leadership was foundational in turning the conference into a reality and in creating a national conversation on the colonization proposals.

[2] Grice has therefore been called "the moving spirit" of the national convention idea,[9] and he organized it by sending letters to Black leaders across the United States.

[9] The conference also suggested possible legal remedies to ensure citizenship rights for free African Americans, as well as practical tools for communal self-sufficiency like the promotion of mechanical trades and agriculture.

[11] Although the politics of colonization were contentious and the idea became sharply less popular in the following years, Grice published a map of potential locations in Canada that free African Americans could relocate to.