African Methodist Episcopal Church Founded

In 1816, delegates from several Black congregations met in Philadelphia and organized the African Methodist Episcopal Church, with Richard Allen as its first bishop. It was the first independent Black denomination in the United States. Its founding mattered far beyond religion: it created an institution that African Americans owned and governed themselves, at a time when most were enslaved or faced severe legal and social restrictions even in the free states of the North.

Allen was born into slavery in 1760, probably in Philadelphia, and was later sold to a Delaware farmer. He converted to Methodism, preached to others, and was eventually allowed to purchase his freedom. By the 1780s he was in Philadelphia, preaching at St. George's Methodist Episcopal Church, where Black worshippers were a growing presence. Alongside Absalom Jones, he helped found the Free African Society in 1787, a mutual aid organization for Black Philadelphians.

Tensions at St. George's are often tied to that same year, though historians differ on the exact date. According to Allen's own later account, Black worshippers were pulled from their knees during prayer and directed to a segregated section of the church. Allen, Jones, and others walked out. Jones went on to lead the African Episcopal Church of St. Thomas, affiliated with the Episcopal Church, while Allen remained committed to Methodist teaching and discipline. In 1794 he founded Bethel Church, which became the center of his movement.

The step toward full independence came through conflict over control. White Methodist leaders in Philadelphia tried to assert authority over Bethel's property and affairs, and Allen and his congregation fought the matter in court. A Pennsylvania ruling in 1815 upheld Bethel's independence. The following year, Bethel joined with Black Methodist congregations from nearby areas, including Baltimore and others in the mid-Atlantic, to form a new denomination. Allen was consecrated bishop soon after.

The AME Church grew steadily through the nineteenth century, spreading across the North and, after the Civil War, rapidly into the South, where it attracted large numbers of newly freed people. It founded schools and eventually colleges, among them Wilberforce University in Ohio, and sent missionaries abroad to the Caribbean and Africa. Its churches served as places for education, political organizing, and mutual support when other public institutions excluded Black Americans.

The denomination's influence continued into the twentieth century, including in the civil rights movement, and it remains active today with congregations in the United States and many other countries. Allen's decision to build a church on Black leadership became a model for other independent Black institutions.