In 1816, the Church was established in Pennsylvania, New Jersey, Delaware and Maryland, with about only 400 members. It is compiled from the best data at hand.ġ816. The following table will show something of the growth of the Church from the beginning, which, as will be seen, has been greatest during the past fifty years. But the great majority confined their labors to the organization of the Church among the recently emancipated people and the results were little short of remarkable, as the people flocked to their standard in greater numbers than they could be efficiently cared for. Others went to Congress and became otherwise prominent. The first United States Senator of African descent was Rev.
Many of these became prominent in religious, business and political life. Before the Civil War was over, hundreds of preachers and teachers had been sent as missionaries to the South, the first going from New York in 1863.
The emancipation of the slaves opened up a great field for the Church, which it was not slow to seize. During this period many of the ministers of this church were active in the anti-slavery movement and “Underground Railroad,” and much of the actual work of receiving and transporting escaped slaves was done by them. Louis, Sacramento and other Northern and Western cities, where there were a hundred or more Negroes, a church was organized. In Boston, Newport, New Bedford, New York, Buffalo, Pittsburgh, Washington, Cincinnati, Chicago, St.
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They adopted the polity and doctrine of the Methodist Episcopal Church, with some slight changes, and elected one of their number, Richard Allen, as their bishop.ĭuring the first fifty years, the church was confined almost entirely to the Northern States, as it was not allowed to operate among the slaves in the South, though in Charleston, New Orleans, and one or two other places, there were small organizations among free Negroes. In 1816 representatives, sixteen in all, from Bethel African Church in Philadelphia, and African churches in Baltimore, Md., Wilmington, Del., Attleboro, Penna., and Salem, New Jersey, met in Philadelphia and formed a church organization or connection under the title of “The African Methodist Episcopal Church.” (The term “African” was then prevalently used to designate the people of color, just as the terms “Negro” and “colored people” are now used). Soon Negroes of other Pennsylvania localities, and of New York, New Jersey, Delaware and Maryland followed the example of the Philadelphians, and formed distinctively African congregations-often with the encouragement of the whites. They established a society of their own, in which any person, regardless of his color, could enjoy the worship of God with freedom from restriction or segregation. George's Methodist Episcopal Church in Philadelphia, because the white Christians desired to segregate them in the gallery of the church, and otherwise place a badge of inferiority upon them. The history of this church dates back to 1787, when a number of persons of African descent, imbued with the spirit of independence then in the American atmosphere, and led by Richard Allen, a colored local preacher in the Methodist Episcopal Church, withdrew from St.
The sessions were held in Bethel African Methodist Episcopal Church, upon ground purchased by that church in 1794, perhaps the oldest piece of real property owned by a Negro organization in this country.
BEGINNING May 3, 1916, and continuing three weeks, there was held in Philadelphia, Pennsylvania, the Centennial General Conference of the African Methodist Episcopal Church, which, among other things, celebrated the one hundredth anniversary of its organization.