Bishop Richard Allen
(1760-1831)

Bishop Richard Allen is conceivably one of the greatest people born in the United States. Born a prisoner-of-war (so-called "slave") in 1760 in Philadelphia, he went on to create one of the largest and perhaps the most prestigious religious denominations in America, the African Methodist Episcopal Church. Chief Justice of Pennsylvania, Benjamin Chew, sold Allen to a Delaware farmer when Allen was a very young man. Young Allen had become a passionate Christian at an early age and converted his new captor to Christianity. The farmer allowed Allen to work at other farms after finishing work for him and keep his earnings. Allen saved the money and "bought" his freedom for two thousand dollars.

Now free, Allen became an itinerant minister, joining St. George's Methodist Church in downtown Philadelphia.

In April 1787, Reverend Allen and a Reverend Absolam Jones formed the first public life insurance company in America. Later that same year, Allen and a number of other African-Americans were prevented from taking communion at the altar of St. George's Church. The insulted people met immediately and voted to form their own churches--the majority becoming the St. Thomas African Episcopal Church, led by Absolam Jones, and the Bethel African Methodist Episcopal Church led by Richard Allen.

During the yellow fever epidemic of Philadelphia, Allen organized Black people to tend the sick and bury the dead, tasks which most whites feared to do.

In 1794, Allen erected Bethel, his first of four church buildings at Sixth and Lombard Streets. The land is the oldest continuously owned by Black people in America. Allen was ordained a bishop in 1799.

In 1814, Bishop Allen and wealthy sail-maker James Forten, responded to a threatened British invasion. They marched 2,500 Black men to Grays Ferry to defend Philadelphia.

The African Methodist Episcopal Church was formed in 1816 when Bishop Allen called together many Black Methodist churches dissatisfied with the racist policies of the Methodist Denomination. It boasts more than six thousand churches in four continents and owns more than twelve colleges and seminaries. Bethel Church became the most important "station" of the Underground Railroad. It was the site of the first mass meeting of Black people in 1817 and the site of the first political convention in 1830. Bethel, known today as "Mother Bethel," and the A.M.E. empire continue to immortalize Bishop Allen.