Richard Allen, who founded the first African American denomination, was born into slavery in Delaware in 1760. As a teenager, Allen began attending a Methodist church, which was one of the few American churches that was open to Black worshippers, and he quickly became a prominent leader among Black Methodists. Allen was able to buy his own freedom in 1780, and was assigned as a preacher to St. George’s Methodist Episcopal Church in Philadelphia. There, he and another Black preacher, Absalom Jones, attracted new converts of both races.

From Christianity Today, Aug. 8, 2008.

However, Allen and Jones were frustrated that White church leaders continued to treat Black and White members differently, including forcing Black members to sit in the balcony. So Allen and Jones led a walkout of Black congregants in 1787. In 1794, the two opened Mother Bethel African Methodist Episcopal Church on Sixth Street in Philadelphia, the first African American-owned church in the United States.

More African American Methodist congregations opened over the next few years, and in 1816, five of these congregations joined to form the African Methodist Episcopal Church, the first independent African American denomination in the United States. Allen was elected as its first bishop.

For the rest of his life, Allen worked both in and outside of the church to advance the rights of African Americans, petitioning Congress to abolish slavery and using his family home as a station on the Underground Railroad. Allen passed away in 1831 at the age of 71 and was buried at Mother Bethel AME, which remains an active church today.

Today, the AME church has more than 2 million members worldwide, worshipping in more than 7,000 individual congregations. According to a statement on its official website, the AME church “was born in protest against slavery—against dehumanization of African people, brought to the American continent as labor.” Today, the mission of the AME church “is to minister to the spiritual, intellectual, physical, emotional, and environmental needs of all people by spreading Christ’s liberating gospel through word and deed.

The first AME church in the South was founded in 1818 in Charleston, South Carolina.  Colloquially known as Mother Emanuel, the church faced discrimination and harassment from state and local officials for decades; its founder was imprisoned although never convicted of a crime; and the original Emanuel AME church was burned down in 1822. It was rebuilt after the Civil War, with its current building constructed in 1891. The congregation played an important role in the Civil Rights movement, and the church has long been involved in local community service projects.

In 2015, nine people were shot and killed inside the church, including South Carolina State Senator Clementa Pinckney, senior pastor, by a 21-year-old white man who was later convicted of federal hate crime and murder charges. My husband and I got to see the Mother Emanuel church in 2019, where we were especially moved by the memorial to the Christians who were killed in 2015 simply because they had chosen to be at a midweek worship service.