Richard Allen

Richard Allen was born into slavery in 1760 on the Delaware property of Benjamin Chew, and as a child he was sold with his family to another Delaware farmer. As a teenager he became a Methodist, and his owner, influenced by Methodist preaching against slavery, allowed him to buy his freedom, which he completed in the early 1780s. He worked at many jobs while traveling as a preacher, and in 1786 he returned to Philadelphia and preached at St. George's Methodist Church. In 1787 he and Absalom Jones founded the Free African Society, a mutual aid group. When the church ordered Black worshippers to sit in a segregated gallery, they left. In 1794 Allen founded Bethel Church, and in 1816 he brought together several Black Methodist congregations to form the African Methodist Episcopal Church, becoming its first bishop. During the yellow fever epidemic of 1793, Allen and Jones organized Black volunteers to nurse the sick and bury the dead, and afterward they published an account defending the volunteers against unfair accusations. He died in Philadelphia in 1831.

Richard Allen is also an author in the library: author page and works.

Faith: Methodist preacher who founded the African Methodist Episcopal Church, the first independent Black denomination in the United States. Source: Wikipedia