Biography
Richard Allen was born on February 14, 1760, in Philadelphia, Pennsylvania, into slavery. His family was owned by a prominent Philadelphia lawyer, Benjamin Chew. When he was a child, he and his family were sold to a farmer, Stokeley Sturgis, in Delaware. He grew up on a farm near Dover. He was a hard worker, who was known for his piety. He was converted at the age of seventeen, after hearing a Methodist preacher. He was convinced that God had forgiven his sin. He joined the Methodist society and began to hold meetings in his master's home. His master, who was also converted, was moved by Allen's example and allowed him to buy his freedom.
He agreed to pay his master two thousand dollars in installments, and he worked at a number of jobs to earn the money. He cut wood, worked in a brickyard and drove a wagon. In 1783, he paid off his debt and became a free man. He became a traveling preacher, and he preached to Black and white congregations in Delaware, Pennsylvania, Maryland and New Jersey. He was one of the first Black ministers in the Methodist church. In 1786, he settled in Philadelphia and joined St. George's Methodist Episcopal Church. He preached to Black people in the early morning, and the Black membership grew.
In 1787, there was a famous event. The white leaders of St. George's decided to segregate the Black worshippers in a gallery. One Sunday, while Allen, Absalom Jones and another man were kneeling in prayer in the section that they had been using, a white trustee came and told them to move. They asked if they might finish their prayer. The trustee tried to pull them to their feet. When the prayer was over, they walked out of the church, and the other Black members followed. It was a sign of their independence. They would never return.
Allen and Jones formed the Free African Society, a mutual aid group for the Black community of Philadelphia. It was one of the first such organizations in America. Allen wanted to start a Methodist church for Black people, but Jones preferred the Episcopal church. Jones started the African Episcopal Church of St. Thomas. Allen bought a lot and in 1794 opened the Bethel African Methodist Episcopal Church, in an old blacksmith shop. It was the first church for Black Methodists in the nation. He was ordained as a deacon in 1799 by Bishop Francis Asbury, the first Black person to be ordained in the Methodist church.
He had to fight for the independence of his congregation. The white Methodist leaders tried to control the church, and they took legal action to claim ownership of the building. Allen won the case in 1816, in the Pennsylvania Supreme Court. In the same year, he called a meeting of Black Methodist churches from Philadelphia, Baltimore, Delaware and New Jersey, which formed the African Methodist Episcopal Church. He was elected the first bishop. It was the first independent Black denomination in the United States. It was a great step for the Black community.
He was a man of great courage and of firm convictions. He was active in the struggle against slavery. He helped to shelter runaway slaves, and his church was a station on the Underground Railroad. During the yellow fever epidemic of 1793, he and Absalom Jones organized the Black community to care for the sick and to bury the dead, at risk to their lives. He wrote a tract to defend the Black people from false accusations. He was also an organizer of the first national Negro convention, in 1830, in Philadelphia. He opposed the colonization movement, which wished to send free Blacks to Africa.
His weaknesses included a firm hand in running his church, and some of his critics thought him autocratic. He was also a man of his time, with the views of the Methodist discipline. He died on March 26, 1831, in Philadelphia, at the age of seventy-one. His life shows the courage of a man who was born into slavery and who built an institution of freedom. The church that he founded has grown to be one of the largest Black denominations in the world.