When Richard Allen established the African Methodist Episcopal Church–the first religious denomination established by African Americans in the United States–he set in motion an organization that would play a critical role in driving the spiritual, social and educational advancement for millions of followers—both in the United States and around the world.
The Early Years
The Free African Society and Social Activism
In 1787 Richard Allen, his friend and colleague Absalom Jones, and leaders from several religious denominations founded the Free African Society (FAS). [1]
‘The Society provided…valuable social services of looking after the sick, the poor, the dead, the widowed, and the orphaned of their marginalized membership.’ [2] The moral uplift of the Black community was also a key objective of the Society—in fact one of the duties of the leaders within the FAS was to visit the more ‘dissipated’ areas of Philadelphia and offer instruction and advice on issues of ‘moral uplift’. [3] The FAS also focused on promoting ‘thrift and savings to build wealth in the Black community.’ [4]
In a 1903 social study of the Negro Church, none other than Dr. W.E.B. DuBois, a founding member of the NAACP, described the impact of the FAS on future social, self-help organizations: ‘How great a step this was, we of to-day scarcely realize. We must remind ourselves that it was the first wavering step of a people toward organized social life.’ [5]
Allen, a devout Methodist, left the interdenominational FAS in 1789. [6] In his autobiography, Allen stresses his allegiance to the Methodist Church—they were the first to bring ‘glad tidings’ to the coloured people. [7] He would always be a Methodist–even as those in leadership failed to live up to the church’s teaching. [8] He also dreamed of a church managed by and focused on serving and uplifting his people.
Mother Bethel
On July 29, 1794, with donations from several benefactors, including President George Washington, [9] and Dr. Benjamin Rush, a signer of the Declaration of Independence and an eminent Philadelphia physician, [10] an old converted blacksmith shop was dedicated as a place of worship. Francis Asbury, the famed bishop of the Methodist Episcopal Church (MEC) and former assistant to John Wesley, led the dedication and preached the opening sermon. [11]
The church that would become Mother Bethel was born, but this was merely the beginning of a bitter struggle with the wider MEC conference of Philadelphia. Allen felt he had no choice but to remain within the MEC—to maintain legitimacy and to secure preachers to administer sacraments and blessings. [12] A representative of the MEC drew up Articles of Association between Bethel and St. George’s church of the Methodist conference, where the conference retained much control over Bethel’s property and operations, [13] albeit in association with trustees from Bethel. [14] According to MotherBethel.org:
From 1794 to 1816, the relationship between Bethel Church and St. George’s was a
mixed bag…At times, it was amicable and all got along just fine. At
other times, however, it was so tense that the St. George’s leadership sought to take
the books and keys of the church, insisting that the congregation and all property
belonged to them. At times… members of Bethel sat in
the aisles of the church to prevent the pastors of St. George’s from taking the pulpit
to preach. It was this rocky interaction that led Allen and the officers to amend the
articles of incorporation to include the “African Supplement” in 1807. Rather than
set them free, the supplement led to a final showdown in the Pennsylvania courts.
In 1815, St. George’s successfully managed to auction off Bethel, and Allen was
required to buy back his own church for $10,125. A series of rulings in lower courts
led to an 1816 hearing before the Pennsylvania Supreme Court, where Richard
Allen and the members of Bethel were declared free from MEC control. [15]
African Methodist Episcopal Church
On April 9th, 1816, Rev. Allen and 15 African American representatives from MEC
congregations in Baltimore, Maryland; Wilmington, Delaware; Salem, New Jersey;
and Attleboro, Pennsylvania convened the first General Conference at the newly
freed Bethel Church in Philadelphia to establish and organize the African
Methodist Episcopal (AME) Church. [16] Though not the initial nominee for bishop, by the end of the conference delegates laid hands on Rev. Richard Allen, and the former slave was ordained the first bishop of a religious denomination in the United States established by African Americans. [17] [18]
Like the FAS, the AME Church was focused not only on the spiritual health of its congregants but on the social well being of the Black community as well.
According to the AME website: The Mission of the African Methodist Episcopal 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. At every level of the Connection and in every local church, the African Methodist Episcopal Church shall engage in carrying out the spirit of the original Free African Society, out of which the AME Church evolved: that is, to seek out and save the lost, and serve the needy. [19]
Social justice was a cornerstone of Richard Allen’s beliefs. In an online article on the AME Church, the Social Welfare History Project at Virginia Commonwealth University states: ‘The church was dedicated to continued social protest, and Allen stressed social justice as the unifying and driving force of his church. The struggle for social justice was analogized with the Exodus story of the Bible…The Exodus typology evoked a feeling that their community transcended the here-and-now, and similar Biblical connections would be made by civil rights leaders of the 20th century. [20]
The formation of the AME Church as the first national Black church in the United Sates, and the ordination of Richard Allen as its first bishop foreshadowed the AME Church’s legacy of many firsts in the African American populace. Along with its work on social uplift, pioneering work in education and publishing soon became part of that legacy.
In 1817 Rev. Allen and Jacob Tapisco, a member of the congregation, published The Doctrines and Disciplines of the AME Church. [21] It was one of the first volumes published by African Americans in the United States. [22] The Doctrines and Disciplines of the AME Church as written for the ‘African Methodist Connection’ in the United States’ [23] became the blueprint for the Church going forward. It includes the history of the AME Church, twenty-five ‘Articles of Religion’, including the ‘Trinity, the Word of God, scripture, original sin and free will, works, sacraments, baptism, Lord’s Supper, church ceremonies, and government.’ [24] Following the Articles is a four-part catechism explaining the meaning and implication of the Doctrines. Finally it outlines ‘practical matters’ of the organization, including guidelines for the composition of the ‘General Conference’ and Yearly Conferences, qualifications for superintendents, elders and preachers, as well as advice for the education of children. [25]
The publication of the Doctrines and Disciples was merely the first step in a plethora of pioneering accomplishments. In 1818 the AME Church published its second volume–the African Methodist Pocket Hymn Book. It contained hymns, spirituals, anthems, and songs from the global community. It has been described as the ‘first book of songs published by the Children of Oppression.’ [26]
The AME Church also created the very earliest institutions of higher learning for African Americans in the U.S. From the beginning there was an insistence on training African Americans to carry out the Church’s functions. The lack of qualified individuals to meet leadership requirements underscored the need for schools equipped to meet this challenge. Educational institutions of higher learning were needed. Starting with Wilberforce College in Ohio in 1856, the AME Church would eventually establish more than twenty educational institutions for Blacks throughout the United States. [27]
Early Leaders and Expansion
A mere eight years after its founding, membership reached 9,888 [28] and at the time of Bishop Allen’s death in 1831, the AME Church had spread throughout the Northern States. Baltimore, Charleston, North Carolina, Chicago [29] and a church had been established in Haiti. [30]
Instrumental to the expansion of the AME Church in the years after Bishop Allen’s death were Morris Brown and William Paul Quinn.
Morris Brown
Morris Brown was born ‘a free mulatto’ in Charleston, South Carolina in 1770. [31]
He was a shoemaker by trade, and by 1817 had become a prominent church leader among that city’s Methodist Episcopal congregation. [32] Opportunities to worship were limited for Brown—as they were for all Blacks–in Charleston. City and state ordinances restricted services to daylight hours, and mandated church congregations have a majority White membership, though Blacks could have separate services, ‘usually in the basements.’
In 1817 a former slave from St. Thomas in the West Indies, Denmark Vesey, joined Morris Brown’s church and preached to small groups in his home. [33]
In 1818 Brown led 4,000 African Americans from the city’s three Methodist Episcopal churches and founded Emanuel African Methodist Episcopal Church. [34] That year, city officials arrested 140 Black church members and sentenced eight church leaders to fines and lashes. [35]
In 1822 Vesey planned a slave revolt in Charleston, becoming one of three men to plot a slave rebellion in the United States. [36] (The others, also preachers, were Nat Turner and Gabriel Prosser.) [37] [38] The Vesey-led rebellion was to take place in July, but several slaves informed their masters of the plot. By June, Vesey and several of his co-conspirators were arrested and brought to trial. By August, he and thirty-four others were executed. [39] Others were deported from the state. Their original church was burned down by a crowd of angry Whites.
Morris Brown was imprisoned, though never convicted. After several months he was released and, with several prominent members of his church, fled to Philadelphia. [40]
In Philadelphia Brown became a member of Mother Bethel, and one of Allen’s closest colleagues, [41] and contributed to the creation of the Doctrines and Disciplines of the AME Church. [42]
In 1828 Morris Brown was elected the second bishop of the AME Church, and in 1831, after Richard Allen’s death, became the sole bishop. [43]
Under Bishop Brown, the AME Church expansion continued, primarily in the Northeast, the Midwest and in Canada. By 1846, there were 298 churches in six AME Church districts located throughout 14 states and Canada. [44] Major congregations were established in ‘large Blacksmith shop cities’ of Philadelphia, New York, Boston, Pittsburgh, Baltimore, Washington, DC, Cincinnati, Chicago, Detroit. [45]
At the time of Bishop’s Brown’s death in May 1849, AME Church membership had risen to more than seventeen thousand. [46]
William Paul Quinn
William Paul Quinn was born near Calcutta, India in 1788. (Another source claims Honduras as his country of birth.) [47] He was among the delegates at the inaugural conference of the AME Church in 1816. Active with the Underground Railroad, he helped to establish AME Churches in Indiana, Kentucky, Missouri, Louisiana, and California, and as far south as New Orleans. [48]
Education and Daniel Alexander Payne
The early AME Church was concerned with social uplift for African Americans like the former FAS, but it would also significantly impact the lives of many African Americans in education–particularly higher education.
Daniel Payne
Daniel Alexander Payne was born to free persons of color on February 24, 1811 in Charleston, South Carolina. [49] At age eight he attended his first class at the Minor’s Moralist School. The school, which he attended for two years, was ‘owned and operated by free men of color’ and was designed to ‘provide educational opportunities for orphaned and indigent children.’ [50] He also attended–and taught–at a Methodist Sunday school in the Charleston area. [51]
In his book, Daniel Alexander Payne, Nelson T. Strobert of the Lutheran Theological Seminary in Gettysburg, PA, describes a ‘prayerful’ session at age eighteen where Payne heard the words: ‘II have set thee apart to educate thyself in order that thou mayest be an educator to thy people. [52]
Payne opened his first school in 1829 with just three students. He also taught slaves at night. Beset with low income Payne was initially forced to close his school but later reopened and, according to Strobert, was ‘very successful’ with his second attempt. [53]
An 1835 South Carolina law made it illegal to educate slaves, and on March 31st of that year Payne again was forced to close his school. [54]
He traveled to New York and soon became friends with a Lutheran minister, Pastor Strobel. [55] Payne was soon offered a scholarship to attend the Gettysburg Theological Seminary, an affiliate of the Lutheran Church, in Gettysburg Pennsylvania. Initially he was not interested in theology but after acquainting himself with the Lutheran Church, and the abolitionist writings of the Seminary’s president, Samuel Simon Schumcker, he accepted. [56]
According to Strobert, Payne underwent three significant changes at Gettysburg: he was confirmed in the Lutheran church, made connections with an AME church in Pennsylvania, and became heavily influenced by the Pietist movement. The Pietists ideology, with its emphasis on everyday Christian living—and on education [57]—would influence Payne for the remainder of his life.
While at the seminary Payne accepted the opportunity to preach and teach Sunday School in the Gettysburg area. He also established a Sunday School for Black children, assisted in the formation of a Society for Moral and Mental Improvement, and lectured on grammar and geography. [58]
Payne was forced to leave the seminary in 1837 for medical reasons. [59] In May of 1837 he became a licensed preacher in the Lutheran church. [60] On June 6th, 1839, in Carlisle, PA, Payne was elected Bishop of the Franckean Synod within the Lutheran church. He was ordained three days later. [61] Payne, an abolitionist, preached against slavery, not only because it enslaved ‘the black man’, but because it enslave[d] man.’ [62] In 1840 Payne moved to Philadelphia, where a large Black population existed. [63]
Upon leaving the Gettysburg Seminary, Payne was encouraged by one of his Lutheran mentors to affiliate with the AME Church. [64] Strobert suggests that the history and the underlying principles of the AME Church, the long struggle to establish itself as one independent body, attracted Payne to the denomination. [65]
Payne joined the Quarterly Conference of Bethel AME Church in Philadelphia. [66] In 1842 he was accepted as a preacher on a trail basis. A year later he was accepted into ‘full connection’, then as an itinerant pastor to Israel Church in Washington, D.C, by Bishop Morris Brown [67]
In 1843 Payne wrote a series of five influential articles on ministry for the AME Magazine. [68] The articles expressed his views on education and training of the clergy. The first two covered what Payne saw as the causes of incompetency among ministers, and the reasons for that incompetency. These included a deficient curriculum, the lack of a rigorous examination for qualifying clergy, and a ‘contempt for solid education’, by clergy, for ministry. Additionally, there was a basic belief that inspiration, and not education, was the key driver of ministry. The other articles centered on the role of the Annual Conferences in examining candidates, the preparation for itinerant ministry, and the role of learning classical languages such as Hebrew and Greek in the training of ministers. [69]
To finance the education of candidates for ministry, Payne advocated the creation of educational societies among congregations, scholarships, and the establishment of various seminaries among the different conferences. One of Payne’s strongest supporters was Bishop Morris Brown, who invited him to the 1844 AME General Conference, and appointed him chair of the Committee on Education. He introduced a resolution to implement a course of study for pastors. It was passed unanimously. [70]
In 1845 Payne was transferred to Baltimore’s Bethel Church. There, in addition to pastor’s duties he resumed teaching, eventually establishing a school of about fifty students. [71] While in Baltimore, he organized a concert to pay the note on the mortgage for a new building. Different musical instruments were used, and the concert was a success. Thereafter, musical instruments became a fixture in the AME Church. [72]
Payne’s influence in the church grew and at the 1848 General Conference he was appointed the Church’s historiographer. [73] The 1848 Conference also addressed educational needs within the church. Pastors of every church were empowered to establish a high school wherever ‘practicable’ and sanctioned and approved by the Conference. [74] During his tenure as historian, Payne wrote the History of the African Methodist Episcopal Church. [75]
On May 13th, 1852 Daniel Payne was ordained a bishop in the AME Church. He was one of only three bishops within the entire AME Church. He was assigned the First District, comprising the Philadelphia and New England Conferences. [76] Education was always high on his list of priorities, and he encouraged pastors to speak on the issue at least every six moths. He also encouraged parents to keep their children in schools, read books, and attend scientific lectures. [77]
By 1854 Bishop Payne, who by now was a widower and in charge of the Ohio Conference, moved to Cincinnati, and embarked on his second marriage. [78]
Wilberforce University
A strong tenet of the early AME Church was education. Most ministers in the antebellum U.S. had little or no formal education, and Black schools were shackled by poverty and a paucity of trained teachers. [79] Payne set himself two tasks to alleviate this: first, “to improve the ministry; the second, to improve the people.” He introduced resolutions requiring church leaders to study English grammar, geography, arithmetic, ancient history, modern history, ecclesiastical history, and theology. Educated ministers, he said, would lift “the mass of general ignorance” from the Black community. [80]
In 1856 the Methodist Episcopal Church opened Wilberforce College, an institution specifically built for ‘Negro’ children. [81] That year in anticipation of the new institution, Bishop Payne and his wife moved from Cincinnati to Tawana Springs, Ohio, the site of the new school. [82] [83] Bishop Payne was a member of Wilberforce’s original Board of Trustees. [84]
For six years Wilberforce was supported financially by southern slaveholders who sent their slave offspring there for an education. [85] At the height of the Civil War however, enrollment and financial support ended, and Wilberforce was forced to close its doors. A year later, Bishop Payne negotiated the purchase of Wilberforce’s facilities for the AME Church. [86]
On June 11, 1863, the deed for Wilberforce University was transferred to the AME Church, making the school the first institution of higher learning owned by African Americans. Bishop Payne was elected president, becoming the first Black president of an institution of higher learning in the United States. [87] The University was incorporated on July 10, 1863. [88]
According to Virginia Commonwealth University:
Wilberforce…drew scholars and students of high regard from around the country. It became the base for the renewed Christian Recorder publication in 1884, and one department received the high endorsement of the Ohio legislature in the allotment of state funding. [89]
The University gave rise to a ‘Normal and Industrial Department’, which eventually became Central State College in 1851, and Central State University five years later. [90] The Wilberforce Theological Department also gave rise to the Payne Theological Seminary, which started operations in 1891 [91] [92]
Within three decades the AME Church created academic institutions in several states, including Paul Quinn College in Texas, Allen University in South Carolina, Morris Brown College in Georgia, and Western University in Kansas (1865-1943). [93] Institutions of higher learning were also established outside the United States– in Liberia, Zimbabwe and South Africa. [94]
The rapid growth in AME Church membership after the Civil War facilitated the building of these institutions. Virginia Commonwealth University states: The dynamic growth in membership in the decades following the Civil War was an important factor in the ability to create these institutions. From 1856-1866, membership increased from 20,000 to 75,000, and more than doubled in the decade following. A subsequent increase in funds resulting from the expansion was instrumental in the development of educational institutions in a multitude of former slave-holding regions. [95]
Bishop Daniel Alexander Payne died of natural causes at his home in Wilberforce, Ohio, on November 29th, 1893. He was eighty-two. [96]
The Civil War and Henry McNeal Turner
The AME Church had 20,000 members in 1858 when Henry McNeal Turner joined; four decades later it had over 450,000. [97]
Henry McNeal Turner was born free on February 1, 1834 in Newberry, South Carolina. [98] He was raised by his mother–a teenager at the time of his birth–and his maternal grandmother. In his biography of Turner, Professor Stephen W. Angell of the Earlham School of Religion, Richmond, Indiana, [99] states, even as a boy, Turner had visions of being a leader for his people. [100] One of the most accessible paths to leadership was through the church. At 14, Turner and his family became members of the Southern Methodist Episcopal Church (SMEC) [101]
Literacy was an important qualification for ministry. In slave states, a group to which South Carolina belonged, teaching Blacks to read and write was illegal. Nonetheless at around age 15 while sweeping floors at a lawyer’s office, Turner so impressed his employers with his knowledge of scripture and a desire to learn they agreed to instruct him in arithmetic, astronomy, geography, history, law and theology. [102]
In 1853 [103] Turner became a licensed preacher in the SMEC, ‘unusual’ for that demonization, which allowed Black exhorters, but not preachers. [104] His extraordinary gifts as a preacher became apparent.
In an article in Christianity Today, University of Memphis Professor Andre E. Johnson describes Turner’s preaching style.
[His] preaching combined not only Scripture but also outside readings of classics, such as John Milton’s Paradise Lost and the writings of popular theologian Thomas Dick. Turner also remembered much of what he read and used it in his extemporaneously delivered sermons. Additionally, Turner presented his erudite sermons in a powerful and eloquently delivered oratory. His preaching earned Turner the nickname “Negro Spurgeon,” nodding to the eloquent English Baptist pastor who was a contemporary of Turner’s. [105]
Aware of the limited prospects for advancement within the SMEC, Turner joined the AME Church because he ‘heard that within that church Black men could become bishops.’ He was mentored by Bishop Daniel Payne [106] and pastored in Baltimore, from 1858 to 1862, and at Washington D.C.’s Israel Church from 1862-1863. By then he had achieved the status of elder. [107]
The early years at the AME Church saw Turner contributing articles to the Church’s weekly newspaper, ‘The Christian Recorder’, advocating for church projects. [108] In Washington D.C. he made powerful allies, including U.S. Representative Thaddeus Stevens, Secretary of the Treasury Salmon Chase, and Senator Benjamin Wade. [109]
The Civil War
On November 6, 1860, Abraham Lincoln was elected the sixteenth President of the United States. The following April, the Confederate Army fired at Fort Sumter in Charleston harbour, South Carolina, and the Civil War had begun. [110]
During the conflict, affiliates of the AME Church became places of refuge for the ‘contrabands’–slaves fleeing their masters to states held by Union forces. [111] Turner’s Israel Church was not an exception. He used his church as a place of spiritual revival and for political and social organization. [112]
First African American Chaplain in the U.S. Military
On January 1, 1863, President Lincoln issued the Emancipation Proclamation [113] effectively marking the beginning of the end of slavery in the United States. The Proclamation included a provision that freed slaves could serve in the Union Army. [114] Turner’s Israel Church in Washington D.C. became a recruiting station for Black soldiers. By the summer of 1863 Turner and his associates had organized the First Regiment of United States Colored Troops. (USCT) [115] Congress had enacted legislation drafting young men into the Armed Forces. While Black men were not exempt, they were prevented from becoming commissioned officers. (This policy was ‘softened’ to allow Black chaplains and surgeons, and by the end of the War, there were at least eighty-seven African American officers in the Union Army.) [116]
Turner applied for the chaplaincy of the First Regiment of United States Colored Troops. His application was accepted and Abraham Lincoln offered him the position, making him the first Black chaplain in any branch of the military, and the only officer in the USCT. [117]
Turner cared for the physical as well as the educational and spiritual needs of his regiment [118] Though a chaplain, Turner was often in the thick of combat with his men. However, when there was a lull in the fighting, Turner would conduct as many as three church services on the ‘Sabbath’, and prayer meetings during the week. He also used his position to encourage his soldiers to convert to Christ. [119] He also encouraged literacy. He was able to secure several texts for his men, as well as weekly installments of the leading Black newspapers of the day, The Christian Recorder and the Anglo African. [120] He also published articles in the Christian Recorder, effectively becoming a war correspondent. [121]
In addition to his duties as chaplain, Turner tried to plant churches where his regiment was stationed. In February 1865, he arrived in North Carolina intending to set up churches in that state. However the lack of preachers, and an already established African Methodist Episcopal Zion (AMEZ) church, rendered his efforts largely unmet. [122]
On Sunday, April 9, 1865, Palm Sunday, General Robert E. Lee of the Confederate Army surrendered at Appomattox, Virginia, ending the Civil War. The following Friday, April 14, Good Friday, President Lincoln was shot at Ford’s Theatre in Washington, D.C. He died the next morning. [123] [124] The following September, Henry McNeal Turner’s First Regiment of the United States Colored Troops was dissolved. [125]
In North Carolina Turner encountered the desperate plight of the newly freed men and women. Angell argues that Turner was ‘overwhelmed…by the enormous needs of rural North Carolina freed people’ and that ‘most black North Carolinians had ‘very limited horizons’ and ‘had been unable to cultivate habits of industry and thrift’, and their principles of ‘morality [were] at a very low ebb.’ The responsibility of elevating the Black population of the South, Turner believed, rested with other African Americans, like the men of his own regiment, with the ability to treat both Whites and Blacks with ‘respect and impartiality.’ [126]
When the Civil War ended, The Freedmen’s Bureau, established to assist former slaves and poor Whites in the aftermath of the Civil War, assigned him to Georgia as an army chaplain. [127] He was also instructed by Bishop Daniel Payne to fill a leadership vacuum caused by the departure of one pastor and the sudden death of another in Georgia. [128] In December 1865 Turner resigned his army commission and by 1866 had become a[n] AME Church superintendent (or presiding elder) in North Georgia. [129]
Growing the church in Georgia was his ‘most pressing objective.’ [130] He encouraged African American congregants of the White-led Methodist Episcopal Church, South to join. During his ‘peak’ year, probably 1866, he is reported to have traveled over fifteen thousand miles, delivering more than five hundred addresses. Turner and his AME Church partners, including Pastor Wesley Gaines (who would later establish Atlanta’s Morris Brown College) and theologian and pastor, Theophilus G. Steward, planted churches in several large Georgia cities, including Atlanta, Columbus and Macon. [131] The AME Church spread rapidly, and Turner found it difficult to find qualified pastors for the congregations, sometimes assigning, to the new congregations, preachers who were unlicensed, illiterate or who may not have a ‘thorough acquaintance’ with the Bible. [132]
Angell argues that one reason for the success of the church immediately following the Civil War was that it was a ‘practical means of celebrating the advent of freedom.’ The Black church represented a ‘social order’ in which Blacks were not subject to being perpetually subjugated to Whites. [133]
Supposedly Turner claimed credit for bringing in five thousand new members per month [134] Angell disputes this number but agrees that Turner was responsible for bringing in about ‘two-fifths’ of new Georgia AME Church members during its first five years in in that state. [135] “I Seek My Brethren,” the title of an ‘often-repeated’ sermon by pastor and Turner associate, Theophilus G. Steward, ‘became a clarion call to evangelize fellow blacks in Georgia, Florida, Alabama, Texas, and many other parts of the south. In 1880 AME membership reached 400,000 because of its rapid spread below the Mason-Dixon line.’ [136]
In the 1890s Turner expanded the reach of the AME Church to the African continent, to Liberia and Sierra Leone in 1891 and into South Africa in 1896. [137]
After many of the gains made by African Americans during Reconstruction were reversed, Turner became more pessimistic about race relations in the United States. After the 1896 Supreme Court Plessy v. Ferguson decision that affirmed the ‘separate but equal’ doctrine he declared’ that there was no place for Black people in the United States. [138]
On May 8th, 1915 he was in Windsor, Ontario, attending an AME General Conference. He suffered a ‘massive’ stroke and died hours late. [139] At the time of his death, Turner had numerous major accomplishments to his credit. He was the first Black chaplain and officer in the U.S. military [140], a Republican Party Organizer, and Gregoria State representative (a position that was cut short when Georgia lawmakers passed a law making it illegal for Blacks to hold elected positions). He was also a publications manager in the AME Church and later a bishop. In 1885 he ordained the first female deacon in the AME Church (though the decision was reversed two years later by the General Conference. [141]
By the beginning of the 20th century, the AME Church had thirteen districts, and at the 1904 Annual Conference, President Theodore Roosevelt addressed an organization that had grown to include eleven bishops and almost 300 ministers. [142]
Publishing
AME Book Concern
The church’s emphasis on education–spearheaded by Bishops Daniel Payne, Henry McNeal Turner and others in the latter half of the nineteenth century—created a need for more outlets for intellectual expression among laypeople and clergy. Elders looked to the Church’s publishing capabilities as a tool to educate their followers. But publishing became far more than a vehicle for educating the Church’s clergy.
Throughout its history the AME Church has published much of its own material, to train, inform and educate members and non-members alike. One year after its founding, the AME Book Concern was established, the country’s first publishing enterprise founded by Blacks. [143]
The AME Book Concern’s first publications included the Doctrines and Disciplines of the African Methodist Episcopal Church in 1817, and the Methodist Pocket Hymn Book a year later. [144]
At the 1836 conference a quarterly magazine for the ‘use and benefit’ of the connection was ‘decreed.’ [145] In 1847 the first issue of The ‘Christian Herald’ was published; the name was changed to the Christian Recorder in 1852—a journal devoted to ‘religion, morality, science, and literature’. Carter Woodson, in his book, the History of the Negro Church, states that some articles show a devotion ‘to religion, morality, science, and literature’, some showing ‘an intelligent insight into conditions, a deep interest in intellectual forces effective in the uplift of the people, and a general knowledge of the great factors which have made the history of the world.’ [146]
Other journals include the A.M.E Review–the ‘oldest journal in the world published by Black people, [147] and the ‘Western Christian Recorder’.
In addition to journals and newspapers, the AME Book Concern published books in a variety of genres–religious and secular, nonfiction and fiction. Religious books sought to assist ‘clergy in their performance and understanding of the church’ and to document the history of the denomination and its leaders. Secular publications documented African American history, described the social, economic and political life of Afro-Americans, portrayed ‘some aspect’ of Afro-American life and culture. [148]
The AME Church Sunday School Union
In 1882 the AME Church Sunday School Union was founded. [149] It ‘was established to promote Sunday School curriculum to students and teachers of African Methodism.’ Beyond the publication of Sunday School literature, the Union printed books on general denominational affairs. Among its publications was Bishop Daniel Alexander Payne’s 1891 work, History of the African Methodist Episcopal Church. The AME Church Sunday School Union became the publishing arm of the AME Church. The Union would eventually operate a full functioning printing plant, and supply the church’s school material, General Conference material, Combined Minutes, Episcopal District Conference Guides, and souvenir journals.
In 1883, Dr. B.T. Tanner suggested a quarterly publication. At the General Conference of 1884, the idea took form as the A.M.E. Review, with Tanner as editor. The scholarly journal would become a focal point for Black intellectual life leading up to the Civil Rights movement
In 1886 and 1891, two other journals commenced publication. The ‘Southern Christian Recorder’ was a church magazine organized for the growing AME Church communities in the newly emancipated areas. The ‘Western Christian Recorder’ held a similar purpose for distant communities, like California, some of which had been established just before the chaos of the Civil War. [150]
The Union has associate bookstores around the United States country, with stores in Alabama, California, Florida, Georgia, Illinois, Maryland, New Jersey, Pennsylvania, South Carolina, Tennessee, Texas and Washington, D.C.
Civil Rights
The AME Church continued the fight for social justice when the dream of Reconstruction devolved into the nightmare of lynching and Jim Crow. In 1889 the Ohio Conference declared the only thing remaining for Blacks was to let the law of self-defence take its course if neither the state nor national government would stop lynching in the South. An 1893 Review article called for the formation of an armed secret organization of Black self-defence. In 1894 the Metropolitan AME Church in Washington, D.C. hosted Frederick Douglass (of the African Methodist Episcopal Zion Church) when he gave his last great speech, “The Lesson of the Hour” on the injustice of lynching. [151]
A. Philip Randolph
The quest for justice and Civil Rights, as a direct outgrowth of the church’s core beliefs, continued with increased ferocity in the first half of the 20th century.
Asa Philip Randolph was born on April 15, 1889 in Crescent City Florida. The son of an ordained AME Church minister, Randolph was a lifelong member of the AME Church. [152]
Randolph became a member of the Socialist Party. By 1917 he was editing ‘The Messenger’ a journal dedicated to African American issues. In 1925 he began a ten-year fight to unionize the Brotherhood of Sleeping Car Porters (BSCP). After a bitterly fought campaign the BSCP was finally certified in 1935 as the ‘exclusive collective bargaining agent of the Pullman porter.’ [153]
In 1940, after President Franklin D. Roosevelt refused to issue an executive order banning anti-black discrimination in the defence industry, Randolph threatened a march on Washington D.C. Six days before the march was scheduled to take place, President Roosevelt issued Executive Order 8802, which ‘mandated the formation of the Fair Employment Practices Commission to investigate racial discrimination charges against defense firms.’ [154]
Six years later Randolph pressed for desegregating the U.S. military – a ‘Jim Crow conscription service.’ Faced with a widespread civil disobedience campaign, on July 26, 1948 President Harry Truman ‘ordered an end to military discrimination “as quickly as possible.”’ [155]
Nineteen sixty-three marked the centennial of the Emancipation Proclamation. In May of that year Randolph contacted Dr. Martin Luther King Jr. and several other civil rights leaders regarding a March on Washington ‘for Negro job rights.’ [156] ‘The stated goals of the protest included “a comprehensive civil rights bill” that would do away with segregated public accommodations; “protection of the right to vote”; mechanisms for seeking redress of violations of constitutional rights; “desegregation of all public schools in 1963”; a massive federal works program “to train and place unemployed workers”; and “a Federal Fair Employment Practices Act barring discrimination in all employment.” [157]
On August 28th more than 200,000 protesters participated on the March on Washington for Jobs and Freedom. Towards the end of the program, Rev. Martin Luther King Jr. delivered his historic ‘I Have a Dream’ Speech. The following year the Civil Rights Act of 1964 was passed. It ‘prohibited discrimination in public places, provided for the integration of schools and other public facilities, and made employment discrimination illegal. This document was the most sweeping civil rights legislation since Reconstruction.’ The following year the Voting Rights Act of 1965 ‘outlawed the discriminatory voting practices adopted in many southern states after the Civil War, including literacy tests as a prerequisite to voting.’ [158]
Randolph continued to be involved in trade union and social justice issues until his death in 1979 [159]
Rev. J. A. DeLaine
In 1946 Joseph Armstrong DeLaine was a teacher and an AME Church minister in Clarendon County, S.C. A hydro electric dam was nearing completion and roads in the area were under water. While White students were bused to school, Black students–including those of his Society Hill AME Church–were left to fend for themselves. This crystalized the crushing inequality of the busing system in his state. A year later, in July 1947, Rev. DeLaine with the assistance of an associate, Levi Pearson, filed a petition to ‘test’ the discriminatory practices of the school busing system in South Carolina. The petition reached Federal Court in S.C .in February 1948 but was dismissed the following June on a technicality. [160]
The following year Rev. DeLaine prepared to file another lawsuit. On March 12th he arrived at the ‘Teacher’s Building in Columbia, S.C.’ At the meeting were ministers, teachers, and members of the NAACP legal team, headed by chief counsel, Thurgood Marshall. [161]
Marshall insisted that Rev. DeLaine persuade other litigants to pursue the case. On June 8th, Rev. DeLaine was asked to lead the group organizing the lawsuit—a suit they were willing to take ‘all the way to the Supreme Court’ if necessary. Twenty parents, all of whom affiliated with the AME or Baptist churches [162] filed the suit requesting equal educational facilities for their children [163] At the top of the list, alphabetically, was Harry Briggs of the St. Mark’s AME Church, who filed for five children. That suit, ‘Briggs v. Elliot’, ‘was heard in federal district court in Charleston, SC in May 1951. [164]
The plaintiffs lost the case. [165] Under the guidance of Marshall and the NAACP, it was then combined with four other cases and appealed to the U.S. Supreme Court. One of those cases was brought by another AME minister, Oliver Brown of Topeka, Kansas, on behalf of his daughter, Linda. In 1952 the Supreme Court agreed to hear the cases collectively. [166] The case became known as Brown v. Board of Education. The landmark 1954 Supreme Court decision ‘ruled that separating children in public schools on the basis of race was unconstitutional. It signaled the end of legalized racial segregation in the schools of the United States, overruling the “separate but equal” principle set forth in the 1896 Plessy v. Ferguson case.’
The Decision and the events leading up to it cost Rev. Delaine dearly. The AME Church where he pastored was destroyed. By 1951 his wife Mattie, also a teacher, and he lost their jobs, and their credit was cancelled. Their home was fire bombed. One October night in 1955, night riders again attacked his home, this time with bullets. DeLaine returned gunfire but hit no one. He fled the state that night. [167] A warrant was issued for his arrest. He spent the remainder of his life in New York and North Carolina, and never returned to his native South Carolina. He died on August 3rd, 1974. [168]
It would be more than twenty-five years later, on October 10, 2000, when SC. state officials cleared Rev. J.A. DeLaine of all charges. [169]
In 2004 Rev. DeLaine, along with the other principals in the Briggs v. Elliot case—Harry and Eliza Briggs, and Levi Pearson–were awarded the Congressional Gold Medal [170] the highest civilian honor awarded by the Congress of the United States. [171]
Rosa Parks
Mrs. Rosa Parks was a NAACP youth leader [172] and a member of the St. Paul’s AME Church in Montgomery, AL. [173] She was also a seamstress at the Montgomery Fair department store. [174] In the early evening of Thursday, December 1st, 1955, Mrs. Parks was on a Montgomery municipal bus, on her way home from work. [175] She was seated in the colored section. Three Black passengers were sitting nearby. Mrs. Parks recalls the events of that evening. ‘All of the front seats in the bus were occupied by white passengers, the driver wanted the four people, a man in the seat with me, and two women across the aisle, to stand in order for this white man to be accommodated with a seat. The other three people did stand up, and when I refused to stand up, the policemen were called. Two came, placed me under arrest, and had me taken to jail. [176]
She was released on bond later that evening. Her husband, Raymond Parks, and the head of the local NAACP, E. D. Nixon, drove her home. Nixon spent the rest of the evening on the phone and began organizing a civil action in protest.
The following evening, a meeting was held at the Dexter Avenue Baptist Church, where a twenty-six-year-old, Rev. Martin Luther King Jr. was the pastor. The next day, Saturday, young people and women working for the civil rights movement, were on the streets of Montgomery, handing out flyers publicizing a planned boycott of the city’s bus system. On Sunday, December 4th, Black pastors informed their congregations of Mrs. Park’s arrest and of the planned boycott of the bus system. On Monday, approximately 40,000 Black riders refused to ride the Montgomery bus system. That evening, Black leaders from across the city held a meeting at the Dexter Avenue Baptist Church. The Montgomery Improvement Association elected Rev. Martin Luther King Jr. its leader and spokesperson—and the face of the boycott. The Association’s demands included ‘hiring of black drivers, and a first-come, first-seated policy, with Whites entering and filling seats from the front and African Americans from the rear’ [177] (Previously Blacks were required to give up their seats to a White person if the white section was full.) Subsequently, a lawsuit was filed by attorney Fred Gray and the NAACP seeking to remove segregation entirely form the city’s bus system on the grounds the practice violated the Fourteenth Amendment, which guaranteed equal rights under state and federal laws. The district court found for the plaintiffs in June of 1956. The ruling was appealed to the U.S. Supreme Court which upheld the lower court’s ruling the following December. On December 21st, 1956, the Montgomery bus system was desegregated.
Rosa and Raymond Parks struggled to make ends meet after the boycott. They lost their jobs and in 1957 moved to Detroit, Michigan. In 1964, Mrs. Parks became a deaconess in the AME Church. In 1987 she co-founded the Rosa and Raymond Parks Institute for Self Development. The Institute’s objective is to ‘motivate and direct youth not targeted by other programs to achieve their highest potential.’ [178]
Mrs. Parks has received numerous honorary degrees and awards [179], including the Congressional Gold Medal. [180]
Mrs. Parks died on October 24th, 2005. She was the first woman in U.S. history to lie in state at the U.S. Capitol [181]
James Cone
Professor James Cone (1938-2018) was an ordained minister in the AME Church. [182] A renowned theologian and scholar, Professor Cone is known for his work in the area of Black Liberation Theology. Two of his twelve books, Black Theology & Black Power (1969) and A Black Theology of Liberation (1970) are considered seminal works in that area.
Bryan Stevenson
Bryan Stevenson was born in Milton, Delaware in 1959. By age 10 he was accompanying his local AME choir on piano. [183] In 1985 Mr. Stevenson graduated Harvard Law School. [184] In 1989 he founded the Equal Justice Initiative (EJI), a non-profit organization based in Montgomery, AL. The EJI describes him as a ‘widely acclaimed public interest lawyer who has dedicated his career to helping the poor, the incarcerated and the condemned’…[185] The organization ‘provides legal representation to people who have been illegally convicted, unfairly sentenced, or abused in state jails and prisons. [It challenges] the death penalty and excessive punishment and…provide[s] re-entry assistance to formerly incarcerated people. [186] In April 2018, it opened The Legacy Museum: From Enslavement to Mass Incarceration, which utilizes technology to ‘dramatize the enslavement of African Americans, the evolution of racial terror lynchings, legalized racial segregation and racial hierarchy in America.’
Charleston, S.C., June 2015
The AME Church has realized extraordinary accomplishments since its establishment in 1816. In many ways the world is a different place for the poor, the powerless, and the marginalized. However the environment of bigotry and intolerance that forced Bishop Allen to leave the MEC still resides in the hearts of men and women to this day.
It was the evening of Wednesday, June 17th–almost two centuries after Morris Brown fled his Mother Emanuel church in the wake of Denmark Vesey’s attempted rebellion. A stranger entered the doors of Mother Emanuel and joined a Bible study group. The stranger was a white supremacist. Later that evening nine members of the congregation lay between the pews. Slaughtered. [187]
Richard Allen’s vision of a church where African Americans can worship freely, attain spiritual fulfillment, fight for social justice and equality, and against intolerance, bigotry and hate, is as relevant today as it was in 1794 and in 1816.
The Emanuel Nine.
Sharonda Coleman-Singleton
Cynthia Hurd
Susie Jackson
Ethel Lance
DePayne Middleton-Doctor
Clementa Pinckney
Tywanza Sanders
Daniel Simmons
Myra Thompson
© 2019 Weldon Turner. All Rights reserved.
Media
Bishops of the AME Church
Bishops of the A.M.E. Church. , ca. 1876. Boston: J.H. Daniels. Photograph. https://www.loc.gov/item/98501269/.
Bethel AME Church Philadelphia
Schomburg Center for Research in Black Culture, Manuscripts, Archives and Rare Books Division, The New York Public Library. “Bethel A.M.E. Church, the first Colored Methodist Church in Philadelphia, established in 1787.” New York Public Library Digital Collections. Accessed April 14, 2019. http://digitalcollections.nypl.org/items/510d47df-9d9d-a3d9-e040-e00a18064a99
Morris Brown
Schomburg Center for Research in Black Culture, Manuscripts, Archives and Rare Books Division, The New York Public Library. “The Rev. Morris Brown of Philadelphia. Second Bishop of the African Methodist Episcopal Church of the United States.” New York Public Library Digital Collections. Accessed April 14, 2019. http://digitalcollections.nypl.org/items/510d47da-7658-a3d9-e040-e00a18064a99
Daniel Alexander Payne
Schomburg Center for Research in Black Culture, Photographs and Prints Division, The New York Public Library. “Daniel Alexander Payne (Bishop Payne).” New York Public Library Digital Collections. Accessed April 14, 2019. http://digitalcollections.nypl.org/items/510d47e1-cdbb-a3d9-e040-e00a18064a99
Henry McNeal Turner
Schomburg Center for Research in Black Culture, Photographs and Prints Division, The New York Public Library. “Bishop Henry McNeal Turner of the African Methodist Episcopal Church.” New York Public Library Digital Collections. Accessed April 14, 2019. http://digitalcollections.nypl.org/items/ad8be6ae-50e2-9cc5-e040-e00a18061a94
Rosa Parks
USIA / National Archives and Records Administration Records of the U.S. Information Agency Record Group 306. ‘Photograph of Rosa Parks with Dr. Martin Luther King jr. (ca. 1955)’ Wikimedia Commons Accessed April 14, 2019 https://upload.wikimedia.org/wikipedia/commons/8/80/Rosa_Parks_%28detail%29.tiff
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Allen, Richard and Jacob Tapisco, Doctrines and Disciplines of the African Methodist Episcopal Church, University of North Carolina at Chapel Hill Library, 2017, Digital edition
Angell, Stephen Ward, Bishop Henry McNeal Turner and African American Religion in the South, The University of Tennessee Press, 1992
Joyce, Donald Franklin, Black Book Publishers in the United States: A Historical Dictionary of the Presses, 1817-1990, Greenwood Press, 1991, Electronic Edition.
Lincoln, C. Eric, and Lawrence H. Mamiya, The Black Church in the African American Experience, Duke University Press, 1990
Newman, Richard S., Freedom’s Prophet, New York University Press, 2008
Strobert, Nelson T., Daniel Alexander Payne, University Press of America, 2012
Wilson Costen, Melva, In Spirit and In Truth, The Music of African American Worship, Westminster John Knox Press, 2004
Woodson, Carter G., The History of the Negro Church, Associated Publishers, 1921, Amazon Kindle edition
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God use Richard Allen mightily,we thank God