Richard Allen was born enslaved in Philadelphia, purchased his own freedom, and built the African Methodist Episcopal Church, one of the earliest independent Black denominations in the United States. From Bethel Church, which he opened in 1794, he led a decades-long struggle with white Methodist authorities for control of Black religious life that ended in 1816 with the founding of the African Methodist Episcopal Church and his election as its first bishop. His church became the organizing center of free Black Philadelphia and a national institution that endures today.
At a Glance
- Born
- 14 February 1760, Philadelphia, Pennsylvania
- Died
- 26 March 1831, Philadelphia, Pennsylvania
- Known for
- Founding the African Methodist Episcopal Church (1816); Free African Society (1787); Mother Bethel Church (1794)
- Fields
- Religion · Organizing · Abolition
- Era
- Revolution & Early Republic
Early Life
Allen was born on 14 February 1760 in Philadelphia, enslaved in the household of Benjamin Chew, a prominent lawyer. While he was still a child, Chew sold Allen, his parents, and his siblings to Stokeley Sturgis, who owned a farm near Dover, Delaware. Financial pressure later led Sturgis to sell Allen’s mother and several of the children, a separation Allen recalled for the rest of his life.
As a teenager Allen was converted by Methodist preachers who were active in Delaware, and he joined a Methodist society. He taught himself to read and write. Sturgis, too, was moved by Methodist preaching against slavery, and around 1780 he agreed to let Allen and his brother buy their freedom. By Allen’s own account the price was sixty pounds in gold and silver, or two thousand dollars in Continental currency, which he paid over several years by cutting wood, working in a brickyard, and hauling salt as a wagon driver during the Revolutionary War. He took the surname Allen after gaining his freedom.
Through the early 1780s he preached as an itinerant in Delaware, Maryland, New Jersey, and Pennsylvania, often to white as well as Black audiences. In 1784 Methodist leaders meeting in Baltimore recognized him as a preacher.
Life and Work
In 1786 Allen returned to Philadelphia and was invited to preach to Black worshippers at St. George’s Methodist Episcopal Church, where Black membership grew quickly. On 12 April 1787 he and Absalom Jones founded the Free African Society, a mutual-aid association that provided for the sick, widows, and orphans and was among the first organizations of its kind created by free Black Americans. The break with St. George’s came when white trustees pulled Jones and others from their knees during prayer in a newly built gallery, and the Black worshippers walked out together. Allen dated the incident to 1787; historians, including Gary B. Nash and Richard S. Newman, have argued from church records that it more likely happened around 1792.
During Philadelphia’s yellow fever epidemic of 1793, Allen and Jones organized Black residents to nurse the sick and bury the dead. When the publisher Mathew Carey accused Black nurses of profiteering, they answered with A Narrative of the Proceedings of the Black People, During the Late Awful Calamity in Philadelphia, in the Year 1793 (1794), one of the first pamphlets published by Black Americans to rebut a public charge against their community.
While Jones led most of the Free African Society into the African Episcopal Church of St. Thomas, Allen remained a Methodist. He bought a former blacksmith shop, hauled it to a lot at Sixth and Lombard Streets, and fitted it out as a church. In July 1794 Bishop Francis Asbury dedicated Bethel Church. In 1799 Asbury ordained Allen a deacon, making him the first Black man ordained in the Methodist Episcopal Church. Allen was also a successful businessman, working as a chimney sweep and shoemaker and buying property in the city.
White Methodist elders claimed authority over Bethel’s pulpit and property, and the dispute ran for more than two decades, including physical confrontations at the church door. In January 1816 the Pennsylvania Supreme Court ruled in Bethel’s favor, confirming the congregation’s independence. That April, Black Methodist delegates from Philadelphia, Baltimore, and other congregations met at Bethel and resolved to form the African Methodist Episcopal Church. Allen was elected and consecrated its first bishop during the same meeting.
Allen used Bethel as a base for political action. In January 1817 the church hosted a mass meeting, chaired by James Forten, at which some three thousand Black Philadelphians rejected the American Colonization Society’s plan to resettle free Black Americans in Africa. In September 1830 Allen presided over the first national Colored Convention, held at Bethel, which considered emigration to Canada and condemned the Colonization Society. His wife, Sarah Allen, whom he married in 1801 after the death of his first wife, Flora, organized support for traveling ministers and is credited with aiding people escaping slavery.
Legacy
Allen died at his home in Philadelphia on 26 March 1831, six months after the first convention. His autobiography, The Life, Experience, and Gospel Labours of the Rt. Rev. Richard Allen, was published in 1833. The fourth church building on the Bethel site, completed in 1890, stands on what the congregation describes as the oldest parcel of real estate continuously owned by African Americans in the United States.
The AME Church spread through the free states before the Civil War and across the South after emancipation, becoming one of the largest Black denominations in the world, with congregations in North America, the Caribbean, and Africa. Its bishops and colleges, including Wilberforce University in Ohio, trained generations of Black leaders. Historians now group Allen with the “Black founders” of the early republic: a generation of free Black Northerners who built churches, schools, and mutual-aid societies, and who insisted on citizenship at the moment the nation was defining it.
Richard Allen and the free Black Philadelphians around him built independent institutions, a church, mutual-aid societies, and a national convention, to claim dignity and citizenship in a nation that denied them both. Open the classroom lesson →
Key Dates
- 14 February 1760 Born enslaved in Philadelphia in the household of Benjamin Chew.
- c. 1777 Converted by Methodist preachers in Delaware.
- c. 1780–1783 Purchases his freedom from Stokeley Sturgis in installments.
- 12 April 1787 Founds the Free African Society with Absalom Jones.
- 1793 Organizes Black nurses and workers during Philadelphia’s yellow fever epidemic.
- July 1794 Bethel Church dedicated by Bishop Francis Asbury.
- 1799 Ordained a deacon, the first Black man ordained in the Methodist Episcopal Church.
- January 1816 Pennsylvania Supreme Court confirms Bethel’s independence.
- April 1816 Consecrated first bishop of the African Methodist Episcopal Church.
- September 1830 Presides over the first national Colored Convention at Bethel.
- 26 March 1831 Dies in Philadelphia.
Sources and Further Reading
- Richard Allen, The Life, Experience, and Gospel Labours of the Rt. Rev. Richard Allen (Philadelphia: Martin & Boden, 1833). Link
- Richard S. Newman, Freedom’s Prophet: Bishop Richard Allen, the AME Church, and the Black Founding Fathers (New York: New York University Press, 2008).
- Gary B. Nash, Forging Freedom: The Formation of Philadelphia’s Black Community, 1720–1840 (Cambridge, MA: Harvard University Press, 1988).
- Mother Bethel A.M.E. Church, “Richard Allen.” Link
- Colored Conventions Project, “Bishop Richard Allen.” Link
- Britannica, “Richard Allen.” Link
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