# Richard Allen (bishop)

Richard Allen (February 14, 1760 – March 26, 1831) was a minister, educator, entrepreneur, writer, and one of the United States' most active and influential black leaders. In 1816, he founded the African Methodist Episcopal Church (AME), the first independent Black denomination in the United States. He dedicated his first AME church building in 1794 in Philadelphia.
Consecrated the first bishop of the AME Church in 1816, Allen focused on organizing a denomination in which free black people could worship without racial oppression and enslaved people could find a measure of dignity. He worked to upgrade the social status of the black community, organizing Sabbath schools to teach literacy and promoting national organizations to develop political strategies. Allen said, "We will never separate ourselves voluntarily from the slave population in this country; they are our brethren, and we feel there is more virtue in suffering privations with them than a fancied advantage for a season." The AME Church proliferated among the freed blacks in the Southern United States.

## Early life and freedom

He was born in Philadelphia, Pennsylvania on February 14, 1760, enslaved to Benjamin Chew. Allen, his three siblings, and both parents were later "sold into Delaware state" to a plantation owner named Stokely Sturgis near Dover. Richard Allen was exposed to the preaching of itinerant Methodist preaching and it led to his spiritual awakening. He later said of his religious experience that his "dungeon shook" and that his "chains flew off" as he cried out to God.
Allen was not content with spiritual freedom alone, but he also desired freedom from slavery. He was able to negotiate the terms of freedom with Sturgis and he began working overtime at various jobs to buy his freedom. Once his freedom was purchased, he changed his name to Richard Allen.

## Marriage and family

Allen's first wife was named Flora. They were married on October 19, 1790. She worked very closely with him during the early years of establishing the church, from 1787 to 1799. They attended church school and worked together, purchasing land donated to the church or rented out to families. Flora died on March 11, 1801, after a long illness. Scholars do not know if they had any children. Allen later married Sarah Bass, a formerly enslaved person from Isle of Wight, Virginia. Richard and Sarah Allen had six children. Sarah Allen was highly active in what became the AME Church and is called the "Founding Mother.". Sarah was also regarded as active in what would become known as the Undergroud Railroad.

## Ministry

It is possible that Allen was in attendence as a witness to the "Christmas Conference" in 1784 of the Methodist Episcopal Church in North America. Held at the old original Lovely Lane Chapel meeting house on the narrow lane off modern South Calvert and German (now Redwood) Streets in old Baltimore Town, (now Downtown Baltimore), largest town/city and port in Maryland. Allen continued preaching where he could for the next two years primarily in New Jersey and Pennsylvania.
In 1786, Allen was given preaching opportunities at St. George's Methodist Episcopal Church in Philadelphia at a 5 AM service. Allen and Absalom Jones, also a Methodist preacher, helped to grow a large Black following. On the third Sunday of November in 1787, Allen, Jones, and other Black worshippers found that the seating arrangements were changed. Black members were told to take the seats behind the White members. Absalom Jones stopped to pray, not knowing the seating was changed. A White member tried to pull him off his knees in the middle of his prayer. Once he ended his prayer, Jones, Allen, and a large group of Black members walked out to form their own church in protest to segregated pews.
They formed the Free African Society (F.A.S.), a mutual aid society that provided financial support and religous guidance to the Black community. The F.A.S. later produced two new congregations. Absalom Jones and the majority of those who walked out of St. George's affilated with the Church of England in the newly formed Episcopal Church. The congregation they formed was known as the African Episcopal Church of St. Thomas and still maintains a vibrant membership to this day.
Allen continued to believe that Methodism best suited Black people and thus took the smaller group to establish what would become Mother Bethel African Methodist Episcopal Church. Allen purchased the land for the church in October, 1791. However, before Jones or Allen could erect their first buildings for worship, the city of Philadelphia experienced an outbreak of the deadly Yellow Fever.
During the 1793 yellow fever epidemic, Richard Allen and Absalom Jones stopped working on their churches and helped to organize free Blacks to care for the sick and deal with the dead. They were appealed to by respected physician and signer of the Declaration of Independence, Benjamin Rush. Rush incorrectly believed that yellow fever was not deadly for Black people. Allen himself worked with the sick and dying, caught yellow fever, and nearly died. In the fall of 1793, the epidemic eased as temperatures dropped and the mosquitoes that carried the disease died. In 1794, Allen and Jones published and copyrighted the pamphlet A narrative of the proceedings of the black people, during the late awful calamity in Philadelphia, in the year 1793: and a refutation of some censures, thrown upon them in some late publications. They confronted slanderous accounts of the epidemic that accused the black community of being greedy opportunists, and that perpetuated the myth that African Americans had not been affected by the disease.
Allen continued working on the new church following the events of the Yellow Fever Epidemic. He purchased an old blacksmith shop and had it hauled to the land on Sixth and Lombard Streets. On July 29, 1794, Bishop Francis Asbury of the Methodist Episcopal Church dedicated the new building. Allen called it Bethel, following the prayer offered during the dedication service by a visiting minister. At first, Bethel was affiliated with the larger Methodist Episcopal Church. The congregation had to rely on visiting white ministers from St. George's to administer the sacraments. The arrangement was plagued with problems and Allen continued to struggle with White ministers of St. George's. This prolonged dispute over ownership and leadership of Bethel found its way into the court system. As a result, in 1816, the Pennsylvania Supreme Court ruled in favor of Allen which allowed Bethel to be a stand alone congregration free of control by the Methodist Episcopal Church.
In April 1816, Rev. Allen called for a meeting in Philadelphia and proposed the uniting of the five African-American congregations then existing in the eastern areas of the Methodist Episcopal Church in Philadelphia; Langhorne/Attleborough, Pennsylvania; Salem, New Jersey; Delaware and Baltimore, Maryland. Most of them had founding stories similar to Bethel. Together, they founded the independent denomination of the African Methodist Episcopal Church (A.M.E. Church), the first fully independent Black denomination in the United States. The delegates to the meeting first elected Daniel Coker as bishop. Coker later declined and Richard Allen was both elected and consecrated as the first Bishop.

## Preaching

The social themes of Bishop Allen's preaching were abolition, colonization, education, and temperance. The preaching style was rarely expository or written to be read, but the subject was delivered in an evangelical and extemporized manner that demanded action rather than meditation. The tone was persuasive, not didactic.

## Activism outside the church

Richard Allen was active in the Philadelphia abolitionist movement. In December 1799, Richard Allen, Absalom Jones, and sixty-nine other Black Philadelphians sent a petition to Congress urging the end of the international slave trade and a gradual emancipation plan. The petition also addressed the rights of free black men. The signers asserted the citizenship of Black Americans and demanded protection against kidnapping under the Fugitive Slave Act. As many states denied Black Americans the right to testify in court, those accused of being runaway slaves often had no legal redress. (Richard Allen himself had been accused of being a runaway slave, but fortunately had white Philadelphian allies who were willing to testify on his behalf.) Congress rejected their petition. Enslavers objected to emancipation, and some non-slave owners such as Harrison Gray Otis (politician) saw the petition itself as fraudulent, arguing that Black Americans were "incapable of writing their names, or of reading the petition..."
In September 1830, Black representatives from seven states convened in Philadelphia at the Bethel AME church for the first Negro Convention. The civic meeting was the first organized by African-American leaders on such a large scale. Allen presided over the meeting, which addressed both regional and national topics. The convention occurred after the 1826 and 1829 riots in Cincinnati when whites had attacked Black people and destroyed their businesses. After the 1829 rioting, 1,200 Black people had left the city to go to Canada. As a result, the Negro Convention addressed organizing aid to such settlements in Canada, among other issues. The 1830 meeting was the beginning of an organizational effort known as the Negro Convention Movement, part of 19th-century institution building in the Black community. Conventions were held regularly nationally.
Allen was a Prince Hall Freemason and served as the first Grand Treasurer of the Grand Lodge of Pennsylvania, Prince Hall.

## Death

Allen died at home on Spruce Street on March 26, 1831. He was buried at the church that he founded. His grave remains on the lower level.

## Legacy and honors

* In 1949, Allen's story was featured in the radio drama Destination Freedom episode "Apostle of Freedom", written by Richard Durham.
* In 2001, the Richard Allen Preparatory School, a charter school, was opened in his name in southwestern Philadelphia.
* Richard Allen Schools, a charter school system in Ohio, is named after him
* In 2002, Molefi Kete Asante named Allen as one of the 100 Greatest African Americans.
* In 2010, a park in the Philadelphia suburb of Radnor Township was named for him.
* The Richard Allen Homes, a public housing project in Philadelphia, were named for him.
* A street in Cambridge, Massachusetts, is named after him, which in turn lent its name to indie rock band Bishop Allen.
* Allen University, a historically Black university in South Carolina, was renamed in Allen's honor when it moved from Cokesbury to Columbia in 1880.
* A stamp honoring Allen was issued by the United States Postal Service in February 2016, with a first-day ceremony in Philadelphia, as part of the ongoing Black Heritage Series.
* Mother Bethel Church erected a life-sized statue of Allen by Fern Cunningham-Terry on July 10, 2016.
* A mural, The Legacy of Bishop Richard Allen and AME Church Mural, was unveiled on July 4, 2016, at 38th and Market Streets in West Philadelphia.
* On February 14, 2022, Allens Lane in Philadelphia's Mt. Airy neighborhood was re-attributed to Richard Allen by resolution of the city's council, facilitated by the efforts of State Rep. Chris Rabb (PA House 200th). A re-attribution of Septa's Allen Lane station is also contemplated.