page_title: John M. Brown
section_title: Religious career
hierarchical_section_title: John M. Brown / Religious career
caption_attribution_description: English: Brown in 1887
context_page_description: John Mifflin Brown was a bishop in the African Methodist Episcopal Church. He was a leader in the underground railroad. He helped open a number of churches and schools, including the Payne Institute which became Allen University in Columbia, South Carolina and Paul Quinn College in Waco, Texas. He was also an early principal of Union Seminary which became Wilberforce University.
context_section_description: In September 1846 he became a deacon in the AME church and moved from Detroit to Columbus, Ohio. He also became principal at the Union Seminary, which became Wilberforce University. In August 1852 he moved to Pittsburgh to preach, and later that year or early in 1853 to New Orleans. In New Orleans he helped raise the money for the Morris Brown chapel, but his work was generally opposed by local whites and he was imprisoned at least once for each of the five years he was in that city for allowing slaves to attend his sermons. In 1857 he asked that he be relieved of his position, and Bishop Daniel Payne assigned him to Louisville, Kentucky in April, and then to Bethel church in Baltimore in May 1858. In Baltimore, he also began editing a church periodical.
  In December 1863 he was asked to superintend the organization of AME churches in Virginia and North Carolina, and in 1864 he became editor of the Christian Recorder. He was also elected corresponding secretary of the Parent Home and Foreign Missionary Society of the AME Church. Along with James F. Sisson, William B. Derrick, and William E. Matthews, he was very important in the work of creating new schools and churches throughout the South for the AME church.
  In May 1868 he was ordained bishop of the AME church, first serving a district consisting of South Carolina, Georgia, Florida, and Alabama. He organized the Alabama Conference of the AME church in Selma, Alabama on July 25, 1868, and organized the Payne Institute in South Carolina which became Allen University in Columbia, South Carolina. In 1872 he changed district, then becoming bishop of Texas, Louisiana, Arkansas, and Tennessee. In this role he helped establish the Paul Quinn College at Waco, Texas, and organized West Texas, South Arkansas, West Tennessee, and Columbia conferences. He also helped Bishop T. M. D. Ward establish the North Georgia Conference in 1872. In 1876 he again moved districts, then overseeing Baltimore, Virginia, North and South Carolina, serving there until 1880. He then moved to a district consisting of Philadelphia, New Jersey, New York, and New England. In 1884 he moved to a district including Missouri, Kansas, Illinois, Iowa, North Missouri, South Kansas, and California. He organized the Colorado conference in September 1887. From 1888-1892 his district included Indiana, Illinois, Michigan, and Iowa.
  He held numerous positions in the national AME church as well. He was president of the financial board of the church. He was a leader in the movement of the AME church to send missionaries to Africa and Latin America, particularly in a speech at a general conference of the church in May 1872. He worked with Frederick Douglass and others to push for the enforcement of the Civil Rights Act of 1875, pointing particularly to an 1882 incident when Bishop Payne was removed from a railroad car and forced to walk to the next station while travelling in Florida. Brown was important in the move to include women in the AME ministry, licensing Emily Calkins Stevens to preach in the New Jersey conference in 1883. He was an outspoken and radical opponent of lynchings, especially in the 1890s. He was a delegate to the first World Methodist Ecumenical Conference in London in 1881 and to the second conference in Washington, DC in 1891.
caption: Brown in 1887
exif: {"Image XResolution": "72", "Image YResolution": "72", "Image ResolutionUnit": "Pixels/Inch", "Image Software": "paint.net 4.0.13"}