Richard Allen (February
14, 1760 – March 26, 1831)[1] was a minister, educator, and writer, and
the founder in 1794 of the African Methodist Episcopal
Church (AME), the first independent black
denomination in the United States. He opened his first AME church in 1794
inPhiladelphia,
Pennsylvania. He was elected the first bishop of the AME Church in 1816. Allen
was one of America's most active and influential black leaders. He focused on
organizing a denomination where free blacks could worship without racial
oppression and where slaves 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.
Born into slavery, Allen had no formal education. As a young man
in Delaware, he worked to buy his freedom. He went to Philadelphia in 1786,
licensed as a Methodist preacher. He belonged for a time to St. George's
Methodist Church, but he and his supporters resented its segregation and decided
to leave the church. In 1787 he and Absalom Jones founded the Free African Society (FAS), a
non-denominational, mutual aid society for blacks in Philadelphia, which
particularly helped widows and children. Eventually they each founded
independent black congregations in 1794. Wiki.
