Richard Allen Biography

Richard Allen born on February 14th, 1760 in Philadelphia was a minister, educator, writer and one America's most active and influential black leaders. Allen had six children and a spouse named Sarah Bass. He founded the African Methodist Episcopal Church (AME) in 1794, which was the first black domination in the U.S. Allen was born into slavery, he and his family were sold to a Delaware plantation. At age 17 Allen joins the Methodist, and Richard began to teach himself how to read and write. The significance of the AME church which Allen founded had a great impact on society.

The AME church changed and got better out of the Free African (community of people/all good people in the world) at the end of the 18th century in Philly. The first religious gathering happened about nine years before the church's official organization in 1794. While bad mistreatment was less dangerous/less bad for free blacks in Philadelphia than in many other cities, the strong (unfair treatment based on skin color, age, etc.) of white Methodists served as the helping force for the new crowd with Richard Allen as pastor. A level of oversight by the church was expected, and the hope was to create a system of checks and balances between white people in charge and black power. White Methodists hoped to impress upon the new (full of energy) / changing community that there were still limits of its independence. The uneasy agreement broke down as white Methodist threatened to prevent church meetings and used other strategies to discourage Bethel's self-authority and control.

By 1807, Allen received legal help and wrote an African supplement to the church’s founding document which made stronger claims of independence while maintaining Bethel’s inclusion into the Methodist Conference as an equal member. (Barga) Membership continued to grow as Bethel became known for its opposition. The first of the extremely important legal challenges that went to Pennsylvania's Supreme Court dealt indirectly with the question of Bethel's realness/respect/truth as an independent church. The lawsuit was lost by the Crowd before the end of 1815, but the court's treatment of Bethel was an independent thing/business. At the point when a moment and the more straightforward lawful test came toward the start of 1816, 1807 add to/option and Allen's entitlement to (settling on your future and after that ensuring it happens) as a minister was guaranteed/expressed as obvious. Bethel Church was enormously successful. By 1810, membership rose from the original 40 members to almost 400. The church had become black Philadelphia's most important institution (PBS.org). Amid its first many years of battle, the church group had turned out to be known as a shelter to ethnic minorities, notwithstanding its notoriety for triumph over white persecution in the courts.

In 1795, a gathering of recently liberated people drove by David Barclay touched base from a Jamaican manor and joined the Bethel people group. Allen and his family led the community in supporting strangers and travelers with housing, food, and other useful things/valuable supplies, especially black learn (on the job) and renters. The (something is given to future people) would spread as new A.M.E Churches were established, and many church buildings have secret basements which point to/show their use in the Underground Railroad. The church was dedicated to continued social protest, and Allen stressed social justice as the bringing together (as one) and driving force of his church.

By the early 1820's, the A.M.E. Church was an (understood/made real/achieved) hope for blacks who wished to create their own (community of people/all good people in the world) as a response to the overall bad mistreatment faced throughout the country. The A.M.E. Church rapidly dispersed to Pittsburgh, Ohio, Buffalo, and Charleston, SC. The last location would be broken up shortly after its organization due to an event that became known as the Vesey Huge riot. Reportedly, individuals utilized gathering times at the church to design a fierce assault on an escape from the white group. When the plans were discovered, the Emmanuel A.M.E. Church was broken up with many of the members convicted as part of the plan (that was put together secretly by a group of people). The black church test was not to be rehashed in the southern city until after the Civil War