1828

Isabella Baumfree (Sojourner Truth) filed suit in New York court after her five-year-old son Peter was illegally sold to an Alabama slaveholder. With Quaker assistance she won the case and Peter was returned — an extraordinary early example of a Black woman successfully using the American legal system to protect her family.

Morris Brown, who had organized AME congregations in Charleston, South Carolina before being forced to flee north after the Denmark Vesey conspiracy scare of 1822, was consecrated as the second bishop of the AME Church in 1828. His leadership expanded the church's reach and maintained its organizational strength after Allen's death.

Christopher Rush, born enslaved in North Carolina and later freed, was elected second bishop of the African Methodist Episcopal Zion Church in 1828 following James Varick's death. Rush served as bishop for nearly three decades, expanded the church westward, and in 1843 published A Short Account of the Rise and Progress of the African Methodist Episcopal Church in America.

Before his landmark Appeal, David Walker published a forceful essay in Freedom's Journal in December 1828 attacking the American Colonization Society's plans as a scheme to deport free Black Americans. The essay established his reputation as a leading voice of Black political thought and foreshadowed the radicalism of his 1829 Appeal.