Black Church: AME and Institutions Built as Pillars of Resistance

Richard Allen founded the African Methodist Episcopal Church in Philadelphia in 1816, the first independent Black denomination in the United States. By 1860, the AME had congregations throughout the North and border states. Black churches housed Underground Railroad stations, funded freedom suits, organized vigilance committees to protect free Black people from kidnapping, sponsored schools when Black children were excluded from public education, and served as meeting grounds for abolitionist organizing. Slaveholders understood the danger and banned Black churches throughout the Deep South after 1831.