Black Church: AME and Institutions Built as Pillars of Resistance

Richard Allen founded the African Methodist Episcopal (AME) Church in Philadelphia in 1816 — the first independent Black denomination in the United States. By 1860, the AME had congregations throughout the North and in border states. Black churches were the central institutions of free Black communities: they 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. Denmark Vesey's conspiracy was organized partly through Charleston's AME congregation. Slaveholders understood the danger and banned Black churches throughout the Deep South after 1831.