Richard Allen, (1700-1831), clergyman.
bishop: born in Philadelphia, Pa.. Allen was the
founding bishop of the African Methodist Episcopal (AME)
Church. The AME Church was the
first major black institution in America, and
Allen was the first major leader of Afro-Americans
in the United States.
Born of slave parentage, he grew up in slavery in Delaware and became a zealous Methodist minister whose many converts included his master, who let him buy his freedom. Allen settled in Philadelphia about 1786, where he brought so many Afro- Americans into St. George's Methodist Clrurch that friction soon developed in the church between whites and blacks.
He proposed a separate church for blacks and by 1787 had formed the Free African Society, one of the first official organizations of Afro-Americans. It was dedicated to self-improvement and advancement. In the same year, whites segregated blacks by assigning them to the gallery at St. George's Church.
Allen and Absalom Jones led an exodus of Black parishioners from that church, and Jones and members of the Free African Society established St. Thomas's Free African Church within the Protestant Episcopal Church. Allen. in turn, formed the Bethel African Methodist Episcopal Church (Mother Bethel). He was ordained a bishop in 1799.
After winning a court case in 1816. he gained complete independence for his congregation and legally established the AME Church.
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