January 15, 2026 • 30 mins
On this episode of Our American Stories, Richard Allen was born into slavery in colonial America and went on to become one of the most influential religious leaders of the early United States. After purchasing his freedom, Allen became a successful entrepreneur, a powerful preacher, and the founder of the African Methodist Episcopal Church. His stature was such that he was chosen to deliver the eulogy for George Washington, a moment that revealed both his influence and the contradictions of the young nation. Historian Richard Newman of Rochester Institute of Technology shares the remarkable life of Richard Allen, drawing on decades of research and his book Freedom’s Prophet.
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Episode Transcript
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Speaker 1 (00:10):
This is Lee Habib and this is our American stories.
Few Americans know the extraordinary story of Richard Allen, who
rose from slavery and colonial America to become a prosperous
entrepreneur and inspirational preacher in the early Republic. Rich Newman
is an historian at Rochester Institute of Technology who's been
(00:31):
researching Richard Allen for over twenty years. Rich wrote the
acclaim book Freedom's Prophet, Bishop Richard Allen, The Ame Church
and the Black Founding Fathers.
Speaker 2 (00:42):
Let's take a listen. If you don't know about Richard Allen,
he's probably the most important figure in the Founding era
of American history that you've either not learned about or
need to learn about. So who was Richard Allen? He
was born to slavery in either Philadelphia or Delaware in
(01:05):
seventeen sixty. He was one of six siblings. We also
know that his mother and father loved him very much,
but the family was split up by bondage when he
was young. But Richard Allen got religion, as they say,
when he was a teenager in the mid seventeen seventies,
just as the American Revolution was kicking into high gear.
Richard Allen joined groups of traveling Methodist preachers who roam
(01:30):
the countryside in Delaware, Maryland, and Pennsylvania, and he felt
really inspired by their word. African Americans like Richard Allen
thought that evangelical religion offered a key to their own liberation.
So Richard Allen became a devoted follower of the Methodist Church.
He went to class study sessions to learn more about
(01:52):
the Bible. He listened to the orations of many of
the great traveling preachers in his day, people like Freeborn Garretson,
and he paid attention to the egalitarian message. No matter
your class, no matter your status, no matter your race,
you were equal in the eyes of God. And for
a young enslaved man like Richard Allen, a teenager who
(02:12):
said that slavery is a bitter pill had split apart
his family, this was a necessary and inspiring message. Indeed,
let me talk to us a little bit more about
the evangelical network that Richard Allen encountered during the Revolution
in America. This was a network that was steeped in
(02:33):
the tradition of John and Charles Wesley and their understanding
of a church that welcomed all souls, regardless of status,
regardless of race. So Richard Allen learned at the feet
of white preachers. He encountered African American preachers. We have
records of black preachers who spoke at camp meetings and
(02:54):
on the evangelical circuit, but he mentions various white preachers
who had given sermons, who had led class meetings, who
talked about the Bible insights from the Wesley Brothers, talked
about some of the anti slavery writings of John Wesley.
Religion and evangelical study also provided a pathway to freedom
(03:19):
by allowing him to learn literacy skills. In many parts
of the South, including Maryland, Delaware, and Virginia, slaveholders frowned
on education for enslaved people because either it would a
provide them with a wider worldview that would undermine bondage
or b it would give them literacy skills like writing
skills that would actually allow them to write passes to
(03:41):
freedom that would facilitate their escape from bondage. So Richard
Allen gained these literacy skills as a teenager and combined
them with his religion and sharpen them into a really
powerful set of anti slavery tools and even weapons. So
with these weapons, Richard Allen started to plot for his
(04:02):
own freedom from bondage. So again we have to think
about the time period around him. It's the American Revolutionary era.
American patriots are fighting for their own liberation. They're arguing
that they have been enslaved to British masters imperial officials
who treat them as if they were unfree underlings. So
Richard Allen hears that message too and imbibes it, and
(04:24):
he thinks that this is the perfect moment to go
to his master with a proposition. He wants to bring
one of the traveling Methodist preachers to his home for
a sermon. And Richard Allen's master says that this would
be good. But what he doesn't know is that Richard
Allen has plotted in some ways for the evangelical preacher
(04:46):
to give an abolitionist sermon. So imagine a small house
of roughly eight people. You've got just a few rooms,
you've got candlelight, there's war, and then and this preacher
that Richard Allen has brought into the house of Stokely
Sturge just gives a fire and brimstone sermon. In which
(05:09):
he essentially points his finger at Richard Allen's master, and,
quoting from the Book of Daniel, says thou Art weighed
in the balances and found wanting. In other words, God
is judging your soul, just as he judged the souls
of ancient Egyptian masters and smoted them. So too, is
he now looking at you as an unrepentant slaveholder in
(05:31):
revolutionary America. Unless you change things, you too will be
destined for a helpit of fire and brimstone. And this
scares the living hell out of Stokely Sturgis, who agrees
to let Richard Allen and his brother buy their freedom
from bondage. So Richard Allen, from that moment in seventeen
(05:52):
eighty works diligently in Delaware, New Jersey, Maryland, Pennsylvania. He's
cutting wood, he's hauling bricks, he's hauling salt. He's doing
anything that will earn some sort of compensation so that
he can pay his master. And it works. He pays
off his master early, after roughly three and a half years,
(06:14):
so by the end of seventeen eighty three he is free,
and he's on good terms with his former master. He's
made a lot of contacts in the evangelical community, and
he starts roaming around this part of the Middle Atlantic
countryside as a traveling preacher himself. He now claims to
be the voice of God. The revolution has just ended
(06:36):
in seventeen eighty three, so people are not only talking
about peace, they're talking about the meaning of freedom, and
just as he did when he was working, Richard Allen
is a very diligent preacher, traveling everywhere he can to
get an audience to preach the word of the Just
and righteous God. So he writes about this in his autobiography,
(06:57):
which his son publishes posthumously in eighteen thirty three. But
he starts telling these stories later in life, writing some
things down, having his son keep notes, and a lot
of these early stories are about his traveling the evangelical circuit.
He'll speak to interracial audiences here, He'll talk to white
(07:18):
Methodists there, he'll stay with African American Methodists. Outside of Philadelphia,
he'll preach several times a day. He'll fall asleep essentially
preaching or reading his Bible or talking to people, so
he's really committed to this task. He arrives in Philadelphia
after Methodist preachers there hear about all of his accomplishments
(07:41):
on the evangelical circuit. Philadelphia is the home to the
largest and most important Methodist church in America, Saint George's
Episcopal Church. It's a grand edifice. It's still in existence.
The congregation is still there in Philadelphia near the waterfront.
And Richard Allen is going to help build up the
(08:02):
African American congregation at Saint George's Methodist Church. As he says,
he began preaching before dawn and he preached after the
sun went down. He preached five times a day. He
got a lot of new congregants into the church, not
just African Americans, but others heard his preaching at the
church and in and around parts of Philadelphia. So he
(08:24):
felt like he was helping to recreate Saint George's and
American Methodism in the eyes of righteous and just God.
He's bringing interracial fellowship into the church. He's talking about
the importance of emancipation, black liberation, and things seemed to
be going well until there's stirrings that Richard Allen and
(08:46):
Black congregants are pushing a little too hard and a
little too fast. And Richard Allen's reply is we just
fought our revolution for human freedom. It's in the Declaration
of Independence. Many of you pray to a God who
believes that everyone has created equal. What should we wait for?
Speaker 1 (09:04):
And you've been listening to rich Newman tell the story
of Richard Allen, And what a story he's telling, what tomerity,
what courage it took for him to invite an itinerant
pastor into his master's home to give a sermon on
how God is displeased with the idea of owning another
human being. And the master is convicted from that message.
Speaker 2 (09:29):
But what next?
Speaker 1 (09:31):
Ah, that's the key. He goes around the country traveling
as an itinerant evangelical preacher, and then he lands in Philadelphia,
and there was the largest Methodist church in the country
at the time, Saint George's, and he wanted to grow
that church and make it a special church with great
interracial fellowship. When we come back, we'll find out what
(09:54):
happens next. This is our American stories, and we continue
with our American stories and with the story of Richard
Allen telling it is rich Newman, an historian at Rochester
(10:17):
Institute of Technology, and who is the author also of
the acclaim book Freedom's Profit. Let's pick up where we
last left off.
Speaker 2 (10:27):
Eventually, white leaders create a segregated seating program at the
church where black congregants will be put either in the
back of the church or in a newly created and
elevated church put This set the stage for the first
sit in in American history for civil rights and then
the first walk out on behalf of civil rights in
(10:48):
American history. So Richard Allen walks into Saint George's Methodist
church one day and is told that the segregated seating
program has now been put into operation and black congregants
have to go to the back, and they walk right
by the sexton. Then they sit where they have always
sat on the main floor of the church and they
begin praying. Richard Allen and his great activist and civil
(11:11):
rights colleague Absolom Jones are in prayer and white leaders
of the church come up and they try to move them.
Richard Allen stays firm, so toots Absolom Jones, and finally
Absolom and Richard Allen say leave us alone until we're
done in prayer, and then we won't bother you again.
And when they're done praying. Richard Allen Absolom Jones and
(11:32):
most of the members of the Black congregation get up
in unison and walk out of the church. It's a
really defiant and glorious moment, and as Richard Allen said
later on, they never saw us again. So in Philadelphia
in the early seventeen nineties, Richard Allen buys church property
and begins building institutionally and organizationally the seeds of what
(11:54):
becomes Mother Bethel African Methodist Episcopal Church. Initially it's going
to be under the organizational wing of the Methodist Church,
but Richard Allen says, this is a Black church. African
American trustees and preachers and congregants are in control. And
when it's dedicated in July of seventeen ninety four, Richard
Allen believes this is a Black redoubt of freedom and
(12:18):
liberty and justice. So in Richard Allen's time, the first
church building was located at sixth and Lombard Streets. So
you can look in the Philadelphia phone book and you
can see this notation. This is the longest continuously owned
parcel of property by any African American community in North America.
(12:39):
So this is really significant. When Alan buys this piece
of property, he thinks he's really setting down church roots forever.
So in the summer of seventeen ninety three, the city
of Philadelphia, which is also at that time the capital
of the United States government. It's where the federal government
is located between seventeen ninety and eighteen hundred. The Congress
(13:00):
is there, the President is there, the Supreme Court is there.
A lot of governing officials are there. This is the
heart and soul of America's national governing infrastructure. And in
the summer of seventeen ninety three, the capital of Philadelphia
is hit with a devastating yellow fever epidemic. Yellow fever
(13:21):
is spread by mosquitoes. The virus is really nasty and
attacks various parts of the body, and it creates punishing fevers.
It creates a yellowing condition in the skin. People who
survive it never forget it, but many people don't survive it.
The big news for Philadelphians is there's no cure. There's
(13:43):
no inoculation. In seventeen ninety three, so around three months
late August to early November, nearly five thousand Philadelphians perish
for the yellow fever. If that doesn't sound like a
truly large number to die from a disease, consider this
population fact. In seventeen ninety three, Philadelphia was the nation's
(14:06):
largest city and its population was fifty thousand people, So
five thousand or thereabouts constituted roughly ten percent of Philadelphia's
overall population. So scholars estimate that somewhere between ten and
twenty thousand people left Philadelphia. This follows on conversations that
Richard Allen had with the celebrated physician Benjamin Rush, who
(14:30):
is perhaps America's leading physician. He works at the College
of Physicians, the leading medical college in the United States,
based in Philadelphia. Benjamin Rush is treating a lot of
yellow fever cases and he needs help, and he asks
Richard Allen the Napsulom Jones if they will mobilize members
of the black community to help him and to help Philadelphians.
(14:51):
So Benjamin Rush, Richard Allen, white and black reformers agree
that this might be a way to intervene on behalf
of the abolitionist and civil rights struggles. But Benjamin Rush
believes that bleeding people is the way to go, and
he trains Richard Allen and Abslom Jones and the art
and science of bleeding, and they minister to dozens and
(15:13):
dozens of white as well as African American people who
feel like there's hope in this treatment. But Richard Allen
and black aid workers do so much more. They meet
with people who are sick and need aid because family
members have left them, so they're engaging in nursing activities.
They clear out infected homes after people die per city ordinances.
(15:34):
This requires burying and burning beds, furniture, clothing, blankets, anything
that people think would be infected by the yellow fever.
Richard Allen also meets with people who are terminally ill
and know they're going to die. In the narrative he
writes about the yellow fever epidemic, he has a moving
(15:54):
account of meeting with someone who was left alone by
his family and asked Richard Allen and Abslom Jones to
measure him, fit him out for a coffin, and make
sure that he was buried when he died. So, as
Richard Allen says, truly, our task was hard. As people
return in late November of seventeen ninety three December of
seventeen ninety three and into seventeen ninety four. They start
(16:16):
talking about what happened in Philadelphia while they were gone,
and rumors start to spread that there was a lot
of looting and a lot of theft. Richard Allen himself
came down with yellow fever, sat in a recovery institution
for a little while, and barely recovered. When he does
finally recover, he reads this Yellow Fever pamphlet and he
(16:38):
can't believe the stories that are being told. He says,
I was here during yellow Fever. I saw what the
black community did. I saw how they interacted with members
of the white community. Richard Allen also lost a business
him Abslom Jones started a nail producing business during the
very early stages of the yellow fever summer. They lost
(16:58):
that business. So Richard Allen goes to the mayor, goes
to reformers like Benjamin Rush, but he realizes that what
he has to do is write his own history. Matthew
Carey's History of Yellow Fever becomes a runaway bestseller. It
goes through second and third and fourth and fifth editions,
So that story about black thefter and yellow fever is
getting set in stone as more and more people read it,
(17:21):
so Richard Allen decides to write his own history of
the Yellow Fever. It also affixes to that narrative an
abolitionist sermon that challenges Americans coming back to Philadelphia, particularly
members of Congress, to think about enacting national abolitionist laws.
As Richard Allen says, if you love your country, if
(17:43):
you love the God of Love, free your hands from slaves.
Burden out your country with them. So this is published
in January seventeen ninety four, and it gains rich and
Allen a national reputation. What Alan is saying is that
the life of the nation depends on the death of bondage.
(18:03):
That slavery is killing the American dream, especially for African Americans,
but also because it's killing the very idea, the egalitarian
idea of the nation that's the heart of the Declaration
of Independence. He's speaking to the very soul of the
American dream. And in that quote, I think he really
lays bare his greatest hopes, in his biggest nightmares, that
(18:27):
if Americans don't confront slavery, if they don't use love
to defeat the fear of bondage, then the nation itself
will be ruined, and in a sense he's predicting a
future civil war.
Speaker 1 (18:41):
And you've been listening to author Rich Newman tell one
powerful story about Richard Allen, and what Alan is predicting,
of course, is what happens. The country doesn't wrestle with
this original sin, or it does, but not enough. And
in the end, the civil war is the only way out.
If you love your country, free your hands from slavery,
(19:04):
he implored by the way Jefferson struggled with us at
the end of his life too read his final writings.
He's tortured by slavery. The life of the nation depends
on the death of bondage. When we come back more
of this remarkable story, the story of Richard Allen. Here
on our American stories, and we continue with our American
(19:40):
stories and the story of Richard Allen as told by
Rich Newman, an historian at Rochester Institute of Technology, and
his book Freedom's Prophet, Bishop Richard Allen, The Ame Church
and the Black Founding Fathers. Let's pick up where we
last left off.
Speaker 2 (19:58):
Richard Allen is no in various parts of early America,
and eventually reformers in the abolitionist community send the Yellow
Fever pamphlet to England and people circulate it there. And
Matthew Carey, who originally came from the British Isles and
has friends in England, he hears from contacts in England
(20:18):
that Richard Allen and Napsulom Jones criticized him. So Matthew
Carey has to actually write corrections to future editions of
his work in which he partially apologizes, but he really
says he didn't mean to offend anyone. These are just
stories that he heard. But the point here is that
Richard Allen succeeded in at least offering a different version
(20:39):
of the Yellow Fever that would neutralize all the ravages
of racism. Now he will do this through his church.
Mother Bethel is a freedom church, and many members of
the subsequent freedom struggle, even into the twenty first century
are members of Richard Allen's African Methodist Episcopal Church. Rosa
Parks is a member of the am Church. She grows
(21:01):
up hearing stories about Richard Allen and the protests at
Saint George's and the Yellow Fever saga. So it's really
revealing to look at the things he went through after
seventeen ninety four. So, for example, in seventeen ninety nine,
when George Washington dies, Richard Allen sees what's happening in Philadelphia,
and he realizes no one is talking about the most
(21:22):
important legacy George Washington left behind. When George Washington dies,
everyone says the same three things about his death. He
was important because he was a revolutionary war hero in general.
Then he served as a leader at the Constitutional Convention
in seventeen eighty seven and gave that body gravitas. And
(21:43):
then he served as the first President of the United
States and gave the new fledgling government a sense of stability.
Richard Allen's information that says, none of those things are
as important as what I now know. He found through
the grapevine and stories that were printed that Washington had
left an emancipation will which would free and liberate over
(22:06):
one hundred slaved people that were in his ownership group
when his wife died, and his wife very sagely liberates
those enslaved people relatively soon after. But Washington says, this
is the only state in of my character that anyone
in the future could reproach me with. And Richard Allen
wants to celebrate that. He's saying to the American public
(22:28):
and American leaders, Look, if George Washington, who you have
all admitted is the most patriotic American who ever lived
emancipated as slaves, then ipso facto emancipation. It's not radical,
it's not illegal, it is actually patriotic. So Richard Allen
publishes this sermon in a Philadelphia newspaper, It's reprinted in
(22:52):
New York and Baltimore papers. Once again, Richard Allen is
known across the American landscape. He's probably the most famous
African Amermerican figure at the turn of the eighteenth into
the nineteenth century. It is important to note here that
Richard Allen is the first African American figure in US
history to give a eulogy of either a white leader
(23:15):
or a president. This is really significant because Richard Allen
realized that Philadelphia was still the capital of the United
States government, and when he was eulogizing Washington, who was
trying to mobilize members of Congress and the next presidential
administration to pass abolitionist laws that would undermine slavery's power
(23:36):
in the United States. So it's a really important eulogy
in his life. Then several years later, in the eighteen tens,
Richard Allen helps mobilize troops for defenses of Philadelphia during
the War of eighteen twelve. At the end of the war,
white Methodist Church officials are so upset with Richard Allen's
(23:56):
independence he doesn't pay attention to or adhere to White
Methodist policies. He claims that Mother Bethel Church is owned
and operated by African Americans and the Methodist Church is
just a kind of umbrella entity that only provides sanction
but not any interventions into church policy. This rankles white
(24:19):
church leaders and at the end of the War of
eighteen twelve, they basically claim ownership of Richard Allen's Mother
Bethel Church building. But then he sues for Mother Bethel's
independence and they argue the case before Pennsylvania Supreme Court
in eighteen sixteen, and in that year, the Supreme Court
(24:40):
sides with Richard Allen and his lawyers, and in that
decision they say, this is a basic principle of American democracy.
People vote with their feet, and Richard Allen's congregation voted
to an ear to black leaders and leaders like Richard Allen.
And if they claim ownership of that church. That is
(25:00):
then the ownership entity of Mother Bethel Church. So other
congregations gravitate towards Richard Allen, and in eighteen sixteen they
form the African Methodist Episcopal Church denomination. So Mother Bethel
is the main church in Allen's life, and it becomes
the central church and the African Methodist Episcopal Denomination. But
(25:24):
the denomination has churches elsewhere in the mid Atlantic, and
eventually it grows nationally and internationally, and today in the
twenty first century, there are well over two and a
half million congregants in the African Methodist Church fold. It's
actually spreading not only in parts of Africa and the Caribbean,
but in parts of India, in parts of Asia. The
(25:47):
spiritual appeal and the story of Richard Allen combined into
this very powerful narrative that other people around the world
identify with. But in eighteen twenty seven he also argues
that the United States is a black homeland. So Richard
Allen says this in eighteen twenty seven, this land, which
(26:07):
we have watered with our tears and our blood is
now our mother country. And we are well satisfied to
stay where wisdom abounds and the Gospel is free. This
is a really powerful statement to members of Richard Allen's
generation because it claims the United States as a black homeland,
(26:27):
as a country where equality prevails across the color line.
But of course, Richard Allen is not done yet. At
the very end of his life in the early eighteen thirties,
the problem of slavery has grown worse in American society.
Slavery doubles in size and population roughly every twenty years,
and Sir Richard Allen says this is a moment of reckoning,
(26:51):
not just for African Americans, but for members of the
white community. And in the late nineteenth century, Frederick Douglas,
who had alway revered Richard Allen, had grown up on
stories of Richard Allen from his birthplace in Maryland, had
been a member of churches where Richard Allen was celebrated.
Actually claimed that his birthday was February fourteenth because his
(27:14):
mother in Maryland told him that's when he was born.
But that's actually the same birthdate of Richard Allen February fourteenth,
seventeen sixty and Richard Allen birthdays in the Chesapeake were
kind of like festive days in the eighteen tens and
eighteen twenties when Frederick Douglass was growing up. So when
Frederick Douglas encountered his own series of backlashes against emancipation
(27:37):
and black feeedom in the late nineteenth century, he sat
down and he typed out a note in which he said,
you know who we could really use at this moment
in our troubled times. Richard Allen. Richard Allen was a
great leader. He was not just a great Black leader
or a great civil rights protester. He was a great
American leader. And I can think of no other way
(27:59):
to who eulogize Richard Allen's memory than by conjuring the
words of Frederick Douglas, who was perhaps the greatest abolitionist
of the nineteenth century, for him to say, for all
I have seen and all I have done, there's still
one person greater than me, and that's Richard Allen.
Speaker 1 (28:17):
And a terrific job on the production, editing and storytelling
by our own Greg Engler, and a special thanks to
rich Newman. He's an historian at Rochester Institute of Technology,
and he's been researching Richard Allen's story for over twenty
years rich wrote the acclaimed book Freedom's Prophet, Bishop Richard Allen,
(28:38):
the Ame Church and the Black Founding Fathers. Get it
at bookstories, Well, anywhere you get your books, you won't
put it down. And my goodness, what a story he
told here. And in the end, it's the story of
all the things that led to America's greatest tragedy of
them all, and that would be the Civil War, the
worst man made disaster in American history, six hundred thousand
(29:01):
lives lost, America torn apart, and all because of the
stain of slavery. And here was Alan doing everything in
his power to preempt conflict like that by striking at
the conscience of the American people. And there was no
better story he thought that the country needed to know.
(29:22):
But George Washington's Washington had led the Continental Army. He
had resigned his commission. And that's a startling thing. He
was the first president not one but two terms and
then left power again. And by the way, there was
no stopping him from going a third or a fourth
term that would end after Roosevelt. But the most important
(29:44):
part of his legacy, rich Newman believes, and I do too,
is the fact that he freed his slaves, and of
course what he creates is the Ame Church, which of
course has spread not just throughout America, but the Caribbean
continent of Africa and around the world. And of course
(30:05):
that final statement, this land, which we had watered with
our blood, is ours. The story of Richard Allen. Here
on our American stories.
This is Lee Habib and this is our American stories.
Few Americans know the extraordinary story of Richard Allen, who
rose from slavery and colonial America to become a prosperous
entrepreneur and inspirational preacher in the early Republic. Rich Newman
is an historian at Rochester Institute of Technology who's been
(00:31):
researching Richard Allen for over twenty years. Rich wrote the
acclaim book Freedom's Prophet, Bishop Richard Allen, The Ame Church
and the Black Founding Fathers.
Speaker 2 (00:42):
Let's take a listen. If you don't know about Richard Allen,
he's probably the most important figure in the Founding era
of American history that you've either not learned about or
need to learn about. So who was Richard Allen? He
was born to slavery in either Philadelphia or Delaware in
(01:05):
seventeen sixty. He was one of six siblings. We also
know that his mother and father loved him very much,
but the family was split up by bondage when he
was young. But Richard Allen got religion, as they say,
when he was a teenager in the mid seventeen seventies,
just as the American Revolution was kicking into high gear.
Richard Allen joined groups of traveling Methodist preachers who roam
(01:30):
the countryside in Delaware, Maryland, and Pennsylvania, and he felt
really inspired by their word. African Americans like Richard Allen
thought that evangelical religion offered a key to their own liberation.
So Richard Allen became a devoted follower of the Methodist Church.
He went to class study sessions to learn more about
(01:52):
the Bible. He listened to the orations of many of
the great traveling preachers in his day, people like Freeborn Garretson,
and he paid attention to the egalitarian message. No matter
your class, no matter your status, no matter your race,
you were equal in the eyes of God. And for
a young enslaved man like Richard Allen, a teenager who
(02:12):
said that slavery is a bitter pill had split apart
his family, this was a necessary and inspiring message. Indeed,
let me talk to us a little bit more about
the evangelical network that Richard Allen encountered during the Revolution
in America. This was a network that was steeped in
(02:33):
the tradition of John and Charles Wesley and their understanding
of a church that welcomed all souls, regardless of status,
regardless of race. So Richard Allen learned at the feet
of white preachers. He encountered African American preachers. We have
records of black preachers who spoke at camp meetings and
(02:54):
on the evangelical circuit, but he mentions various white preachers
who had given sermons, who had led class meetings, who
talked about the Bible insights from the Wesley Brothers, talked
about some of the anti slavery writings of John Wesley.
Religion and evangelical study also provided a pathway to freedom
(03:19):
by allowing him to learn literacy skills. In many parts
of the South, including Maryland, Delaware, and Virginia, slaveholders frowned
on education for enslaved people because either it would a
provide them with a wider worldview that would undermine bondage
or b it would give them literacy skills like writing
skills that would actually allow them to write passes to
(03:41):
freedom that would facilitate their escape from bondage. So Richard
Allen gained these literacy skills as a teenager and combined
them with his religion and sharpen them into a really
powerful set of anti slavery tools and even weapons. So
with these weapons, Richard Allen started to plot for his
(04:02):
own freedom from bondage. So again we have to think
about the time period around him. It's the American Revolutionary era.
American patriots are fighting for their own liberation. They're arguing
that they have been enslaved to British masters imperial officials
who treat them as if they were unfree underlings. So
Richard Allen hears that message too and imbibes it, and
(04:24):
he thinks that this is the perfect moment to go
to his master with a proposition. He wants to bring
one of the traveling Methodist preachers to his home for
a sermon. And Richard Allen's master says that this would
be good. But what he doesn't know is that Richard
Allen has plotted in some ways for the evangelical preacher
(04:46):
to give an abolitionist sermon. So imagine a small house
of roughly eight people. You've got just a few rooms,
you've got candlelight, there's war, and then and this preacher
that Richard Allen has brought into the house of Stokely
Sturge just gives a fire and brimstone sermon. In which
(05:09):
he essentially points his finger at Richard Allen's master, and,
quoting from the Book of Daniel, says thou Art weighed
in the balances and found wanting. In other words, God
is judging your soul, just as he judged the souls
of ancient Egyptian masters and smoted them. So too, is
he now looking at you as an unrepentant slaveholder in
(05:31):
revolutionary America. Unless you change things, you too will be
destined for a helpit of fire and brimstone. And this
scares the living hell out of Stokely Sturgis, who agrees
to let Richard Allen and his brother buy their freedom
from bondage. So Richard Allen, from that moment in seventeen
(05:52):
eighty works diligently in Delaware, New Jersey, Maryland, Pennsylvania. He's
cutting wood, he's hauling bricks, he's hauling salt. He's doing
anything that will earn some sort of compensation so that
he can pay his master. And it works. He pays
off his master early, after roughly three and a half years,
(06:14):
so by the end of seventeen eighty three he is free,
and he's on good terms with his former master. He's
made a lot of contacts in the evangelical community, and
he starts roaming around this part of the Middle Atlantic
countryside as a traveling preacher himself. He now claims to
be the voice of God. The revolution has just ended
(06:36):
in seventeen eighty three, so people are not only talking
about peace, they're talking about the meaning of freedom, and
just as he did when he was working, Richard Allen
is a very diligent preacher, traveling everywhere he can to
get an audience to preach the word of the Just
and righteous God. So he writes about this in his autobiography,
(06:57):
which his son publishes posthumously in eighteen thirty three. But
he starts telling these stories later in life, writing some
things down, having his son keep notes, and a lot
of these early stories are about his traveling the evangelical circuit.
He'll speak to interracial audiences here, He'll talk to white
(07:18):
Methodists there, he'll stay with African American Methodists. Outside of Philadelphia,
he'll preach several times a day. He'll fall asleep essentially
preaching or reading his Bible or talking to people, so
he's really committed to this task. He arrives in Philadelphia
after Methodist preachers there hear about all of his accomplishments
(07:41):
on the evangelical circuit. Philadelphia is the home to the
largest and most important Methodist church in America, Saint George's
Episcopal Church. It's a grand edifice. It's still in existence.
The congregation is still there in Philadelphia near the waterfront.
And Richard Allen is going to help build up the
(08:02):
African American congregation at Saint George's Methodist Church. As he says,
he began preaching before dawn and he preached after the
sun went down. He preached five times a day. He
got a lot of new congregants into the church, not
just African Americans, but others heard his preaching at the
church and in and around parts of Philadelphia. So he
(08:24):
felt like he was helping to recreate Saint George's and
American Methodism in the eyes of righteous and just God.
He's bringing interracial fellowship into the church. He's talking about
the importance of emancipation, black liberation, and things seemed to
be going well until there's stirrings that Richard Allen and
(08:46):
Black congregants are pushing a little too hard and a
little too fast. And Richard Allen's reply is we just
fought our revolution for human freedom. It's in the Declaration
of Independence. Many of you pray to a God who
believes that everyone has created equal. What should we wait for?
Speaker 1 (09:04):
And you've been listening to rich Newman tell the story
of Richard Allen, And what a story he's telling, what tomerity,
what courage it took for him to invite an itinerant
pastor into his master's home to give a sermon on
how God is displeased with the idea of owning another
human being. And the master is convicted from that message.
Speaker 2 (09:29):
But what next?
Speaker 1 (09:31):
Ah, that's the key. He goes around the country traveling
as an itinerant evangelical preacher, and then he lands in Philadelphia,
and there was the largest Methodist church in the country
at the time, Saint George's, and he wanted to grow
that church and make it a special church with great
interracial fellowship. When we come back, we'll find out what
(09:54):
happens next. This is our American stories, and we continue
with our American stories and with the story of Richard
Allen telling it is rich Newman, an historian at Rochester
(10:17):
Institute of Technology, and who is the author also of
the acclaim book Freedom's Profit. Let's pick up where we
last left off.
Speaker 2 (10:27):
Eventually, white leaders create a segregated seating program at the
church where black congregants will be put either in the
back of the church or in a newly created and
elevated church put This set the stage for the first
sit in in American history for civil rights and then
the first walk out on behalf of civil rights in
(10:48):
American history. So Richard Allen walks into Saint George's Methodist
church one day and is told that the segregated seating
program has now been put into operation and black congregants
have to go to the back, and they walk right
by the sexton. Then they sit where they have always
sat on the main floor of the church and they
begin praying. Richard Allen and his great activist and civil
(11:11):
rights colleague Absolom Jones are in prayer and white leaders
of the church come up and they try to move them.
Richard Allen stays firm, so toots Absolom Jones, and finally
Absolom and Richard Allen say leave us alone until we're
done in prayer, and then we won't bother you again.
And when they're done praying. Richard Allen Absolom Jones and
(11:32):
most of the members of the Black congregation get up
in unison and walk out of the church. It's a
really defiant and glorious moment, and as Richard Allen said
later on, they never saw us again. So in Philadelphia
in the early seventeen nineties, Richard Allen buys church property
and begins building institutionally and organizationally the seeds of what
(11:54):
becomes Mother Bethel African Methodist Episcopal Church. Initially it's going
to be under the organizational wing of the Methodist Church,
but Richard Allen says, this is a Black church. African
American trustees and preachers and congregants are in control. And
when it's dedicated in July of seventeen ninety four, Richard
Allen believes this is a Black redoubt of freedom and
(12:18):
liberty and justice. So in Richard Allen's time, the first
church building was located at sixth and Lombard Streets. So
you can look in the Philadelphia phone book and you
can see this notation. This is the longest continuously owned
parcel of property by any African American community in North America.
(12:39):
So this is really significant. When Alan buys this piece
of property, he thinks he's really setting down church roots forever.
So in the summer of seventeen ninety three, the city
of Philadelphia, which is also at that time the capital
of the United States government. It's where the federal government
is located between seventeen ninety and eighteen hundred. The Congress
(13:00):
is there, the President is there, the Supreme Court is there.
A lot of governing officials are there. This is the
heart and soul of America's national governing infrastructure. And in
the summer of seventeen ninety three, the capital of Philadelphia
is hit with a devastating yellow fever epidemic. Yellow fever
(13:21):
is spread by mosquitoes. The virus is really nasty and
attacks various parts of the body, and it creates punishing fevers.
It creates a yellowing condition in the skin. People who
survive it never forget it, but many people don't survive it.
The big news for Philadelphians is there's no cure. There's
(13:43):
no inoculation. In seventeen ninety three, so around three months
late August to early November, nearly five thousand Philadelphians perish
for the yellow fever. If that doesn't sound like a
truly large number to die from a disease, consider this
population fact. In seventeen ninety three, Philadelphia was the nation's
(14:06):
largest city and its population was fifty thousand people, So
five thousand or thereabouts constituted roughly ten percent of Philadelphia's
overall population. So scholars estimate that somewhere between ten and
twenty thousand people left Philadelphia. This follows on conversations that
Richard Allen had with the celebrated physician Benjamin Rush, who
(14:30):
is perhaps America's leading physician. He works at the College
of Physicians, the leading medical college in the United States,
based in Philadelphia. Benjamin Rush is treating a lot of
yellow fever cases and he needs help, and he asks
Richard Allen the Napsulom Jones if they will mobilize members
of the black community to help him and to help Philadelphians.
(14:51):
So Benjamin Rush, Richard Allen, white and black reformers agree
that this might be a way to intervene on behalf
of the abolitionist and civil rights struggles. But Benjamin Rush
believes that bleeding people is the way to go, and
he trains Richard Allen and Abslom Jones and the art
and science of bleeding, and they minister to dozens and
(15:13):
dozens of white as well as African American people who
feel like there's hope in this treatment. But Richard Allen
and black aid workers do so much more. They meet
with people who are sick and need aid because family
members have left them, so they're engaging in nursing activities.
They clear out infected homes after people die per city ordinances.
(15:34):
This requires burying and burning beds, furniture, clothing, blankets, anything
that people think would be infected by the yellow fever.
Richard Allen also meets with people who are terminally ill
and know they're going to die. In the narrative he
writes about the yellow fever epidemic, he has a moving
(15:54):
account of meeting with someone who was left alone by
his family and asked Richard Allen and Abslom Jones to
measure him, fit him out for a coffin, and make
sure that he was buried when he died. So, as
Richard Allen says, truly, our task was hard. As people
return in late November of seventeen ninety three December of
seventeen ninety three and into seventeen ninety four. They start
(16:16):
talking about what happened in Philadelphia while they were gone,
and rumors start to spread that there was a lot
of looting and a lot of theft. Richard Allen himself
came down with yellow fever, sat in a recovery institution
for a little while, and barely recovered. When he does
finally recover, he reads this Yellow Fever pamphlet and he
(16:38):
can't believe the stories that are being told. He says,
I was here during yellow Fever. I saw what the
black community did. I saw how they interacted with members
of the white community. Richard Allen also lost a business
him Abslom Jones started a nail producing business during the
very early stages of the yellow fever summer. They lost
(16:58):
that business. So Richard Allen goes to the mayor, goes
to reformers like Benjamin Rush, but he realizes that what
he has to do is write his own history. Matthew
Carey's History of Yellow Fever becomes a runaway bestseller. It
goes through second and third and fourth and fifth editions,
So that story about black thefter and yellow fever is
getting set in stone as more and more people read it,
(17:21):
so Richard Allen decides to write his own history of
the Yellow Fever. It also affixes to that narrative an
abolitionist sermon that challenges Americans coming back to Philadelphia, particularly
members of Congress, to think about enacting national abolitionist laws.
As Richard Allen says, if you love your country, if
(17:43):
you love the God of Love, free your hands from slaves.
Burden out your country with them. So this is published
in January seventeen ninety four, and it gains rich and
Allen a national reputation. What Alan is saying is that
the life of the nation depends on the death of bondage.
(18:03):
That slavery is killing the American dream, especially for African Americans,
but also because it's killing the very idea, the egalitarian
idea of the nation that's the heart of the Declaration
of Independence. He's speaking to the very soul of the
American dream. And in that quote, I think he really
lays bare his greatest hopes, in his biggest nightmares, that
(18:27):
if Americans don't confront slavery, if they don't use love
to defeat the fear of bondage, then the nation itself
will be ruined, and in a sense he's predicting a
future civil war.
Speaker 1 (18:41):
And you've been listening to author Rich Newman tell one
powerful story about Richard Allen, and what Alan is predicting,
of course, is what happens. The country doesn't wrestle with
this original sin, or it does, but not enough. And
in the end, the civil war is the only way out.
If you love your country, free your hands from slavery,
(19:04):
he implored by the way Jefferson struggled with us at
the end of his life too read his final writings.
He's tortured by slavery. The life of the nation depends
on the death of bondage. When we come back more
of this remarkable story, the story of Richard Allen. Here
on our American stories, and we continue with our American
(19:40):
stories and the story of Richard Allen as told by
Rich Newman, an historian at Rochester Institute of Technology, and
his book Freedom's Prophet, Bishop Richard Allen, The Ame Church
and the Black Founding Fathers. Let's pick up where we
last left off.
Speaker 2 (19:58):
Richard Allen is no in various parts of early America,
and eventually reformers in the abolitionist community send the Yellow
Fever pamphlet to England and people circulate it there. And
Matthew Carey, who originally came from the British Isles and
has friends in England, he hears from contacts in England
(20:18):
that Richard Allen and Napsulom Jones criticized him. So Matthew
Carey has to actually write corrections to future editions of
his work in which he partially apologizes, but he really
says he didn't mean to offend anyone. These are just
stories that he heard. But the point here is that
Richard Allen succeeded in at least offering a different version
(20:39):
of the Yellow Fever that would neutralize all the ravages
of racism. Now he will do this through his church.
Mother Bethel is a freedom church, and many members of
the subsequent freedom struggle, even into the twenty first century
are members of Richard Allen's African Methodist Episcopal Church. Rosa
Parks is a member of the am Church. She grows
(21:01):
up hearing stories about Richard Allen and the protests at
Saint George's and the Yellow Fever saga. So it's really
revealing to look at the things he went through after
seventeen ninety four. So, for example, in seventeen ninety nine,
when George Washington dies, Richard Allen sees what's happening in Philadelphia,
and he realizes no one is talking about the most
(21:22):
important legacy George Washington left behind. When George Washington dies,
everyone says the same three things about his death. He
was important because he was a revolutionary war hero in general.
Then he served as a leader at the Constitutional Convention
in seventeen eighty seven and gave that body gravitas. And
(21:43):
then he served as the first President of the United
States and gave the new fledgling government a sense of stability.
Richard Allen's information that says, none of those things are
as important as what I now know. He found through
the grapevine and stories that were printed that Washington had
left an emancipation will which would free and liberate over
(22:06):
one hundred slaved people that were in his ownership group
when his wife died, and his wife very sagely liberates
those enslaved people relatively soon after. But Washington says, this
is the only state in of my character that anyone
in the future could reproach me with. And Richard Allen
wants to celebrate that. He's saying to the American public
(22:28):
and American leaders, Look, if George Washington, who you have
all admitted is the most patriotic American who ever lived
emancipated as slaves, then ipso facto emancipation. It's not radical,
it's not illegal, it is actually patriotic. So Richard Allen
publishes this sermon in a Philadelphia newspaper, It's reprinted in
(22:52):
New York and Baltimore papers. Once again, Richard Allen is
known across the American landscape. He's probably the most famous
African Amermerican figure at the turn of the eighteenth into
the nineteenth century. It is important to note here that
Richard Allen is the first African American figure in US
history to give a eulogy of either a white leader
(23:15):
or a president. This is really significant because Richard Allen
realized that Philadelphia was still the capital of the United
States government, and when he was eulogizing Washington, who was
trying to mobilize members of Congress and the next presidential
administration to pass abolitionist laws that would undermine slavery's power
(23:36):
in the United States. So it's a really important eulogy
in his life. Then several years later, in the eighteen tens,
Richard Allen helps mobilize troops for defenses of Philadelphia during
the War of eighteen twelve. At the end of the war,
white Methodist Church officials are so upset with Richard Allen's
(23:56):
independence he doesn't pay attention to or adhere to White
Methodist policies. He claims that Mother Bethel Church is owned
and operated by African Americans and the Methodist Church is
just a kind of umbrella entity that only provides sanction
but not any interventions into church policy. This rankles white
(24:19):
church leaders and at the end of the War of
eighteen twelve, they basically claim ownership of Richard Allen's Mother
Bethel Church building. But then he sues for Mother Bethel's
independence and they argue the case before Pennsylvania Supreme Court
in eighteen sixteen, and in that year, the Supreme Court
(24:40):
sides with Richard Allen and his lawyers, and in that
decision they say, this is a basic principle of American democracy.
People vote with their feet, and Richard Allen's congregation voted
to an ear to black leaders and leaders like Richard Allen.
And if they claim ownership of that church. That is
(25:00):
then the ownership entity of Mother Bethel Church. So other
congregations gravitate towards Richard Allen, and in eighteen sixteen they
form the African Methodist Episcopal Church denomination. So Mother Bethel
is the main church in Allen's life, and it becomes
the central church and the African Methodist Episcopal Denomination. But
(25:24):
the denomination has churches elsewhere in the mid Atlantic, and
eventually it grows nationally and internationally, and today in the
twenty first century, there are well over two and a
half million congregants in the African Methodist Church fold. It's
actually spreading not only in parts of Africa and the Caribbean,
but in parts of India, in parts of Asia. The
(25:47):
spiritual appeal and the story of Richard Allen combined into
this very powerful narrative that other people around the world
identify with. But in eighteen twenty seven he also argues
that the United States is a black homeland. So Richard
Allen says this in eighteen twenty seven, this land, which
(26:07):
we have watered with our tears and our blood is
now our mother country. And we are well satisfied to
stay where wisdom abounds and the Gospel is free. This
is a really powerful statement to members of Richard Allen's
generation because it claims the United States as a black homeland,
(26:27):
as a country where equality prevails across the color line.
But of course, Richard Allen is not done yet. At
the very end of his life in the early eighteen thirties,
the problem of slavery has grown worse in American society.
Slavery doubles in size and population roughly every twenty years,
and Sir Richard Allen says this is a moment of reckoning,
(26:51):
not just for African Americans, but for members of the
white community. And in the late nineteenth century, Frederick Douglas,
who had alway revered Richard Allen, had grown up on
stories of Richard Allen from his birthplace in Maryland, had
been a member of churches where Richard Allen was celebrated.
Actually claimed that his birthday was February fourteenth because his
(27:14):
mother in Maryland told him that's when he was born.
But that's actually the same birthdate of Richard Allen February fourteenth,
seventeen sixty and Richard Allen birthdays in the Chesapeake were
kind of like festive days in the eighteen tens and
eighteen twenties when Frederick Douglass was growing up. So when
Frederick Douglas encountered his own series of backlashes against emancipation
(27:37):
and black feeedom in the late nineteenth century, he sat
down and he typed out a note in which he said,
you know who we could really use at this moment
in our troubled times. Richard Allen. Richard Allen was a
great leader. He was not just a great Black leader
or a great civil rights protester. He was a great
American leader. And I can think of no other way
(27:59):
to who eulogize Richard Allen's memory than by conjuring the
words of Frederick Douglas, who was perhaps the greatest abolitionist
of the nineteenth century, for him to say, for all
I have seen and all I have done, there's still
one person greater than me, and that's Richard Allen.
Speaker 1 (28:17):
And a terrific job on the production, editing and storytelling
by our own Greg Engler, and a special thanks to
rich Newman. He's an historian at Rochester Institute of Technology,
and he's been researching Richard Allen's story for over twenty
years rich wrote the acclaimed book Freedom's Prophet, Bishop Richard Allen,
(28:38):
the Ame Church and the Black Founding Fathers. Get it
at bookstories, Well, anywhere you get your books, you won't
put it down. And my goodness, what a story he
told here. And in the end, it's the story of
all the things that led to America's greatest tragedy of
them all, and that would be the Civil War, the
worst man made disaster in American history, six hundred thousand
(29:01):
lives lost, America torn apart, and all because of the
stain of slavery. And here was Alan doing everything in
his power to preempt conflict like that by striking at
the conscience of the American people. And there was no
better story he thought that the country needed to know.
(29:22):
But George Washington's Washington had led the Continental Army. He
had resigned his commission. And that's a startling thing. He
was the first president not one but two terms and
then left power again. And by the way, there was
no stopping him from going a third or a fourth
term that would end after Roosevelt. But the most important
(29:44):
part of his legacy, rich Newman believes, and I do too,
is the fact that he freed his slaves, and of
course what he creates is the Ame Church, which of
course has spread not just throughout America, but the Caribbean
continent of Africa and around the world. And of course
(30:05):
that final statement, this land, which we had watered with
our blood, is ours. The story of Richard Allen. Here
on our American stories.
Host
Lee Habeeb
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