The emergence of the first African Community Development Corporation (CDC) is deeply rooted in the history of African American self-help and community building in the United States. This movement traces its origins back to the late 18th century, with the establishment of mutual aid societies and the rise of independent Black churches. These early efforts laid the groundwork for the more formalized community development initiatives that would follow.
Richard Allen, founder of the Free African Society and the African Methodist Episcopal Church.
The Free African Society: A Foundation for Community Development
The AMEC grew out of the Free African Society (FAS) which Richard Allen, Absalom Jones, and others established in Philadelphia in 1787. Headed by Black founding fathers Richard Allen (1760-1831) and Absalom Jones (1746-1818), the Free African Society was founded on April 12, 1787, as a nondenominational mutual aid society and the first dedicated to serving Philadelphia’s burgeoning free Black community. The Free African Society emerged from discussions among Allen, Jones, and other men in early 1786, when Allen was leading prayer meetings and early-morning services for Black congregants of St. George’s Methodist Church.
The Free African Society, the first major secular institution with a mission to aid African Americans, paved the way for later institutions such as the National Association for the Advancement of Colored People (NAACP). The society existed for less than a decade, however, before its membership merged with African American churches and other religious organizations with similar agendas.
Key Figures of the Free African Society
- Richard Allen (1760-1831): African American former slave, religious leader, and social reformer.
- Absalom Jones (1746-1818): Leader of the Free African Society.
- Benjamin Rush (1746-1813): American physician and member of the Continental Congress.
Absalom Jones was older than Allen and had had a different set of life experiences. Born a slave in Delaware in 1746, Jones served for more than twenty years in his master’s store in Philadelphia. He earned enough money to purchase his wife’s freedom, to build his own home, and finally, in 1784, to purchase his own freedom. He continued to work for his former master for wages and bought and managed two houses for additional income. His success earned him great respect among other free blacks and opened the way for him to serve as lay leader representing the African American membership of St. George’s Methodist Episcopal Church.
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Born a slave in Philadelphia, Richard Allen and his entire family were sold to a Delaware plantation owner in the 1760s. At the age of 17, Allen began attending weekly Methodist Society meetings that transformed his life. By the age of 20, Allen was able to purchase his freedom and he became an itinerant Methodist preacher. The preaching circuit allowed him to attend Methodist meetings throughout Delaware, Maryland, New Jersey, and Pennsylvania. In 1786 Allen accepted an offer to be a weekly speaker at St. George's Methodist Episcopal Church in Philadelphia.
The Schism at St. George's Methodist Episcopal Church
Despite the religious activities undertaken by the Free African Society, its adherents remained as worshippers at St. George’s Methodist Episcopal Church until the early 1790s. Although St. George's was primarily a white church, its African American audience was steadily growing, largely due to the tremendous drawing power of Richard Allen’s weekly sermons. With their numbers rising-and with tensions rising with white congregants-Richard Allen and Absalom Jones and other blacks began fund-raising and petitioned Methodist elders to create a distinct black church. Their designs were denied, and confrontation was inevitable.
When officials at St. George’s MEC pulled blacks off their knees while praying, FAS members discovered just how far American Methodists would go to enforce racial discrimination against African Americans. Traditional accounts of Jones’s role in the founding of the Free African Society assert that, when Jones refused to comply with the announcement of St. George’s sexton that African American parishioners should give up their usual seats among the white congregation and move to the upper gallery, he was supported by Richard Allen, in particular. The two then agreed that the only way African Americans could worship in an environment that responded to their social, as well as religious, needs would be to found an all-black congregation.
Three black congregations originated from this historic act of protest. Black congregants who remained at St. George’s were soon allowed to meet separately and would formally organize African Zoar Methodist Church, a Methodist satellite, in 1796. Allen broke away from the society, and some members followed him to become members of Bethel African Methodist Episcopal (AME) Church, founded in 1794. Others preferred to associate with the Episcopal (formerly Anglican) denomination-founding St. Thomas’s African Episcopal Church, with Jones as their leader.
Ultimately, the nondenominational nature of the Free African Society combined with tensions between black and white parishioners at St. George’s Methodist Episcopal Church to bring about a schism that led to the founding of three distinct African American congregations. The original organization itself was of short duration: About seven years after it was organized, it disappeared as a formal body. In its immediate wake, however, closely related institutions emerged that tried to take over its proclaimed mission.
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Allen left the Free African Society when it grew more Quaker under religious influence from the Society of Friends. Allen, a Methodist, became disillusioned with the society’s reliance on Quaker principles such as observing fifteen minutes of silence before meetings or having a committee visit members’ houses to ensure they were living morally. In 1794, Allen broke away from the society, and some members followed him to become members of Bethel African Methodist Episcopal (AME) Church, founded in the same year.
Others preferred to associate with the Episcopal (formerly Anglican) denomination-founding St. Thomas’s African Episcopal Church, with Absalom Jones as their leader in 1794. For his part, Richard Allen, who believed deeply in the Methodism’s antislavery bona fides and its virtues of plain living and speaking, was committed to establishing an independent Methodist church.
Mother Bethel African Methodist Episcopal Church in Philadelphia.
The Rise of the African Methodist Episcopal Church
Hence, these members of St. George’s made plans to transform their mutual aid society into an African congregation. Although most wanted to affiliate with the Protestant Episcopal Church, Allen led a small group who resolved to remain Methodists. In 1794 Bethel AME was dedicated with Allen as pastor. To establish Bethel’s independence from interfering white Methodists, Allen, a former Delaware slave, successfully sued in the Pennsylvania courts in 1807 and 1815 for the right of his congregation to exist as an independent institution.
The original Bethel Church was dedicated in July 1794 on land at Sixth and Lombard Streets that Allen had purchased in 1791. As the congregation grew, new, larger churches were built. Bethel's fourth church, dedicated in October 1890, stands here at 419 S. Sixth Street. In 1953, the word "Mother" was added to the name of this Bethel Church.
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Remarkably, the slave states of Maryland, Kentucky, Missouri, Louisiana, and, for a few years, South Carolina, became additional locations for AME congregations. The denomination reached the Pacific Coast in the early 1850’s with churches in Stockton, Sacramento, San Francisco, and other places in California. The most significant era of denominational development occurred during the Civil War and Reconstruction.
Oftentimes, with the permission of Union army officials AME clergy moved into the states of the collapsing Confederacy to pull newly freed slaves into their denomination. “I Seek My Brethren,” the title of an often repeated sermon that Theophilus G. Steward preached in South Carolina, became a clarion call to evangelize fellow blacks in Georgia, Florida, Alabama, Texas, and many other parts of the south. Hence, in 1880 AME membership reached 400,000 because of its rapid spread below the Mason-Dixon line.
Today, the African Methodist Episcopal Church has membership in twenty Episcopal Districts in thirty-nine countries on five continents. While the AME is doctrinally Methodist, clergy, scholars, and lay persons have written important works which demonstrate the distinctive theology and praxis which have defined this Wesleyan body. Bishop Benjamin W. Arnett, in an address to the 1893 World’s Parliament of Religions, reminded the audience of the presence of blacks in the formation of Christianity. Bishop Benjamin T. Tanner wrote in 1895 in The Color of Solomon - What? that biblical scholars wrongly portrayed the son of David as a white man.
The First African Housing Development Corporation
Responding to white flight and disinvestment, the church organized the First African Housing Development Corporation in 1968. FAHDC aimed to acquire abandoned properties in the Parkside neighborhood of Philadelphia from absentee landlords. One of the group's members was future Philadelphia mayor Wilson Goode, representing the Philadelphia Council for Community Advancement.
In the 1990s First African's minister Henry Pinkney served on the Parkside Historic Preservation Corporation, which renovated a series of abandoned 19th century mansions facing Centennial Park, converting them to housing for low-income residents. Significantly, the renovations were designed to deliver improved housing to people already living in the neighborhood.
The geographical spread of the AMEC prior to the Civil War was mainly restricted to the Northeast and Midwest. Major congregations were established in Philadelphia, New York, Boston, Pittsburgh, Baltimore, Washington, DC, Cincinnati, Chicago, Detroit, and other large Blacksmith’s Shop cities. Numerous northern communities also gained a substantial AME presence.
| Organization | Year Founded | Founder(s) | Purpose |
|---|---|---|---|
| Free African Society | 1787 | Richard Allen, Absalom Jones | Mutual aid and community support |
| Bethel AME Church | 1794 | Richard Allen | Independent Black Methodist church |
| First African Housing Development Corporation | 1968 | First African Presbyterian Church | Acquire abandoned properties for housing |
