African American Christianity
The Atlantic Slave Trade
African Americans in the U.S. today are not the descendants of immigrants. Their ancestors came to North America in chains on slave ships from West and Central Africa. To gain perspective, view this two-minute interactive graphic. In total, more than 10 million enslaved Africans were brought to the Western Hemisphere from the sixteenth to the mid-twentieth centuries. Approximately 390,000 (4% of the total) were brought to North America. White America’s treatment of African Americans has sometimes been referred to as the nation’s original sin. The Civil War fought to end slavery and the Civil Rights movement to secure political rights were both important, but much work is yet to be done as stystemic racism still permeates many of the nation’s institutions.
The first slave ship arrived in Philadelphia in 1684, just two years after William Penn arrived. Penn’s endorsement of slavery reminds us that even those in the past we view as progressive, are still embedded in social structures built on white supremacy.
Richard Allen was born into slavery, but purchased his freedom, became a Methodist preacher, and later established the African Methodist Church after leading a protest walkout against racism at from Philadelphia’s St. George’s Methodist Episcopal Church in the 1780s.
Abolition Movement: the Struggle to End Slavery
Some of the earliest people to oppose slavery were Quakers and Mennonites. The first written protest against slavery was the 1688 Germantown Quaker Petition Against Slavery. Benjamin Lay was an early abolitionist who disrupted Quaker meetings and called on his fellow Friends to end the practice. In 1780, Pennsylvania passed the Gradual Abolition Act, which declared that persons of African descent born in Pennsylvania would be free. Slavery would not end in the United States until the end of the Civil War.
Media Resources
Racism in Philadelphia: Past and Present
Fever 1793: Richard Allen Apostle of Freedom. This video tells the story of walk-out protest Richard Allen led in a predominantly-white church, Historic St. George's. Allen and Jones founded the Free African Society, which sought the social uplift of African Americans in the city. During the Yellow Fever Epidemic of 1793, Jones and Allen lead their community in caring for Philadelphia's dying citizens. Despite their generosity, African Americans were falsely accused of stealing from their white neighbors. Jones and Allen wrote a response. Read a contemporary take on their protest writings HERE.
Key Figures
Ona Judge - (d. 1848) born into slavery serving as a slave to the President George Washington's household in Philadelphia, she escaped from the President's house and lived her life as a fugitive in New Hampshire.
Richard Allen - (d. 1831) led a walk-out protest from a predominantly white Methodist church and founded the African Methodist Episcopal Church.
Absalom Jones - (d. 1818) first African American ordained as an Episcopal priest.
Jarena Lee - (d. 1864) wrote an account of her religious experience, was licensed to preach by Bishop Allen but was only ordained posthumously by the A.M.E. church in 2016.
Octavius Catto - (d. 1871) African American leader who struggled against segregation and discrimination in transportation, sports, politics, and society; he was murdered on the streets of Philadelphia while fighting for voting rights.
Frederick Douglas - (d. 1895) abolitionist and Christian orator who spoke out against the evils of slavery.
W.E.B. DuBois - (d. 1963) sociologist who wrote a ground-breaking study of African Americans in the city's 7th Ward: The Philadelphia Negro (1899). Read the full-text version, pages 197-234 discuss the social role of the Black church.
Martin Luther King, Jr. - (d. 1968) Baptist preacher and civil rights leader.
Worship Practices
Preaching: often characterized by call and response from the congregation.
Music: Click HERE to learn more about traditional African American music known as spirituals.
A Timeline of African American History
1619 - the first enslaved Africans were brought to the colony of Virginia
1684 - the first enslaved Africans arrived in William Penn’s Colony
1787 - Richard Allen and Absalom Jones led walk-out protest against racism at a Philadelphia Methodist Church
1793 - Congress passed the Fugitive Slave Act which made it illegal to help an enslaved person escape
1796 - enslaved African American Ona Judge escaped from President Washington’s home in Philadelphia and never returned
1831 - William Lloyd Garrison first published an abolitionist newspaper which help fuel the movement to end slavery
1830s - 1850s - a national network known as the Underground Railroad helped 75,000 escape slavery
1857 - Dred Scott Supreme Court Case declared enslaved people are not citizens
1861 - Southern states formed the Confederacy to defend the institution of slavery
1863 - President Abraham Lincoln writes the Emancipation Proclamation, which declared slavery illegal
1865 - the 13th Amendment to the Constitution officially abolished slavery
1870 - the 15th Amendment promised the right to vote for African Americans
1871 - voting rights advocate Octavius Catto martyred on the streets of Philadelphia on election day
1896 - The U.S. Supreme Court case Plessy v. Ferguson affirmed that “Jim Crow” laws were legal and that public facilities could be segregated by race.
1890s - 1920s - the peak years of public, vigilante killings of African Americans known as lynching, over 4000 documented occurences
1910s and 1920s - millions of African Americans migrate north to cities like Philadelphia to escape poverty and racial violence perpetrated against them
1921 - white rioters destroyed a prosperous Black neighborhood in the Tulsa Race Massacre
1954 - Supreme Court case Brown v. Board of Education declared segregation to be unconstitutional
1955 - Civil rights activist Rosa Parks was arrested after refusing to give up her seat sparking the Montgomery Bus Boycott
1965 - Voting Rights Act
2008 - Barack Obama become the first African American elected president
2020 - An African American George Floyd was killed by a Minneapolis police officer sparking nationwide protests against police brutality and for racial justice
Key Sites
Odunde Festival - the largest and longest-running African American street festival in the U.S. Founded in 1975 in Philadelphia, Odunde takes its name from "Happy New Year" in the Yoruba language. It is held the second weekend of June and takes place near 22nd and South Streets.
National Memorial for Peace and Justice - located in Montgomery, Alabama, this museum and memorial commemorates the 4,400 lynching deaths of black people in the United States between 1877 and 1950.
Slavery Sites in Philadelphia - Front and Market (site of slave auctions), President's House at 6th and Market (includes memorial to 9 persons enslaved in household of President Washington), and Washington Square at 6th and Walnut (gathering site for persons of African descent during colonial period).
Philadelphia's Seventh Ward - this is the historic African American neighborhood of the city and focus of DuBois' sociological study: The Philadelphia Negro.
Readings/Resources
Harvey, Paul. Through the Storm, Through the Night: A History of African American Christianity, 2011.
King, Martin Luther King, Jr. “Letter From a Birmingham Jail (Links to an external site.).” 1963.
Newman, Richard S. Freedom's Prophet: Bishop Richard Allen, the AME Church and the Black Founding Fathers, 2008.
