Click on any of the locations listed below to learn more.

Background

In 1751, Isaac Norris, the Speaker of the Pennsylvania Assembly, placed an order for a bell from the Whitechapel Foundry in London. The bell that we now know as the Liberty Bell was first called the “State House Bell”. Originally, it resided in the tower of the Pennsylvania State House, now known as Independence Hall. However, this bell cracked during its first test ring. Determined to have a suitable bell for the tower, local metalworkers named John Pass and John Stow decided to melt down the flawed bell and cast a new one right here in Philadelphia.

The precise origin and cause of the Liberty Bell's initial crack remain undocumented. However, it is widely believed that a small split developed in the early 1840s, following almost 90 years of rigorous use. In 1846, the city of Philadelphia made the decision to repair the bell just before George Washington's birthday. Skilled metal workers chose a method known as "stop drilling" to widen the narrow crack, aiming to prevent its further propagation and restore the bell's original tone.

Unfortunately, the repair endeavor did not ultimately succeed. The Public Ledger newspaper reported that the repair failed when a second fissure emerged. This new crack stretched from the abbreviation for "Philadelphia" up to the word "Liberty," forever silencing the bell. Presently, no living individual has had the opportunity to experience the unhindered ringing of the bell, but computer simulations provide some insight into its original sound.

A Symbol of Liberty

The bell was inscribed with a verse from Leviticus 25:10: “Proclaim liberty throughout all the land unto all inhabitants thereof.” (KJV) It was intended to commemorate the 50th anniversary of William Penn’s Charter of Privileges, which guaranteed religious and political liberty in the colony of Pennsylvania.

In the 19th century, the State House bell gained recognition as a remarkable symbol of freedom. The inscription on the bell, "Proclaim Liberty Throughout All the Land Unto All the Inhabitants thereof," became a significant rallying cry for abolitionists who sought an end to slavery. The Liberty Bell, originally referenced in an 1835 abolitionist publication, The Anti-Slavery Record, took years to become popularized with its new name.

Starting in the late 1800s, the Liberty Bell was exhibited across the nation, making stops in communities, large and small, for expositions and fairs. As the nation rebuilt following the Civil War, the bell served to remind Americans of a time when they fought together for independence.

The Liberty Bell was increasingly embraced as a symbol for all kinds of liberty - women's voting rights during the Suffrage Movement, civil rights, and LGBTQ+ rights. The Liberty Bell continues to inspire people worldwide and remains a symbol of American freedom.

Background

Mikveh Israel is a synagogue in Philadelphia, founded in 1740. It is the oldest synagogue in Philadelphia and the second oldest in America. However, because the Jewish community was so small, its minyan (the quorum of ten men required for Jewish public worship) was often split between Philadelphia and Lancaster. It was not until 1771 that the congregation finally got a minyan and was able to establish a formal synagogue. While its name means “Hope of Israel,” it gained the nickname the “Synagogue of the Revolution,” due to the congregation’s political and financial support for the American Revolution. During the Revolutionary War, Mikveh Israel became a haven for Jews seeking refuge from the British in other areas of colonial America such as New York, Richmond, and Charleston. 

Architectural Summary

Mikveh Israel was founded by Nathan and Isaac Levy in roughly 1740 as a Sephardic Jewish congregation. To begin with, services were held in Nathan Levy’s home on Sterling Alley. The first synagogue building was constructed on Cherry Street, between 3rd and 4th streets, in 1782. After several Jews left Philadelphia following the Revolutionary War, Mikveh Israel had significant construction debt. Key Jewish leaders helped fund the synagogue alongside non-Jewish figures such as Benjamin Franklin, Thomas McKean, Charles Biddle, and David Rittenhouse. Christ Church also donated funds. The congregation constructed its second building at the same location in 1822 before moving to 117 N 7th St. in 1860. In 1909, the congregation moved to Broad and York streets, and then moved to its current location in the Independence Mall area in 1976. The building held the National Museum of American Jewish History until the new museum opened in 2010. Alongside fundraising, the congregation received a grant from the Bicentennial Commission for construction of the building. It was designed by the architecture firm Harberson, Hough, Livingston and Larson. 

Spruce Street Cemetery

Notable Firsts

• Oldest synagogue in Philadelphia and second oldest synagogue in North America.

• Established the first Jewish Cemetery in Philadelphia, located at 831 Spruce St.

•  The congregation built an Egyptian Revival synagogue on Cherry Street in 1829, making it one of the earliest Egyptian Revival buildings in America.

Notable Figures

• Nathan Levy (1704-1753) was a Jewish merchant who moved to Philadelphia in the late 1730s. He founded Congregation Mikveh Israel. 

• Jonas Phillips (1736-1803) settled in Philadelphia. He fought in the Revolutionary War and spoke to the Constitutional Convention in 1787, arguing against religious oaths for political office.

• https://commons.wikimedia.org/wiki/File:Jonas_Phillips.jpg

• Haym Salomon (1740-1785) helped finance the American Revolution. He was imprisoned by the British, but escaped and made his way to Philadelphia. 

• https://commons.wikimedia.org/wiki/File:Haym_Salomon_stamp.jpg

• Uriah P. Levy (1792-1862) was the first Jewish commodore in the U.S. Navy and led a movement to abolish flogging as punishment.

• https://commons.wikimedia.org/wiki/File:UriahPhillipsLevy.jpg

• Rebecca Gratz (1781-1869) was a prominent Jewish American educator and philanthropist.

• https://picryl.com/media/rebecca-gratz-47f6db

• David Salisbury Franks (1740-1793) was tied as the highest ranking Jewish officer in the Continental Army. 

• Rebecca Machado Phillips (1746-1831) was a founding member of the Female Association for Relief of Women and Children in Reduced Circumstances and director of the Female Benevolent Society, the first Jewish charity in America unaffiliated to a synagogue.

• https://commons.wikimedia.org/wiki/File:Rebecca_Mendes_Machado_Phillips_1746-1831.jpg

Current Congregation  

• 44 N 4th St, Philadelphia, PA 19106

• Service held in the  Spanish-Portuguese tradition

• Welcomes visitors and guest 

Link to the Website - www.mikvehisrael.org

Jewish Life in Colonial America 

Jewish life in colonial America is generally traced to 1654 when a small vessel arrived in New Amsterdam, today the southern end of Manhattan. The vessel included twenty-three Jews who were fleeing from Brazil. There were early and short-lived attempts in the following decades to create Jewish communities in North America, such as in Newport, Rhode Island. The first permanent Jewish community formed in New York during the 1680s. A second Jewish community emerged in Savannah, Georgia shortly afterwards. When this community split between its Sephardic and Ashkenazi populations, the former group departed and formed a new community in Charleston, South Carolina. Throughout the middle of the eighteenth and into the early nineteenth centuries, Jewish communities continued to form along the Atlantic seaboard in Philadelphia, Baltimore, and Richmond. Small Jewish communities also moved inland to form trade routes, for example in Lancaster, Pennsylvania with Native American populations.

Despite the growth of these communities, the Jewish population remained tiny in comparison to the overall population. Jews accounted for under one percent of the nation’s entire population by 1820. As the historian Eli Farber notes, while the period between 1654 and 1820 is commonly referred to as the “Sephardic era in American Jewish history,” this was because it was Sephardic rituals that governed Jewish religious life. Even in this early period, the majority of Jews who established themselves in America were of Ashkenazic descent. Regardless of descent, for the most part Jewish immigrants came from or traveled through London and Amsterdam on the way to America.

Jewish Life in Philadelphia 

The first Jews arrived in the Delaware Valley in the 1650s as traders, but it would not be until the eighteenth century that a permanent Jewish community formed. Isaac Miranda, a Jewish trader from Italy arrived in Pennsylvania in the second decade of the eighteenth century and lived in Philadelphia before he moved to Lancaster. Miranda rose to the position of deputy-judge of the court of vice-admiralty for Pennsylvania. While he eventually converted to Christianity, this was the only major civic position held by a Jewish individual in Pennsylvania until after the American Revolution. Lancaster started to form a permanent Jewish community around the middle of the eighteenth century and, in 1747, a group of Jewish families obtained a plot of land for use as a burial ground.

A permanent Jewish community started to form in Philadelphia in the late 1730s, after Nathan Levy and David Franks arrived in the city. Levy and his brother are considered the first known practicing Jews to settle in Philadelphia. Levy and Franks merged their merchant businesses and became important and wealthy trading families.  Other Jewish families, such as the Simons and Gratzes started to arrive in the colony. While these merchant families had some wealth, most Jewish immigrants during this period were young men with little money. Historian Toni Pitock estimates that by 1750, there were fifteen to twenty Jewish men in Philadelphia and the greater region (estimates for Jewish women are much harder). This had likely risen to fifty to sixty men by the following decade. 

Pennsylvania’s early focus on religious tolerance and diversity also increased the diversity of many of the city and the colony’s civic institutions. For example, when Franklin Academy was founded in Lancaster in 1787, later Franklin and Marshall College, four of its first students were two Jewish men and two Jewish women. A significant amount of Philadelphia’s Jewish men belonged to the city’s Masonic lodges. When Philadelphia became an epicenter of Jewish life during the American Revolution, almost a quarter of the Sublime Lodge of Perfection were Jewish men, including the chapter’s deputy grand master Solomon Bush.

Jews and the American Revolution

The American Revolution transformed Jewish life in North America. On the eve of the American Revolution, there were at most 2,500 Jews in the colonies, in a population of approximately 2.5 million. As less than one percent of the population, the vast majority of Americans had likely never encountered a Jew outside of the pages of the Bible. While a small minority of Jews supported the British, the vast majority of the colonies’ Jews supported the American cause. The focus on liberty fit with Jews’ own question for emancipation. At the same time, there were financial reasons why many American Jews supported the American cause. Many Jewish merchants held grievances against the British for their regulation of trade. For example, at least nine Jews joined Philadelphia’s merchant community in 1765 in adopting a Non-Importation Agreement. This pledged to not import goods from Britain until the Stamp Act was repealed. These included members of families such as the Gratzes and Levys, and David Franks.

Up to one hundred Jews fought in the American Revolution. Three attained high office in the Continental Army, which would have been impossible in Britain, where one could not become an officer unless they took an oath as a Christian. At least one of the Jews who fought in the American Revolution was exempted from serving on the city watch on Friday nights. Haym Salomon was a crucial financier of the war effort and gained the name “Broker to the Office of Finance,” while a Jewish doctor ministered to George Washington’s troops at Valley Forge. On the Dutch Caribbean island of St. Eustatius, several hundred Jews successfully averted the British blockade, smuggling goods and military supplies to the Americans. Philadelphia became a key destination of Jewish refugees during the war. When a boys’ military group escorted the Continental Congress into Philadelphia when they first met in September 1774, it included twelve-year-old Jacob Mordecai. The city and Mikveh Israel may have been temporary homes to as much as half the Jewish population in America at various points during the war. 

Tolerance and Intolerance 

Historian William Pencak argues that the status of Jews in colonial North America shifted over time from the 1650s through to the 1820s. Throughout the colonial era, Jews were tolerated to the extent that they were allowed to live and practice their religion. Yet they still experienced antisemitism, particularly from non-elites, and were barred from voting or holding public office in most colonies. However, as Jews experienced significant gains in political equality and social standing in the Revolutionary era, public prejudice became more acute in some quarters. Rather than being seen as a tiny minority of little consequence, some Christians started to view Jews as a threat to a Christian nation. Pencak argues that as Jews became more politically involved and gained rights, it gave birth to a “political anti-Semitism.”

Even in William Penn’s “holy experiment,” there were limits to religious tolerance. Beginning in the 1750s, attacks on Pennsylvania’s Jews became disproportionate to their number and influence. While the Pennsylvania Gazette supported the Jewish Naturalisation Act of 1753, the short-lived act to allow Jews in Britain to become naturalized, much of the press was less supportive of the Jewish population. Moreover, as conflict erupted in the western edge of the colony, Jewish merchants in Lancaster who had trading routes with Native Americans increasingly faced antisemitic threats from German settlers on the Pennsylvania frontier. For example, in 1766, an article in the German-language newspaper Der Wochentlichte Philadelphische Staatsbote attacked the “Jew landlords’’ as ‘‘terrible people” who were intent upon ruining the German families in the region.

Even after the American Revolution, there remained limits on religious freedom, The war and its aftermath brought crucial questions of political and religious equality to the fore. In the new states, rights varied. To begin with only New York, which passed its first state constitution in 1777, removed all previous restrictions against Jews. It was as late as 1826 that Maryland became the final state to pass legislation in favor of Jewish equality. That year, it passed a law that stated, “people professing the Jewish religion” would be extended the “same rights and privileges enjoyed by Christians.” Important in this respect, was the federal constitution and the Bill of Rights which outlawed religious tests. For Jews, the free exercise clause of the First Amendment was particularly relevant. The free exercise clause gave Jews a legal basis for protesting policies that prevented them from practicing their religion. In George Washington’s famed letter to the Jews of Newport in 1790, part of a larger series of correspondence between Washington and various Jewish congregations, he noted that the new government would not sanction bigotry towards Jewish people, while reminding American Jews that they would be welcomed in the United States as long as they were “good citizens.” In a sense, Jews went from being outsiders to participants in civil society. Yet, there remained limits on this participation and prejudice did not completely disappear.

Pennsylvania's new state constitution in 1776 expanded the meaning of democracy but mandated that only professing Christians could hold office and vote. One letter that appeared in the Philadelphia Evening Post on September 26, 1776, displayed the opposition of some to the religious diversity characteristic of Penn’s “holy experiment.” The letter stated “An Episcopal church, a Presbyterian meeting-house, a Roman Catholic church, a mosque, a synagogue, a heathen temple have now in Pennsylvania all equal privileges! Will it not be an asylum for all fugitive Jesuits and outcasts of Europe.... If blasphemers of Christ and the Holy Blessed Trinity, despisers of the revelation and the holy bible may hold public office... Wo unto the city! Wo unto the land!” The section of the new constitution that required an oath of allegiance ended up not just disenfranchising Jews but also Quakers, deists, and freethinkers who would not swear that both the Old and New Testaments were divinely inspired. The politician who had suggested the oath was a prominent Lutheran clergyman, Henry Muhlenberg. Muhlenberg was likely attempting to direct attention onto minorities to divert from accusations of his own loyalist sympathies during the war. Muhlenberg stated that ‘‘Jews, Turks, Spinozists, Deists [and] perverted naturalists [were] ruling over a ‘Christian people.’’’

Several Philadelphia Jewish leaders protested the oath requirements of the Pennsylvania Assembly that linked government service to belief in Jesus Christ as savior of the world. At the Constitutional Convention in Philadelphia, the city’s Jews petition the convention that no religious requirements for voting or office holding should be written into the document in the manner of the Pennsylvania Constitution. Jonas Phillips emphasized Jews commitment to the revolutionary cause and argued that ‘‘all men have a natural and unalienable right to worship almighty God according to the dictates of their own conscience and understanding.’’ Even after the removal of the Christian oath to hold political office following the First Amendment and the adoption of a new Pennsylvania constitution in 1790, a pervasive Christianity still dominated elements of Philadelphia daily life. For example, because stores were barred from opening on Sunday, Jewish businesses could only open their stores during five days of the week compared to six for Christians. The revolutionary hero Jonas Phillips was fined ten pounds in 1793 for refusing to be sworn in as a witness on a Saturday and, in 1816, Abraham Wolf was convicted of working on the Sabbath, even though he had kept to his own religion’s Sabbath.

Useful Documents 

Letter, Jonas Phillips to Present and Members of the Convention, 7 Sept. 1787 - link

• Letter arguing for full political equality and participation for Jewish citizens 

Letter, “A Philadelphia Wedding,” Benjamin Rush to Julia Stockton Rush, 1787 - link

• Benjamin Rush’s account of attending the wedding of Rachel Phillips, daughter of Jonas Phillips, to Micheal Levy. Rachel and Michael were the parents of Uriah P. Levy. 

• This is the only surviving account of an eighteenth century Jewish wedding in America. 

Mikveh Israel Congregational Records - link

Bibliography

Ashton, Dianne. Rebecca Gratz: Women and Judaism in Antebellum America. Detroit: Wayne State University Press, 1997. 

Diner, Hasia R. The Jews of the United States, 1654 To 2000. Berkeley: University of California Press, 2004.

Faber, Eli. America’s Earliest Jewish Settlers, 1654-1820, in Marc Lee Raphael, ed., The Columbia History of Jews and Judaism in America. New York: Columbia University Press, 2008, pp. 21-46.

Pencak, William. Jews & Gentiles in Early America, 1654-1800. Ann Arbor: University of Michigan Press, 2005.

Pencak, William. “Anti-Semitism, Toleration, and Appreciation: The Changing Relations of Jews and Gentiles in Early America,” in Chris Beneke and Christopher S. Grenda., eds. The First Prejudice: Religious Tolerance and Intolerance in Early America. Philadelphia: University of Pennsylvania Press, 2011, pp. 241-62.

Sarna, Jonathan D. America Judaism: A History. New Haven: Yale University Press, 2004. 

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Architectural Summary

Mother Bethel has undergone several remodelings since its founding. It was refashioned in 1889 in the Romanesque style and is currently a three-story building with stained glass windows from Germany. The church’s basement has a tunnel that connects the building to a Quaker meeting house. This tunnel was part of the Underground Railroad, the network that transported escaped enslaved people to freedom. Several other AME churches built in the nineteenth century also had this feature. 

Notable Firsts

• Oldest piece of real estate continuously owned by Black people in the United States.

• Oldest African Methodist Episcopal Church in the United States.

• Home to Richard Allen, the first Black Methodist Minister in the United States.

• First fully independent Black denomination in the United States. 

• Hosted the inaugural meeting of the African Methodist Episcopal Church in 1816. 

• Hosted the first major anti-colonization meeting in the United States in 1817. 

• Hosted the first Black Conventions Movement, a gathering of Black leaders, in 1830. 

Notable Figures

• Francis Asbury (1745 – 1816) 

• Prominent Methodist bishop during the Second Great Awakening who contributed to the spread of Methodism in the United States. Gave the inaugural address at Mother Bethel and ordained Richard Allen as the first Black Methodist deacon in 1799. 

• Jarena Lee (1783 – 1864)

• Richard Allen (1760 – 1831) 

• Sarah (Bass) Allen (1764 – 1849) 

• A former slave, Allen was an abolitionist and missionary for the AME Church. She married Richard Allen in 1802 and is considered the “Founding Mother” of the denomination. 

Link to the Website

• https://motherbethel.org/

Black Freedom in Philadelphia 

In the Revolutionary War and Early Republic eras, Philadelphia’s Black population transitioned from a majority enslaved community to a predominantly free Black community. In 1780, Pennsylvania passed the nation’s first gradual abolition act. Alongside the steady growth of its free Black population, thousands of fugitive slaves made their way to the city, many of whom found shelter at Bethel Church or in Richard Allen’s home. From the late eighteenth century until the Civil War, Philadelphia boasted the largest free Black population of any American city.  Despite the growth of the Black population in Philadelphia, many of the established churches and denominations had little interest in growing their Black congregations or ministering to people of color. This made the message of Black religious leaders such as Richard Allen even more appealing. By the middle of the 1830s, there were almost 4000 Black church members in Philadelphia across fourteen different churches. Historian Gary Nash argues that the creation of Black institutions and organizations, such as Mother Bethel, played a crucial role in the development, growth, and politicization of the Black community in the city. In turn, this community helped shape the growing anti-slavery movement across the nation. 

St. George’s Methodist Episcopal Church 

By the early 1780s, Richard Allen had become well-known on the itinerant Methodist preaching circuit. In 1786, Methodist elders invited Allen to Philadelphia and preach to various Black groups. Allen started to preach at St. George’s Methodist Episcopal Church where he could access the pulpit at 5AM each day. Allen started to build up the Black contingent of St. George’s, from five members when he arrived in 1786 to forty-two Black members within a year. However, white elders started to limit Allen’s activity, particularly the way he exhorted. Eventually, the church vestry at St. George’s attempted to enforced segregation without notice by removing Black worshippers to a newly built upstairs gallery. The vestry attempted to forcibly remove Absalom Jones during prayers, and Allen recalled that a trustee pulled Jones up “off his knees” and exclaimed “you must get up – you must not kneel here.” The two men led the Black contingent out of St. George’s. It remains a source of historical debate when this incident occurred. Allen, in his own recollection, as well as prominent scholars of Allen, such as Charles Wesley and Carol George, stated that the walk-out occurred in 1787. However, most historians now believe that it happened in 1792. This draws from the work of Milton Sernett who discovered that the new balcony’s construction did not begin until 1792. Allen biographer Richard Newman describes the walk out from St. George’s as “one of the first ‘back of the bus’ moments” in the long Black freedom struggle. 

Free African Society

While Allen and Jones were building a Black contingent at St. George’s, they formed the Free African Society (FAS) in 1787.  FAS was a Black mutual aid society that provided financial support to Black families, aid to fugitive enslaved people, and lobbied city government. For example, in 1790, FAS petitioned city leaders for a plot of land for a common cemetery. Originally, FAS met in Allen’s home, then the home of Sarah Dougherdy, before settling at the Friends Free African School House, a Quaker institution. FAS maintained a strong moral reformist bend from its beginning, but it was not explicit religious at its founding and maintained a non-denominational status. Yet, FAS soon became riven with denominational tensions. Allen unsuccessfully tried to impose Methodism on the society. He believed that the plain doctrine of Methodism would be appealing to African Americans. Allen stopped attending the meetings in late 1788, at the same time that FAS adopted the Quaker practice of fifteen minutes of silence at the beginning of each session, and was effectively read out of the society by 1789. FAS spawned dozens of African mutual aid societies and benevolent organizations across the nation in the following decades. 

Origins of Mother Bethel

By the late 1780s, Allen, Jones, and several other Black leaders had started to think about building an independent Black church separate from St. George’s. This faced opposition from several white clerics but also from some Blacks who raised concerns over offending white leaders. The fallout from FAS, however, only convinced Allen further of the need for an independent Black church. From 1790 to 1792, Allen joined other leaders of the city’s Black community to raise funds for an independent “African Church.” Jones and Allen raised as much as $360 in one day for the venture, and even received a donation from George Washington. In 1791, Allen purchased a plot of land at Sixth and Lombard, today the site of Mother Bethel and the oldest plot of land in the United States continuously owned by African Americans. The segregation of St. George’s and the removal of Black worshippers only increased sympathy for the project and helped raise funds for an “African Church.”

The African Church, at its inception, emerged out of FAS. However, Allen eventually withdrew part of the congregation to found Mother Bethel. Absalom Jones remained the head of the African Church, which was received into the Episcopal Diocese of Pennsylvania in October 1794 and remained St. Thomas African Episcopal Church. The name “Bethel” comes from the Hebrew translation for “temple” but also drew on the reference to spiritual destiny in Genesis 28:17-19. Within a year, Allen had attracted over one hundred congregants, from a range of different socio-economic backgrounds. 

The new church, however, maintained a very tense relationship with St. George’s which continuously tried to limit Black autonomy and take control of Mother Bethel. From its dedication in 1794 until 1816, the white Methodist elders at St. George’s tried to seize of the property at Mother Bethel, limit ministerial authority, and control its membership. One of the reasons for this was the very success of Mother Bethel itself, whose membership grew significantly in the first two decades of the nineteenth century and had risen to almost 1300 members by 1813. In 1807, Mother Bethel’s leadership passed an African Supplement to guarantee Black autonomy to Mother Bethel, which Allen argued superseded the church’s original charter. Methodist lawyers, however, argued that it had illegally seized power from white clerics and tried to sell the building in June 1815. After purchasing the plot of land with his own money that summer, a federal court sided with the Black leadership over the white Methodist elders in January 1816 and declared that the church was free and independent. This paved the way for the formation of the African Methodist Episcopal Church as a separate denomination. Mother Bethel continued to become one of the fastest growing churches in Philadelphia. By the 1820s, it was performing two hundred baptisms annually which provided between four and eight percent of the city’s total baptisms.

After the courts declared Mother Bethel independent, Allen held a general conference in 1816 that united the five African American Methodist congregations that existed at that time in the United States into the denomination, the African Methodist Episcopal Church. The denomination reasserted John Wesley’s original prohibition against membership by slaveholders, which had been abandoned by several Methodist churches. In 1817, Allen and fellow Mother Bethel member Jacob Tapisco coauthored The Doctrines and Discipline of the African Methodist Episcopal Church. The African Methodist Episcopal Church’s founding text, it remains an important statement on Black theology. The denomination distributed thousands of copies, so much so that Newman suggests that by the 1830s it was probably the most popular text, except for the Bible, in many Black communities. Today, the African Methodist Episcopal Church that sprung from Mother Bethel boasts a membership of over two million people across the globe. 

Mother Bethel became an important center, along with St. Thomas’s, for Black protest and abolitionism. In 1799, an anti-slavery petition was presented to the federal government, written by over seventy Black Philadelphians. While parishioners from St. Thomas provided most of the signatures, it included at least five members of the Mother Bethel congregation. By 1816, Newman argues that “Bethel Church was a bastion of black power.” In 1816, the American Colonization Society was formed which argued that the solution to slavery was to transport Blacks to another country. Between the years 1817 and 1830, Black clergy organized major protests against this initiative. The most important public protest was at Mother Bethel in January 1817, which included three thousand African Americans. Charles Coleman contends that the Black church’s role in defeating colonization was important in both the development of the Black church into a form of protest, the Black community’s acceptance of religious leadership’s key role in the race’s future, and in helping Black clergy articulate an explicit theology of Blacks as children of God. Moreover, Black ministers were influential in turning William Lloyd Garrison against the American Colonization Society. 

The Yellow-Fever Epidemic of 1793 

In 1793, a yellow-fever epidemic broke out across Philadelphia. The city had previously endured yellow fever outbreaks in 1699, 1741, and 1762, but never on this scale. By the early 1790s, Philadelphia was the busiest port in the nation. Combined with Philadelphia’s unsanitary public urban conditions and the summer climate, it is likely that yellow fever was carried through mosquito bites on the several thousand French immigrants and their slaves who had recently arrived in the city fleeing the Haitian Revolution. Not coincidently, when the thousands of French immigrants arrived in the city during the summer of 1793, they received the sympathy of many prominent white Philadelphia philanthropists, who moved from helping to build the African Church and instead focused on aiding the refugee slaveowners. The epidemic eventually came to a stop in the winter, as the weather killed off the mosquitos, but by this point it had killed between 4000 to 5000 people, roughly ten to fifteen percent of Philadelphia’s population, including 400 African Americans. 

When the epidemic began, many of Philadelphia’s population with means fled the city, including most city officials. Benjamin Rush erroneously believed that African Americans were immune to yellow fever and enlisted the help of Richard Allen and Absalom Jones to try and mobilize the Black community to help assist with the disease recovery effort. Numerous African American volunteers assisted those citizens afflicted with the disease, and with the disposal and burial of the dead. Rush abandoned several racial stereotypes after seeing the medical skills of African Americans and the heroism of Jones and Allen during the epidemic, and the Black Philadelphia community gained deserved recognition in some, although not all, corners.

Richard Allen caught yellow fever in September 1793 and was lucky to survive. The Spruce Street neighborhood in which he resided was devastated by the epidemic, with fifty-five of its 708 residents dead by the end of the year, and another 250 had fled their homes. The ability to leave the city often reflected class and racial biases, with forty percent of Spruce Street’s white residents leaving, compared to only fifteen percent of its Black population. From September to November, Black leaders marshalled a powerful force of Black volunteers and workers to combat the disease, often becoming the de facto medical examiners and notaries. For example, Richard Allen’s brother John Allen worked as a nurse and laborer. 

Despite the heroism of the Black community during the epidemic, racist perceptions of Black people persisted. Matthew Carey, a prominent printer in Philadelphia who had been appointed to serve on the civic relief committee by the mayor, published A Short Account of the Malignant Fever, Lately Prevalent in Philadelphia: With a Statement of the Proceedings That Took Place on the Subjects in Different Parts of the United States. Despite having fled the city himself, Carey’s pamphlet labelled the Black masses “villainous,” and accused Black nurses of stealing and taking advantage of white patients. In response to Carey’s pamphlet, Jones and Allen coauthored their own. A Narrative of the Proceedings of the Black People During the Late Awful Calamity in Philadelphia demonstrated that Black leaders would respond to racist stereotypes in print. It contested Carey’s claims to criminality and reported both Black morality rates and their contribution to battling the epidemic. As scholar Joanna Brooks writes, the text “reclaimed blackness from feverish overdetermination.” The first political pamphlet written by Black Philadelphians in the new republic, it may have also been the first time that African American authors availed themselves of federal copywrite. 

Documents 

Jones, Absalom, and Richard Allen. A Narrative of the Proceedings of the Black People, During the Late Awful Calamity in Philadelphia, in the Year 1793. Philadelphia, William W. Woodward, 1794.

Lee, Jarena. Religious Experience and Journal of Mrs. Jarena Lee, Giving an Account of Her Call to Preach the Gospel. Philadelphia: published for the author, 1849.

The Doctrines and Discipline of the African Methodist Episcopal Church. Philadelphia, published by Richard Allen and Jacob Tapisco for the African Methodist Connection in the United States, 1817. 

Bibliography

“About the Reverend Absalom Jones.” The African Episcopal Church of St. Thomas, accessed April 30, 2023. http://www.aecst.org/ajones.htm.

Brooks, Joanna. American Lazarus: Religion and the Rise of African American and Native American Literatures. Oxford: Oxford University Press, 2003. 

Campbell, James T. Songs of Zion: The African Methodist Episcopal Church in the United States and South Africa. Oxford: Oxford University Press, 1995.

Coleman, Charles L. “The Emergence of Black Religion in Pennsylvania, 1776-1850,” Pennsylvania Heritage, vol 4, no. 1 (December 1977): 24-28. 

Douglass, William. Annals of the First African Church in the USA, Now Styled the African Episcopal Church of St. Thomas, Philadelphia. Philadelphia: King & Baird, 1862. 

Dunkley, D. A., “Black Radicalism in the Episcopal Church: Absalom Jones and Slave Resistance, 1746-1818,” Anglican and Episcopal History, vol. 91, no. 3 (September 2022): 263-90. 

Lammers, Ann C. “The Rev. Absalom Jones and the Episcopal Church: Christian Theology and Black Consciousness in a New Alliance,” Historical Magazine of the Protestant Episcopal Church, vol. 51, no. 2 (June 1982): 159-84. 

Nash, Gary B. Forging Freedom: The Formation of Philadelphia’s Black Community, 1720-1840. Cambridge: Harvard University Press, 1988. 

Newman, Richard. Freedom’s Prophet: Bishop Richard Allen, the A.M.E. Church, and the Black Founding Fathers. New York University Press, 2008.

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