Richard Allen

Introduction

Richard Allen was a success. Born into slavery in Philadelphia in 1760, he past away in 1831 not only free but influential, a founder of the African Methodist Episcopal place of worship and its first bishop. Allen's increase has much of the classic American success story about it, but he bears a larger implication: Allen, as one of the first African-Americans to be emancipated during the Revolutionary Era, had to forge an persona for his people as well as for himself (Eddie, 4-81).

traded as a child along with his family to a grower in Delaware, Allen began his ascent in 1777, when he was altered to Methodism by Freeborn Garretson, an itinerant preacher. Garretson furthermore altered Allen's master and assured him that on Judgment Day slaveholders would be "weighted in the balance, and discovered wanting." permitted by his repentant proprietor to purchase his freedom, Allen earned a dwelling cutting cordwood and going by car a wagon throughout the Revolutionary War. After the conflict he furthered the Methodist origin by becoming a "licensed exhorter," preaching to blacks and whites from New York to South Carolina. His efforts attracted the vigilance of Methodist managers, including Francis Asbury, the first American bishop of the Methodist Church. In 1786 Allen was nominated as an aide minister in Philadelphia, assisting the racially blended congregation of St. George's Methodist Church. The following year he and Absalom Jones, another very dark preacher, connected other ex-slaves and Quaker philanthropists to form the Free African humanity, a quasi-religious benevolent association that suggested fellowship and mutual help to "free Africans and their descendants (Charles, 1-258)."

Richard Allen was an abolitionist and the first bishop of the African Methodist Episcopal (AME) Church. Allen was born a slave on February 14, 1760, in Philadelphia to parents belongs to by Benjamin Chew, the colony's attorney general and head fairness of the High Court of Appeals. Allen subsequent recalled masticate as a kind master, but the attorney's practice faltered when Allen was seventeen, and Allen, his parents, and his three siblings were sold to Stokely Sturgis, a rich farmer who dwelled beside Dover, Delaware. Sturgis was far less benevolent than masticate, and after a short time he traded Allen's parents and two of his siblings. He did permit Allen to join localized Methodist services, and Allen wise to read and compose and shortly started to preach at the meetings.

With the help of Freeborn Garretson, an itinerant Methodist minister, Allen was adept to convince Sturgis that the ownership of another was morally wrong. At extent, Sturgis acquiesced to manumit Allen and his brother, supplied that they were adept to purchase themselves by raising either $2,000 in Continental paper or £60 in gold or shiny currency. Both were able to do so by 1780, and at the age of twenty, Allen started a new life as a free day laborer, bricklayer, and wagon driver.

While working as a teamster during the last days of the Revolutionary conflict, Allen started to preach at normal stops around ...