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Biography of Richard AllenName: Richard AllenBirth Date: February 14, 1760 Death Date: March 26, 1831 Place of Birth: Philadelphia, Pennsylvania, United States Nationality: American Gender: Male Occupations: bishop Richard Allen Richard Allen (1760-1831), American Methodist bishop, rose from slavery to freedom to become the first African American ordained in the Methodist Episcopal Church. He was the founder of the African Methodist Episcopal Church.Richard Allen was born on Feb. 14, 1760, the slave of a Quaker lawyer in Philadelphia who sold him to a planter near Dover, Del. While laboring on his new master's farm, he showed an interest in religion, was converted, and joined a Methodist society. His master, who encouraged his religious work, was in turn converted and allowed Richard and his brother to earn their freedom. Allen educated himself. As a free African American, he traveled through Delaware, Maryland, New Jersey, and Pennsylvania, preaching to both whites and blacks and maintaining himself by cutting wood, laboring in a brickyard, and driving a wagon.The warm, informal style of early Methodism won Allen's loyalty. He was one of two African Americans …showed first 150 words…
…showed last 150 words…growing denomination and given it national standing. The African Methodist Episcopal Church continued to grow, becoming part of the antislavery movement and the Underground Railroad prior to the Civil War. Further Reading Allen's short but essential autobiography is The Life Experience and Gospel Labors of the Rt. Rev. Richard Allen: To Which Is Annexed the Rise and Progress of the African Methodist Episcopal Church in the United States (1800; repr. 1960). Charles H. Wesley, Richard Allen: Apostle of Freedom (1935), is a well-documented biography. Also useful are William J. Simmons, Men of Mark: Eminent, Progressive and Rising (1887; repr. 1968); Carter G. Woodson, The History of the Negro Church (rev. ed. 1921); Langston Hughes, Famous American Negroes (1954); Emory Stevens Bucke, The History of American Methodism vol. 1 (1963); and Richard R. Wright, The Bishops of the African Methodist Episcopal Church (1963).Mwadilifu, Mwalimu I. (Mwalimu Imara), Richard Allen: the first exemplar of African American education, New York: ECA Associates, 1985. |