Richard Allen was born into slavery in 1760 in Philadelphia.  His owner, Benjamin Chew, a Quaker lawyer, owned the Allen family which included Richard’s parents and three other children.  Soon afterwards Chew sold the Allen family to Stokeley Sturgis, a Delaware planter.  At age seventeen, Allen was converted under the preaching of an itinerant Methodist preacher as was his master, Stokeley Sturgis. After his conversion Sturgis offered his slaves the opportunity to buy their freedom.  Allen did in 1783 after working odd jobs for five years to earn enough money for the purchase. In the meantime, Allen began to preach in Methodist churches and meetings in the Baltimore area.  In 1786, he was invited through his Methodist connections to return to Philadelphia, where he joined St. George’s Methodist Episcopal Church where he became active in teaching and preaching.

As the number of African Americans attending St. George’s increased, racial tensions mounted. Allen preached at 5:00 a.m. in special services on Sunday mornings to approximately 50 African American Methodists.  When they attended the regular morning service, segregated seating was instituted. Allen became convinced that a separate church was necessary for the black congregants.  In 1787, Allen, fellow minister Absalom Jones, and a number of other African Americans walked out and formed a separate church that would become Bethel African Methodist Episcopal Church, the first Methodist church in the United States specifically for African Americans. On July 29, 1794, Bethel was dedicated by Bishop Francis Asbury. Allen served Bethel Church as its pastor, and he was ordained a deacon by Asbury in 1799.

Other African American Methodist churches were formed in New York, New Jersey, Delaware and Maryland.  After two decades of conflict with white Methodism, Allen and other African American Methodist preachers hosted a meeting on April 9, 1816 in Philadelphia which would bring these churches together to organize a new denomination, the African Methodist Episcopal Church (AME). Allen was elected bishop, and with his consecration, became the first African American bishop in the United States. When he died in 1831, the AME church was well-established in the United States and supported missions in several countries overseas.

Allen cared passionately for education and opened a day school for African American children. He abhorred slavery, worked actively for abolition, and maintained a stop on the Underground Railroad. He was committed to African Americans’ self-determination in the United States and eventually opposed all colonization plans for African Americans in other countries.