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The African Methodist Episcopal and other black churches were born partly as a result of revival preaching, partly because of white segregation. Christian History asked Wesley Roberts to give us a glimpse into the beginning of the African-American church, especially the role played by Methodist Richard Allen. Dr. Roberts is pastor of Peoples Baptist Church in Boston, Massachusetts (the oldest African-American church in New England), and member of our advisory board.

The 1740s Great Awakening, with its enthusiastic preaching and emotional meetings, resulted in a great harvest of black converts, most of whom were slaves. The informal services of the Baptists and, later, the Methodists attracted the most blacks—as did early Methodism’s antislavery stance. By 1786, blacks made up about 10 percent of the Methodist church.

Although whites and blacks often worshiped together in the 1700s, blacks enjoyed no real freedom or equality—in the North or South. Segregated seating was typical; the area reserved for blacks was usually called the “Negro Pew” or the “African Corner.”

Such discrimination motivated blacks, where possible, to organize their own churches, though white leaders actively opposed that. On the eve of the American Revolution, the first black congregations appeared.

Historians debate the date and place of the first black Baptist congregation in America, but it seems it was established in South Carolina between 1773 and 1775 by a slave named George Liele.

Liele was converted during the revivals that followed the Great Awakening. Licensed as an “exhorter,” he traveled up and down the Savannah River preaching to other slaves. At the Galpin plantation, near Silver Bluff, he and a white itinerant preacher named Elder Palmer ministered to a group of some thirty slaves. A church made up of both slaves and free blacks was soon established, and slave preacher David George was put in charge.

Three types of black Baptist churches developed: 1) the racially mixed church, 2) the separate black church under white leadership, and 3) the separate black church under black leadership. Blacks much preferred the separate, all-black churches, and in these churches slaves constituted the largest group.

Whites, however, regarded unsupervised black meetings as a security risk. Many slaves were permitted to attend only churches pastored by white ministers. Black ministers were often harassed until it was unmistakably clear they posed no threat to the community. Knowing they were watched by whites, black preachers were careful how they taught and conducted their services.

Many slaves, therefore, also held secret religious meetings on their plantations. Here they shouted and sang and encouraged one another without the intimidating presence of whites.

Any independence enjoyed by the black congregations quickly diminished after the aborted slave uprisings of the early 1800s. Whites began imposing increasingly severe restrictions on black religious activities. For example, a black person in Georgia who wanted to preach had to obtain a license from a local court of law and be certified by three white ministers. An Alabama law of 1832 required that five “respectable slave holders” attend any service at which blacks preached.

In spite of such restrictions, the number of black Baptists in the South continued to grow. Nearly all of the independent congregations in the South were Baptist.

Racial segregation and discrimination were also the main impetus for Northern blacks’ forming their own denominations, and black Methodists were the first to do so. It happened in Philadelphia, at the initiative of Richard Allen.

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