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1809 The Abyssinian Baptist Church is founded.

1813 The Union Church of Africans (now called the Union American Methodist Episcopal Church) breaks with the Methodist Episcopal Church. Led by Peter Spencer, the new denomination was concentrated mainly in Delaware and Maryland.

1815 Elders of St. George's Church take the leadership of Richard Allen's Bethel Church to court, hoping to maintain control of the operations of the black Methodist congregation. They lost before the Pennsylvania Supreme Court January 1, 1816.

1816 John Stewart begins missionary work among Ohio's Wyandot Indians.

1816 The African Methodist Episcopal Church (AME) organizes in Philadelphia with Richard Allen consecrated as its first bishop.

1819 Jarena Lee, one of the premiere female black preachers, begins her preaching career.

1820 The Missouri Compromise prohibits slavery in all states north of 36 degrees 30 minutes north latitude (except Missouri).

1822 The African Methodist Episcopal Zion Church (AMEZ) organizes in New York City with James Varick as its first bishop.

1822 The First Colored Presbyterian Church of New York is founded with Samuel Cornish as pastor.

1822 An insurrection planned by Denmark Vesey, a member of the African Methodist Episcopal Church of Charleston, is discovered in Charleston, South Carolina.

1823 Julia A. J. Foote, the daughter of former slaves from Schenectady, New York, becomes a powerful preacher within the AMEZ Church, helping the denomination to be the first black church to ordain a woman as elder 75 years later.

1827 Samuel Cornish founds Freedom's Journal, the first black abolitionist newspaper.

1829 David Walker, a freeborn South Carolina African American, publishes his critical essay against American racism, Walker's Appeal in Four Articles, Together With a Preamble to the Colored Citizens of the World, But in Particular and Very Expressly to Those of the United States of America.

1829 The Catholic religious order Oblates, Sisters of Providence, organizes to educate "free children of color" in Baltimore. Sister Mary Elizabeth Lange, a free black, is appointed as superior general.

1830 James Augustine Healy, the first black Roman Catholic priest in the United States, is born to an Irish father and a mulatto slave mother. He and his brothers and sisters rose to several prominent positions within American Catholicism. Because of their light complexion they were able to move in the white world undetected as having African ancestry. Patrick Frances Healy (1834-1910) was the first black Jesuit, the first black to earn a doctorate, and the second president of Georgetown University. Eliza [Sister Mary Magdalen] (1846-1918) was an educator and later became convent superior of Villa Barlow at St. Albans in Vermont. She was transferred to the College of Notre Dame as superior on Staten Island during the last year of his life. Hugh, born in 1832, was also ordained a priest and died in his early 20s.

1830 The American Society of Free Persons of Color for Improving their Condition in the United States meets at Richard Allen's Bethel Church in Philadelphia. These conventions, which were dominated by black ministers, were an attempt by the free black community to strategize ways to end slavery in America and to end discrimination by whites in the North.

1831 Nat Turner leads an insurrection in Southampton Virginia. At least 57 whites are killed before the revolt is put down.

1831 William Lloyd Garrison begins publishing his abolitionist newspaper, The Liberator.

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