No major Protestant denominational family in post-Revolutionary America was immune from interracial strife. Whites and blacks confronted each other over who could govern, who could be pastor, who could own church property, and who could discipline congregants. For generations those rules were set by whites, who told the Africans (as they were collectively designated) only whites could govern. Only whites could discipline. Only whites could manage church property.

Richard Allen changed the rules. The first Christian bishop of African descent in North America, he founded the African Methodist Episcopal (AME) Church, one of America's first truly independent black denominations.

Allen's desire to preach had come with his conversion in his late teens. "I was constrained to go from house to house, exhorting my old companions and telling to all around what a dear Savior I had found," he wrote in his autobiography. But he was still enslaved. "Slavery is a bitter pill, notwithstanding ...

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