Religion: African Anniversary

In Philadelphia in 1787, St. George's Methodist Episcopal Church—standing today as the oldest church of the denomination in the U. S.—requested its handful of Negro members to segregate themselves at worship. Led by a prosperous teamster named Richard Allen and his friend Absalom Jones, the Negroes indignantly left the congregation, forthwith founded a benevolent organization called the Free African Society. From this group, first which U. S. Negroes formed to aid themselves socially and economically, stem all U. S. Methodist and Episcopal Negro churches. The majority of the Free Africans voted...

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