Guide to Source Material for Anti-Racist Activists and Thinkers

Freedom's Prophet is a long-overdue biography of Richard Allen, founder of the first major African-American church and the leading black activist of the early American republic. Allen (1760-1831) was born a slave in colonial Philadelphia, secured his freedom during the American Revolution, and became one of the nations leading black activists before the Civil War. A tireless minister, abolitionist, and reformer, Allen inaugurated some of the most important institutions in African-American history including the African Methodist Episcopal (AME) Church. He co-authored the first copyrighted pamphlet by an African American writer, published the first African American eulogy of George Washington, and convened the first national convention of black reformers. He influenced nearly every black leader of the nineteenth century, from Douglass to Du Bois. This important book makes it clear that Allen belongs in the pantheon of Americas great founding figures.

This book is the first to trace the good and bad fortunes, over more than a century, of the earliest large free black community in the United States, of which Richard Allen was a key leader. From colonial times through the Revolution and into the turbulent 1830s, blacks in the City of Brotherly Love struggled to shape a family life, gain occupational competence, organize churches, establish neighborhoods and social networks, advance cultural institutions, educate their children in schools, forge a political consciousness, and train black leaders who would help abolish slavery. These early generations of urban blacks--many of them newly emancipated--constructed a rich and varied community life. Nash's account includes elements of both poignant triumph and profound tragedy. Keeping in focus both the internal life of the black community and race relations in Philadelphia generally, he portrays first the remarkable vibrancy of black institution-building, ordinary life, and relatively amicable race relations, and then rising racial antagonism.