The Glad Procession to Mother Bethel

In 1794, Richard Allen — a formerly enslaved man who had purchased his own freedom — opened the doors of a converted blacksmith shop on Sixth Street in Philadelphia. It was Mother Bethel African Methodist Episcopal Church, and for the Black community of Philadelphia, it became their Jerusalem. Allen knew what it meant to be unwelcome in God's house. Years earlier, he and other Black worshippers had been physically pulled from their knees during prayer at St.…