Juneteenth Event: Featuring Richard Newman

(June 19, 2008)

Freedom’s Prophet: Bishop Richard Allen, the AME Church, and the Black Founding Fathers by Richard S. Newman is a long-overdue biography of Richard Allen (1760–1831), founder of the first major African American church and the leading black activist in the age of Washington and Jefferson. A tireless minister, abolitionist, and reformer, Allen inaugurated some of the most important institutions in African American history and influenced nearly every Black leader of the 19th century, from Frederick Douglass to W.E.B. Dubois. The book restores Allen to his rightful place in history as one of America’s “Black Founders.”