Richard Allen was enslaved at the birth of a family in Philadelphia of a prominent lawyer and civil servant, Benjamin Chew. Allen was sold with his family to Stokely Sturgis, a Delaware farmer in 1768. In 1777, Allen experienced a religious conversion to Methodism. And then later bought his freedom in 1780. Allen was a co-founder of the Free African Society in 1787, helped many during the yellow fever epidemic in Philadelphia in 1793, and founded the Mother Bethel African Methodist Episcopal Church in 1816. Sunday morning Richard Allen and Absalom Jones went to St. George's Church. One of the administrators asked Jones not to kneel during prayer, but Jones asked to wait until after the prayer. But Jones didn't get a chance to finish the prayer and soon another man came and removed him from the church. Denied the opportunity to pray, Jones, Allen and other African-American members of the church left before the prayer ended. Allen and Jones had been kicked out of the church. From there was born the Free African Society in 1787...