Founded in 1794 by Richard Allen — a man who purchased his own freedom and then built a church on land he purchased — Mother Bethel sits on the oldest parcel of land continuously owned by Black Americans in the United States. It has been on this spot since 1791, through every era of American history: slavery, the Civil War, Reconstruction, the Great Migration, the civil rights movement, and into the present.
The lower level houses a museum and a crypt containing the remains of Richard Allen and his wife Sarah. This is not a museum about the past. It is a living institution — still holding services, still engaged with its community, still standing on the same ground where Allen drew the line.
Visit Mother Bethel AME Church →