From the founding of the Free African Society to the creation of independent Black churches, historians say these institutions became the foundation of civic life and a pathway to survival, self-determination and leadership.

According to the Library Company of Philadelphia, the city’s free Black population grew from nearly 240 in 1780 to 1,849 in 1790, then to more than 6,000 in 1800 and 8,942 by 1810.

“Even though they were smaller in number, they had an outsized influence,” said Timothy Welbeck, professor and director of Temple University’s Center for Anti-Racism. 

By the late 1780s, Philadelphia had become home to the largest free Black population in the United States.

Out of this growing population came institutions built not only for faith, but for survival.

One of the earliest and most significant was the Free African Society, co-founded in 1787 by Richard Allen and Absalom Jones. The organization became a foundation for Black civic life in the city, providing social, religious and economic support for Philadelphia’s growing free Black community.

Michiko Quinones, co-founder and lead public historian at 1838 Black Metropolis, said early Black organizing often centered on securing basic rights and protections.

In the 1720s, the Pennsylvania Assembly passed “Black Codes,” including the 1726 Act for the Regulation of Negroes, to control the growing Black population. 

The laws stripped both enslaved and free Black Philadelphians of basic rights, including gathering in large groups, and restricted their movement, trade and assembly.

During the same period, many Black Philadelphians were also barred from public burial grounds, forcing families to rely on separate burial spaces and community support systems, according to the Encyclopedia of Greater Philadelphia. 

“Those challenges led the Free African Society to come together to advocate for our rights,” Quinones said. “This is 10 years after the Declaration of Independence and a couple of years after the first Continental Congress.”

That framework was tested during Philadelphia’s Yellow Fever epidemic, when members of the society provided nursing and burial services. The experience also accelerated the creation of independent Black churches.

The Rev. Carolyn C. Cavaness, pastor of Mother Bethel AME Church, said the breaking point came at St. George’s Methodist Episcopal Church.

“In 1787, The Great Walkout began when Allen, Jones and other Black worshippers left St. George’s after being forced to sit in the segregating seating even while they were actively participating in worship,” she said. “From that moment, they were not just leaving the church. They were building the foundation for independent Black churches.”

Jones founded the African Episcopal Church of St. Thomas in 1792 and became the Episcopal Church’s first Black priest a decade later. The church became a center for worship, education and mutual aid in Philadelphia’s free Black community.

Arthur Sudler, director of the Historical Society of the African Episcopal Church of St. Thomas, said Jones’ commitment to education shaped the church’s focus on learning, a legacy documented in the Rev. William Douglass’ “Annals of the First African Church in the United States of America.” 

“While enslaved by Abraham Wynkoop in Delaware, Absalom Jones developed a deep love of education by working for small wages and buying a spelling book, reader and Bible to teach himself to read,” Sudler said. “He attended night school in Philadelphia, likely at Quaker-run schools influenced by abolitionist Anthony Benezet and other early educators.

“Literacy allowed him to maintain communication with his mother and siblings, who had been sold away, and how he studied reading, writing and arithmetic. He later established a school in his home after his ordination,” he added.

Meanwhile, Allen continued building a separate religious movement in Philadelphia’s Black community.

He founded Mother Bethel AME Church, which became the cornerstone of Black Methodist worship in the city, and later helped establish the African Methodist Episcopal Church in 1816, becoming its first bishop.

Under Allen’s leadership, the church became a center for education, mutual aid and political organizing and political organizing at a time when Black Philadelphians were largely excluded from public institutions.

“He stayed with the Methodist tradition and founded Bethel Church, later Mother Bethel AME Church, in 1794,” Cavaness said. “You cannot talk about the birth of America without lifting up the contributions of people of African descent.

“Civil rights did not just appear,” she said. “At Mother Bethel, we honor Black revolutionary heroes and sheroes who, as the country was being formed, still believed in its ideals.”

Sudler said both institutions have had lasting historical significance, with their influence continuing beyond their founding era into the present day.

“Both of these churches were involved in the Underground Railroad,” he said. “They were places where people could discern their gifts, have those gifts validated and become sources of advocacy.

“They were not only places of faith,” he added. “They nurtured communities, provided education and leadership opportunities, and reflected a belief that people had a responsibility to improve both their communities and the city.”

That commitment that fueled the rise of the church also drove efforts to expand education opportunities for Black Philadelphians. 

Among the earliest institutions was the Bray School, established in Philadelphia in 1758 by the Associates of Dr. Bray, an Anglican charitable organization. The school provided instruction to free and enslaved Black children at a time when educational opportunities were scarce.

These early efforts were expanded by Quaker educator and abolitionist Anthony Benezet, who opened a school for children of African descent in 1759 and later founded what became known as Benezet’s School in 1770.

The school educated hundreds of Black children and counted Jones and Allen among its students. In 1794, the Pennsylvania Abolition Society established a school for Black males as part of a broader abolitionist effort that also helped train Black teachers.

That network of instruction continued to expand into the post-Revolutionary period.

“Within these schools we start to see the emergence of Black teachers,” Quinones said. “The Free African Society develops and then you see churches like Mother Bethel and St. Thomas start to have Sabbath schools, which were schools for reading and writing and often had components for adults and children.”

By the early 1800s, Quinones said, nearly 10 Black schools operated in the city through churches, private instruction and informal home schools in Philadelphia’s free Black community.

One of the first officially recognized public schools for Black children was the James Forten School, then known as the Mary Street School, which opened at 141 League St.

“By 1838, Philadelphia had 23 public and private schools serving Black children,” Quinones said. “The Lombard Street School enrolled about 500 students by itself, and roughly 2,000 Black children attended schools across the city.”

Alongside the houses of worship, Black Philadelphians shaped a cultural world that influenced early American music, worship and artistic tradition.

“The arts have always thrived in Philadelphia,” said Welbeck, of Temple University’s Center for Anti-Racism. “You saw artists, writers and thinkers coming through the city. When W.E.B. Du Bois wrote The Philadelphia Negro, he chose Philadelphia because it reflected the growth of Black communities and the opportunities they were creating.”

As Philadelphia’s free Black population expanded after Pennsylvania’s Gradual Abolition Act of 1780, Black musicians and dancers became central to the city’s entertainment culture, performing at cotillions, balls and military parades.

One of the most influential figures of this era was Francis “Frank” Johnson, whose performances became central to cotillions, civic events and public celebrations across Philadelphia and beyond. He became the first Black composer to publish sheet music and wrote more than 200 compositions.

“He was such an accomplished musician and bandleader,” said Michael Idriss, manager of the African American Interpretive Program at the Museum of the American Revolution. “When you think about his travels, he’s going to places like Pittsburgh pre-rail and pre-roads, crossing rivers.

“His music was the engine for so many families and couples getting together for cotillions and formals,” he added. “He also played for members of the African American community who were upwardly mobile. He was between two worlds and blended his artistry through both.”

Johnson’s band grew so popular that organizers routinely booked the group for Philadelphia’s major events. The group expanded its reach beyond the United States and toured England as one of the first American performance groups to travel abroad.

He later founded the African Harmonic Society, which brought large-scale orchestral and sacred music to the Black community. The society held its first concert at First African Presbyterian Church.

“The only place you could hear a huge orchestra was at the Academy of Music, but Black people weren’t allowed,” Quinones said. “The African Harmonic Society created large orchestras and major concerts on the same scale in churches in the 1820s and 1830s, developing a rich cultural history of classical music appreciation.”

Among other contributors to the city’s cultural life was Allen, who in 1808 compiled one of the first widely circulated hymnals.

“He went around and gathered the songs people were singing and compiled them into a hymnal,” Quinones said. “It became so popular it was reprinted over and over.”

“Over time, the authors were lost and the songs were included in white hymnals,” she added. “Some of the white hymnals used today trace their origins to Black Philadelphians.”

Black artisans and artists also helped shape Philadelphia’s architecture and physical landscape through their work. 

“Philadelphia’s architecture was shaped in large part by Black labor,” said Morgan Lloyd, programming coordinator of the African American Museum in Philadelphia. “It reflects the skill of artisans and artists, even though many of their names were not recorded.”

Among the few Black artisans whose names are documented is Thomas Gross Jr., a cabinetmaker whose work reflects the skilled craftsmanship that helped shape early Philadelphia. 

Gross operated a furniture-making shop in the city and was part of a broader community of free Black craftsmen whose skilled labor contributed to Philadelphia’s growing economy.

He is best known for a signed chest-on-chest now housed at the Philadelphia Museum of Art, one of the few surviving works directly attributed to a Black artisan from the period.

“It reflects a unique design and is signed by Thomas Gross Jr.,” Lloyd said. “His work helps us understand the broader community of Black carpenters whose contributions shaped Philadelphia’s buildings and homes.”

Historians say these stories of Black artistic and cultural achievement are not simply part of Philadelphia’s past. They continue to shape how the city understands its history.

Lloyd said the story of early Black Philadelphia is ultimately one of community.

“People did not act alone,” Lloyd said. “For the most part, there are folks in history who always do their own thing, but for our major players they are thinking of the people around them.”

“People need to understand that Black Philadelphia history is not as far as they think,” she added. “There are many Philadelphians who, if they do the work, will find they are maybe two generations removed from being James Forten’s first cousin.”

Churches like Mother Bethel and St. Thomas became more than houses of worship. They anchored education, mutual aid and leadership. Schools built on that foundation expanded literacy and learning throughout the community.

Black Philadelphians carried those networks into business and entrepreneurship, helping build the city’s economy. Through music, craftsmanship and performance, they shaped cultural traditions that influenced American life, even while being excluded from many of its most prominent stages.

“These are some of the stories that need to be told for the next generation,” Welbeck said. “Students need to know there was a vibrant free Black population in Philadelphia around the nation’s founding that set a standard many generations that followed tried to emulate.”

But preserving those stories is only part of the work, historians say. They also push to expand how Black history is understood.

“When we start to tell people the history, it’s often wrapped in trauma,” Quinones said. “But there’s also the liberating side where we can come from hell and overcome and build our own.

“We need to remember that people imagined themselves out of enslavement and into a brand,” she said. “It’s such an incredible story of hope, and the evidence is all around us. We need to continue to uplift and share those stories as well.”