<P> Baptists and Methodists in the South preached to slaveholders and slaves alike . Conversions and congregations started with the First Great Awakening, resulting in Baptist and Methodist preachers being authorized among slaves and free African Americans more than a decade before 1800 . "Black Harry" Hosier, an illiterate freedman who drove Francis Asbury on his circuits, proved to be able to memorize large passages of the Bible verbatim and became a cross-over success, as popular among white audiences as the black ones Asbury had originally intended for him to minister . His sermon at Thomas Chapel in Chapeltown, Delaware, in 1784 was the first to be delivered by a black preacher directly to a white congregation . </P> <P> Despite being called the "greatest orator in America" by Benjamin Rush and one of the best in the world by Bishop Thomas Coke, Hosier was repeatedly passed over for ordination and permitted no vote during his attendance at the Christmas Conference that formally established American Methodism . Richard Allen, the other black attendee, was ordained by the Methodists in 1799, but his congregation of free African Americans in Philadelphia left the church there because of its discrimination . They founded the African Methodist Episcopal Church (AME) in Philadelphia . After first submitting to oversight by the established Methodist bishops, several AME congregations finally left to form the first independent African - American denomination in the United States in 1816 . Soon after, the African Methodist Episcopal Zion Church (AME Zion) was founded as another denomination in New York City . </P> <P> Early Baptist congregations were formed by slaves and free African Americans in South Carolina and Virginia . Especially in the Baptist Church, African Americans were welcomed as members and as preachers . By the early 19th century, independent African American congregations numbered in the several hundred in some cities of the South, such as Charleston, South Carolina, and Richmond and Petersburg, Virginia . With the growth in congregations and churches, Baptist associations formed in Virginia, for instance, as well as Kentucky and other states . </P> <P> The revival also inspired slaves to demand freedom . In 1800, out of African American revival meetings in Virginia, a plan for slave rebellion was devised by Gabriel Prosser, although the rebellion was discovered and crushed before it started . Despite white attempts to control independent African American congregations, especially after the Nat Turner Uprising of 1831, a number of African American congregations managed to maintain their separation as independent congregations in Baptist associations . State legislatures passed laws requiring them always to have a white man present at their worship meetings . </P>

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