Firsts of the A.M.E. Church

The first black church to own a piece of real estate in America. (In 1793 it purchased the land at Sixth and Lombard in Philadelphia, on which it later erected a church, Mother Bethel).

The Church published the world's oldest black religious weekly, the Christian Recorder, 1841.

The Church was the first black institution to promote finance, and to administer a program of higher learning: Bishop Daniel A. Payne purchased Wilberforce University in 1863. Ten other centers of higher education followed in its wake, as well as the nation's oldest black hospital.

The Church was the first black institution to go to Africa to help other blacks. Its missionary outreach started over 150 years ago.

The A.M.E. Church was the first to enter the publishing business: The A.M.E. Discipline (1817), and the A.M.E. Hymnal (1818).

The first black chaplain was Rev. H. M. Turner.

The first elected black president of Howard University was Rev. J.A.Gregg, who chose instead to become a bishop. As such he was the first black leader selected by the United States to make inspection trips to war areas.

Bishop P.R. Wright, Jr. published and edited the largest book ever compiled exclusively by black people.

William T. Vernon served as Registrar of the U.S. Treasury under the administration of President Theodore Roosevelt. He signed certain paper currency of the nation. He later became a bishop in the A.M.E. Church.

William H. Heard was the Minister to Liberia, and a member of the South Carolina legislature from 1880-1882. He later became a bishop.

Bishop S.L. Greene was the first to sign the documents bringing into
being the National Council of Churches, the most important movement in Protestant cooperation the world had ever known, November 28, 1950, Cleveland, Ohio.

R.H. Cain, Senator from South Carolina, 1877-79, was a preacher in the A.M.E. Church; President of Paul Quinn College, Waco, Texas; elected a bishop from South Carolina.

Frederick Douglass, the great abolitionist, attended Metropolitan A.M.E. Church in Washington, DC. He gave the two candlesticks that now stand on the pulpit of the great church.

The first black United States senator was an A.M.E. minister, Rev. Hiram

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