Hosier, Harry “Black Harry”

Allen, Richard

1760-1831

Founded the African Methodist Episcopal Church, the first independent Black religious denomination in the United States; became its first bishop

Haynes, Lemuel

1753-1833

Became the first Black American ordained by a mainstream Protestant denomination when the Congregational church ordained him in 1785, and went on to lead a mostly white Vermont congregation for 30 years while authoring some of the earliest antislavery writings by an African American author

Varick, James

1750-1827

Founded the African Methodist Episcopal Zion Church and, in 1822, became its first bishop after leading a two-decade struggle to free the denomination from white Methodist Episcopal control, building what became one of the largest historically Black denominations in the United States

Liele, George

c.1750-1828

Became the first ordained African American Baptist preacher in 1775 and, upon emigrating to Jamaica in 1782, is widely credited as America's first Baptist missionary — leaving to evangelize abroad a full decade before William Carey, often called the father of the modern missionary movement, departed for India