Varick, James

Impact on the world

A shoemaker and tobacco cutter who joined New York's John Street Methodist Episcopal Church around 1766 and was later licensed to preach there, Varick led a group of Black congregants who withdrew from the increasingly segregated church in 1796 to hold their own services, and by 1800 the group had built its own wooden church at Church and Leonard Streets in Manhattan; the congregation, known as Mother Zion, became the founding church of a new denomination. After a lengthy struggle to secure the right to ordain its own Black ministers rather than depend on white Methodist Episcopal elders, Varick and fellow leader Abraham Thompson were ordained full elders in September 1820, and in 1822 Varick was elected the denomination's first bishop, formally establishing the independent African Methodist Episcopal Zion Church, distinct from Richard Allen's AME Church founded in Philadelphia in 1816. Beyond his ministry, Varick ran a school for Black children, served as the first chaplain of the New York African Society for Mutual Relief, helped co-found Freedom's Journal — the first Black-owned newspaper in the United States — shortly before his death, and petitioned New York's 1821 constitutional convention for Black voting rights, living just long enough to celebrate New York's final abolition of slavery on July 4, 1827, before his death eighteen days later.

Life & background

Born January 10, 1750, near Newburgh, New York, to a possibly enslaved mother and free father, Varick grew up in New York City, trained as a shoemaker, and joined the John Street Methodist Episcopal Church as a young man. He led the founding of the AME Zion Church from 1796 through his election as its first bishop in 1822, continuing to serve until his death in New York City on July 27, 1827, at age 77; his remains now rest in the crypt of the Mother African Methodist Episcopal Zion Church in Harlem.

Sources

1. BlackPast.org; Encyclopedia.com; United Methodist Church (UMC.org)