Richard S. Newman

“Allen once recalled that even local blacks doubted the efficacy of an independent black church in Philadelphia, so fearful were they of a white backlash. But after segregated seating policies were instituted at white churches, Allen appeared to be a visionary, and many blacks soon joined his exodus from segregated Northern pews and galleries for independent black churches. For subsequent generations, Allen’s act of defiance had all the meaning and power of Rosa Parks’s sit-in during the mid-twentieth century. The comparison is not superficial. For while both events—Parks’s sit-in and Allen’s walkout of segregated pews—were courageous nonviolent acts in and of themselves, they also set the stage for new black freedom struggles.”
― Richard S. Newman, Freedom's Prophet: Bishop Richard Allen, the AME Church, and the Black Founding Fathers