African American Studies in The Books Store

The Black Mafia was one of the bloodiest crime syndicates in modern US history. From its roots in Philadelphia’s ghettos in the 1960’s, it grew from a rabble of street toughs to a disciplined, ruthless organization based on fear and intimidation with links across the Eastern Seaboard. Known in its "legitimate" guise as Black Brothers, Inc., it held regular meetings, appointed investigators, treasurers and enforcers, and controlled drug dealing, loan-sharking, numbers rackets, armed robbery and extortion.

Its ferocious crews of gunmen grew around burly founder Sam Christian, the most feared man on Philly’s streets. They developed close ties with the influential Nation of Islam and soon were executing rivals, extorting bookies connected to the city’s powerful Cosa Nostra crew, and cowing local gangs. The Black Mafia was responsible for over forty killings, the most chilling being the 1973 massacre of two adults and five children in Washington, D.C. Despite the arrests that followed, they continued their rampage, exploiting their ties to prominent lawyers and civil rights leaders. A heavy round of convictions and sentences in the 1980’s shattered their strength – only for the crack-dealing Junior Black Mafia to emerge in their wake.

”Newman's lively, lilting biography of Richard Allen is the keen-eyed appraisal of a remarkable founding father that we needed, wanted, and can now cherish. Save a special place on your bookshelf for this exploration of a man who extricated himself from slavery and rose to accomplish what few white Americans of his generation could match.”
—Gary B. Nash, author of The Forgotten Fifth: African Americans in the Age of Revolution

”Through exhaustive research and graceful writing, Newman shows us all the sides of this genuine black founding father: activist, institution-builder of the AME church, theologian and writer, pulpit politician, American-made genius from the street and the study. This book is at once a wonderful breath of fresh air into ‘founder mania,’ as well as the new standard in our eternal quest to define the black ‘leader.’ ”
—David W. Blight, author of A Slave No More: Two Men who Escaped to Freedom

FreedomÂ’s Prophet is a long-overdue biography of Richard Allen, founder of the first major African-American church and the leading black activist of the early American republic. A tireless minister, abolitionist, and reformer, Allen inaugurated some of the most important institutions in African-American history and influenced nearly every black leader of the nineteenth century, from Douglass to Dubois.

Allen (1760–1831) was born a slave in colonial Philadelphia, secured his freedom during the American Revolution, and became one of the nation’s leading black activists before the Civil War. Among his many achievements, Allen helped form the African Methodist Episcopal (AME) Church, co-authored the first copyrightedpamphlet by an African American writer, published the first African American eulogy of George Washington, and convened the first national convention of black reformers. In a time when most black men and women were categorized as slave property, Allen was championed as a black hero. As Richard S. Newman writes, Allen must be considered one of America’s “Black Founding Fathers.”

In this thoroughly engaging and beautifully written book, Newman describes Allen’s continually evolving life and thought, setting both in the context of his times. From Allen’s early antislavery struggles and belief in interracial harmony to his later reflections on black democracy and black emigration, Newman traces Allen’s impact on American reform and reformers, on racial attitudes during the years of the Early Republic, and on the black struggle for justice in the age of Adams, Jefferson, Madison and Washington. Whether serving as America’s first Black bishop, challenging slaveholding statesmen in a nation devoted to liberty, or visiting the “President’s House” (the first black activist to do so), this important book makes it clear that Allen belongs in the pantheon of America’s great founding figures. Freedom’s Prophet reintroduces Allen to today’s readers and restores him to his rightful place in our nation’s history.