S.C. Church rooted in Philly history

THE SHOOTING that killed nine people Wednesday at Emanuel AME Church in Charleston, S.C., which officials are calling racially motivated, isn't the first tragedy to strike the congregation since it separated from a predominantly white church over a land dispute in 1816.

White supremacists burned down the church in 1822 after learning one of its founders was planning a slave revolt.

Some parishioners fled north to Philly, to Mother Bethel AME Church on 6th Street near Lombard, the first of many driven out as tensions rose over slavery in the South, according to Mother Bethel's the Rev. Dr. Mark Tyler.

But "the floodgates opened up" during the Great Migration in the early 20th century, when more than a million African-Americans moved from the South to take industrial jobs in the North. Members of Emanuel found a home at Mother Bethel, Tyler said yesterday.

Mother Bethel opened in 1794, after Bishop Richard Allen relocated a black congregation who flocked to see him preach at St. George's United Methodist Church in Old City. White church leaders had tried to segregate parishioners, said Tyler's wife, Leslie Patterson-Tyler.

"We were told that we couldn't worship where we want to," she said.

In 1816, Allen founded and became the first bishop of the African Methodist Episcopal Church, a network of black Methodists who wanted independence from whites.

Morris Brown, who succeeded Allen as the AME's second bishop, founded Mother Emanuel in South Carolina that same year.

Brown is interred near Allen at Mother Bethel. The name "Mother" honors its position as the first black church in the country, Patterson-Tyler said.