The African Supplement: Religion, Race, and Corporate Law in Early National America

Abstract

In unexpected ways, corporate law in the early Republic provided African Americans in religious institutions with rights that they were denied in other venues. As black congregants developed legal expertise, they built powerful and long-lasting churches. Yet these rights were fragile, as the legal rules governing such institutions also sustained dissent and fracture. Bethel African Methodist Episcopal Church was incorporated in Philadelphia in 1796, setting the stage for subsequent battles over legal and spiritual autonomy for black congregations. Such struggles were conducted through legal means. During the two decades following its incorporation, Bethel’s leaders ever more powerfully defended their church against attempts by the central Methodist Church to assert control. In an era when increasing racism and aggression imperiled free blacks, church corporations were uniquely empowered to protect African American religious institutions. Repeated encounters with law produced both victory (over the white Methodist denomination, which was forced to recognize Bethel’s independence) and defeat (at the hands of breakaway Bethel members, who founded another church nearby and who successfully sued Bethel leaders for theft and trespass). The resulting plurality belies a unitary “black church,” even as it serves as evidence of great resilience and creativity.