The Free African Society (FAS), founded in 1787, was a benevolent organization that held religious services and provided mutual aid for "free Africans and their descendants" in Philadelphia. The Society was founded by Richard Allen and Absalom Jones. It was the first Black religious institution in the city and led to the establishment of the first independent Black churches in the United States.[1] [2]
Founding members, all free Black men, included Samuel Baston, Joseph Johnson, Cato Freedman, Caesar Cranchell, James Potter and William White.[3][4] Notable members included African-American abolitionists such as Cyrus Bustill, James Forten, and William Gray.[5]
- ^ Butler, Anne S. (March 11, 2005). "Fraternal and Benevolent Societies in Nineteenth-Century America". In Brown, Tamara L.; Parks, Gordon; Phillips, Clarenda M. (eds.). African American Fraternities and Sororities: The Legacy and the Vision. University Press of Kentucky. ISBN 0813123445.
- ^ Minkah Makalani. "Pan-Africanism". The New York Public Library / Schomburg Center for Research in Black Culture (Africana Age: African and African Diasporan Transformations in the 20th Century), a project of the Schomburg-Mellon Humanities Summer Institute, funded by the Andrew W. Mellon Foundation. Retrieved January 5, 2014.
- ^ Wilder, Craig Steven (2005). In The Company Of Black Men: The African Influence on African American Culture in New York City. NYU Press. ISBN 9780814793695.
- ^ "Preamble (1778) and Articles of the Free African Society, 1787". explorepahistory.com. Retrieved July 18, 2017.
- ^ Yee, Shirley (February 10, 2011). "Free African Society of Philadelphia (1787- ?)". www.blackpast.org. Retrieved July 19, 2017.
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