organized into classes, and at least two African-American preachers, Harry Hoosier and Richard Allen, traveled and preached with Francis Asbury. (A detailed history of the period 1780 to 1845 is provided by Mathews.)
After the Civil War, the African-American Methodist and Baptist churches enjoyed a period of growth as they expanded their work among the freedmen. Churches such as the African Methodist Episcopal Church had not been allowed to recruit in the South, and quickly made up for lost time. The Methodists also added a new major organization, the Colored (now Christian) Methodist Episcopal Church, originally composed of the former slave members of the Methodist Episcopal Church, South, segregated during the Reconstruction era. African-American Baptists formed several regional and national organizations that merged in the 1890s to become the National Baptist Convention. Up to 60 percent of African-Americans in the United States are Baptists. The several million African-American Methodists form the second-largest block.
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