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Black Facts for January 9th

1894 - Metropolitan AME Church, Washington D.C. (1821- )

Metropolitan African Methodist Episcopal (AME) is the oldest continuously operating black church in the District of Columbia.  Metropolitan AME is also designated by the AME Church (the black denomination founded in 1787 by Richard Allen) as the National Cathedral of African Methodism.

Metropolitan AME began in 1872 as the result of a merger of two smaller churches, Israel Bethel AME, founded in 1821, and Union Bethel AME created in 1838.  Both churches were formed because of disaffection from two mostly white Methodist congregations in Washington, D.C.: Fourth Street and Ebenezer Church. Each church required African Americans to sit in the gallery. In protest to this treatment, black members of these churches established Israel Bethel and Union Bethel.  

The new churches actively championed the cause of anti-slavery in the Nineteenth Century.  They sheltered runaway slaves as stations on the Underground Railroad, and led the way in protest as well as racial uplift work.  The Bethel Literary Society, for example, led by the Reverend Daniel A. Payne, one of the most prominent AME ministers in the nation, worked tirelessly to increase literacy and introduce literary luminaries to Washington’s black community.    

In 1872 the leaders of Israel Bethel and Union Bethel decided to merge their congregations and become Metropolitan AME.  The new church was officially sanctioned by the Baltimore Conference of the AME Church and given the name: Metropolitan.  National AME leaders mandated that the new church should be located “in close proximity” to the United States Capitol and the White House. Because of its location, annual AME Conferences throughout the country were asked to donate funds for its completion.  Construction of the present church edifice was begun in 1881 and was completed in 1886.

Metropolitan continued its tradition of leadership into the post-Civil War period.  Many noted individuals have addressed its congregation.  The first African American U.S. Senator to serve a full term, former Mississippi

1946 - Countee Cullen

Countee Cullen , in full Countee Porter Cullen (born May 30, 1903, Louisville, Kentucky?, U.S.—died January 9, 1946, New York, New York), American poet, one of the finest of the Harlem Renaissance.

Reared by a woman who was probably his paternal grandmother, Countee at age 15 was unofficially adopted by the Reverend F.A. Cullen, minister of Salem M.E. Church, one of Harlem’s largest congregations. He won a citywide poetry contest as a schoolboy and saw his winning stanzas widely reprinted. At New York University (B.A., 1925) he won the Witter Bynner Poetry Prize and was elected to Phi Beta Kappa. Major American literary magazines accepted his poems regularly, and his first collection of poems, Color (1925), was published to critical acclaim before he had finished college.

Cullen received an M.A. degree from Harvard University in 1926 and worked as an assistant editor for Opportunity magazine. In 1928, just before leaving the United States for France (where he would study on a Guggenheim Fellowship), Cullen married Yolande Du Bois, daughter of W.E.B. Du Bois (divorced 1930). After publication of The Black Christ and Other Poems (1929), Cullen’s reputation as a poet waned. From 1934 until the end of his life he taught in New York City public schools. Most notable among his other works are Copper Sun (1927), The Ballad of the Brown Girl (1928), and The Medea and Some Poems (1935). His novel One Way to Heaven (1932) depicts life in Harlem.

Cullen’s use of racial themes in his verse was striking at the time, and his material is always fresh and sensitively treated. He drew some criticism, however, because he was heavily influenced by the Romanticism of John Keats and preferred to use classical verse forms rather than rely on the rhythms and idioms of his black American heritage.

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