“The Crucible of the Freedom Church: The African Methodist Episcopal Church and the Culture of Building in the United States, 1790s-1930s”
This study examines how cultural, economic, and political processes influenced the building culture of the African Methodist Episcopal Church from the late eighteenth century to the 1930s. Although previous scholarship, mostly in religious and sociological fields, has highlighted the importance of the AME Church in the creation of the Black Church, architectural history has yet to fully investigate the connection between this institution’s building practices and historical perceptions of “Blackness”. This study looks to unearth how Black Church building reflected issues of class and identity amongst AME leadership and its congregants, demonstrating how the AME culture of building formed within a crucible marred by the vestiges of slavery and violence against Black Americans in the United States. As such, this architectural narrative explores regional, national, and international trends in AME Church architecture, showing various spatial counternarratives that complicate racialized minorities as architectural protagonists.