In 1816 the colored Methodists conceived the idea of organizing and
evangelizing their race, and to this end a convention was called and
assembled in Philadelphia of that year, composed of sixteen delegates,
coming from Pennsylvania, Delaware, Maryland and New Jersey. The
convention adopted a resolution that the people of Philadelphia,
Baltimore and all other places who should unite with them, should
become one body under the name and style of the African Methodist
Episcopal Church. Similar action was taken by two other bodies of
colored Methodists, one in New York, the other in Wilmington,
Delaware, about the same time. The people were coming together and
beginning to understand the value of organization. This was manifested
in their religious, beneficial and educational associations that were
springing up among them. In 1841 the African Methodist Magazine
appeared, the first organ of religious communication and thought
issued by the American colored people. It was published in Brooklyn,
N.Y., Rev. George Hogarth being its editor.

There were papers published by the colored people prior to the
appearance of the African Methodist Magazine, but these were
individual enterprises. They were, however, indices of the thought of
the race, and looking back upon them now, we may regard them as
mile-stones set up along the line of march over which the people have
come. New York, city and State, appears to have been the home of these
early harbingers, and it was there that the earliest literary centre
was established, corresponding to that centre of religious life and
thought which had been earlier founded in Philadelphia. In 1827 the
first newspaper published on this continent by colored men issued from
its office in New York. It was called "Freedom's Journal," and had for
its motto "Righteousness exalteth a nation." Its editors and
proprietors were Messrs. Cornish & Russwurm. Its name was subsequently