Ruby Chappelle Boyd | |
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Born | |
Education | Atlanta University |
Ruby Chappelle Boyd (born March 18, 1919) was the first African-American librarian in the city of Philadelphia, Pennsylvania. She also worked to preserve the history of the African Methodist Episcopal Church.
Ruby Chappelle was born March 18, 1919, in Philadelphia. [1] Her parents, Bersie and Pearl Chappelle, had moved to Philadelphia from South Carolina during the Great Migration. [2] After growing up in Philadelphia, Boyd sought work as a librarian and applied to attend Drexel Institute, but was denied admittance due to her race. [1] [3]
Boyd is a graduate of Wilberforce University and attended Atlanta University Library School, earning her Bachelor in Library Science and Service degree in 1943. [3] While she was attending school in Atlanta, Philadelphia elementary school principal John Henry Brodhead fought a battle against discrimination in the city's government, and in 1943 the Free Library of Philadelphia advertised to hire their first African American librarian. [1] Upon Boyd's return to Philadelphia she applied for the position and was appointed the city's first black librarian. [1] She later became the first black librarian in the School District of Philadelphia. [1]
In 1966, as president of the School Librarians Association of Philadelphia, she led the organization of the School Library Student Assistants Conference. [4]
Boyd's maternal grandfather was an A.M.E. Church preacher and her mother served as superintendent of the Sunday school at Mother Bethel, the birthplace of the African Methodist Episcopal Church; Boyd was a lifelong member of that church. [2] [1] After her retirement from the Philadelphia school district, she dedicated her work to preserving the history of Mother Bethel, developing the Church's museum. [1]
In 1982, Boyd edited a book about the Mother Bethel Church titled On this rock : the mother of African Methodism. [5]
Chappelle married James T. Boyd, a school principal, and had one daughter. [6] [7]
Richard Allen was a minister, educator, writer, and one of the United States' most active and influential black leaders. In 1794, he founded the African Methodist Episcopal Church (AME), the first independent Black denomination in the United States. He opened his first AME church in 1794 in Philadelphia.
The African Methodist Episcopal Church, usually called the AME Church or AME, is a Methodist Black church. It adheres to Wesleyan-Arminian theology and has a connexional polity. The African Methodist Episcopal Church is the first independent Protestant denomination to be founded by black people; though it welcomes and has members of all ethnicities.
The Mother Bethel African Methodist Episcopal Church is an historic church and congregation which is located at 419 South 6th Street in Center City Philadelphia, Pennsylvania, USA. The congregation, founded in 1794, is the oldest African Methodist Episcopal congregation in the nation.
Bethel African Methodist Episcopal Church, Bethel AME Church, Greater Bethel AME Church or Union Bethel AME Church may refer to:
Fanny Jackson Coppin was an American educator, missionary and lifelong advocate for female higher education. One of the first Black alumnae of Oberlin College, she served as principal of the Institute for Colored Youth in Philadelphia and became the first African American school superintendent in the United States.
The Allen Temple AME Church in Cincinnati, Ohio, US, is the mother church of the Third Episcopal District of the African Methodist Episcopal Church. Founded in 1824, it is the oldest operating black church in Cincinnati and the largest church of the Third Episcopal District of the AME Church.
St. George's United Methodist Church, located at the corner of 4th and New Streets, in the Old City neighborhood of Philadelphia, is the oldest Methodist church in continuous use in the United States, beginning in 1769. The congregation was founded in 1767, meeting initially in a sail loft on Dock Street, and in 1769 it purchased the shell of a building which had been erected in 1763 by a German Reformed congregation. At this time, Methodists had not yet broken away from the Anglican Church and the Methodist Episcopal Church was not founded until 1784.
Daniel Coker (1780–1846), born Isaac Wright, was an African American of mixed race from Baltimore, Maryland; after he gained freedom from slavery, he became a Methodist minister. He wrote one of the few pamphlets published in the South that protested against slavery and supported abolition. In 1816, he helped found the African Methodist Episcopal Church, the first independent black denomination in the United States, at its first national convention in Philadelphia.
John A. Lankford, American architect. He was the first professionally licensed African American architect in Virginia in 1922 and in the District of Columbia in 1924. He has been regarded as the "dean of black architecture".
The Big Bethel AME Church is the oldest African-American congregation in the Sweet Auburn neighborhood of Atlanta, Georgia, and according to AME historical documents, it is the mother church of AME in North Georgia. It is located at 220 Auburn Avenue NE in the Sweet Auburn neighborhood. It is the "first" church on the North Atlanta District, in the Atlanta-North Georgia Annual Conference of the African Methodist Episcopal Church.
Jamal Harrison Bryant is an American minister, author and former political candidate. He is the senior pastor of New Birth Missionary Baptist Church.
William Henry (Harrison) Heard was a clergyman of the African Methodist Episcopal Church who served as United States Ambassador to Liberia from 1895 through 1898.
Jarena Lee was the first woman preacher in the African Methodist Episcopal Church (AME). Born into a free Black family in New Jersey, Lee asked the founder of the AME church, Richard Allen, to be a preacher. Although Allen initially refused, after hearing her preach in 1819, Allen approved her preaching ministry. A leader in the Wesleyan-Holiness movement, Lee preached the doctrine of entire sanctification as an itinerant pastor throughout the pulpits of the African Methodist Episcopal denomination. In 1836, Lee became the first African American woman to publish an autobiography.
The Bethel A.M.E. Church, known in its early years as Indianapolis Station or the Vermont Street Church, is a historic African Methodist Episcopal Church in Indianapolis, Indiana. Organized in 1836, it is the city's oldest African-American congregation. The three-story church on West Vermont Street dates to 1869 and was added to the National Register in 1991. The surrounding neighborhood, once the heart of downtown Indianapolis's African American community, significantly changed with post-World War II urban development that included new hotels, apartments, office space, museums, and the Indiana University–Purdue University at Indianapolis campus. In 2016 the congregation sold their deteriorating church, which will be used in a future commercial development. The congregation built a new worship center at 6417 Zionsville Road in Pike Township, Marion County, Indiana.
Sarah Allen was an American abolitionist and missionary for the African Methodist Episcopal Church. She is known within the AME Church as The Founding Mother.
The Emanuel African Methodist Episcopal Church, often referred to as Mother Emanuel, is a church in Charleston, South Carolina. Founded in 1817, Emanuel AME is the oldest African Methodist Episcopal church in the Southern United States. This, the first independent black denomination in the United States, was founded in 1816 in Philadelphia, Pennsylvania.
Morris Brown was one of the founders of the African Methodist Episcopal Church, and its second presiding bishop. He founded Emanuel AME Church in his native Charleston, South Carolina. It was implicated in the slave uprising planned by Denmark Vesey, also of this church, and after that was suppressed, Brown was imprisoned for nearly a year. He was never convicted of a crime.
Bishop Levi Jenkins Coppin was a minister of the African Methodist Episcopal Church, the editor of the AME Church Review, and one of the founders of the American Negro Academy.