Stokely Sturgis was an eighteenth-century Delaware farmer and enslaver. One of the people he enslaved was named Richard (1760-1831). Three of Richard’s five siblings along with his mother had been previously sold to a plantation far away from him.
Richard had a dramatic conversion to Christ at age at seventeen while attending a Methodist gathering in the woods. Stokely took notice of his genuine faith, so much so that he started asking probing questions about it. Richard told him, “Sir, I would ask Rev. Garretson to come and preach right here to your house. He can answer your questions much better than I can.” Stokely took Richard up on the offer. When Freeborn Garretson (what a name!) preached at his home, Stokely heard the gospel and became a Christian. He soon fell under conviction that enslaving people was wrong. Because he was in debt, he was unwilling to release Richard on the spot, but he worked out a deal for Richard to buy his freedom for two thousand dollars. After work hours, Richard drove a wagon delivering salt and preaching the gospel wherever he went.
Three years later, Richard bought his freedom and changed his name to Richard Allen. He purchased a former blacksmith shop, which he converted into a church, and in 1794 founded a new denomination, the African Methodist Episcopal Church, so that Black people could worship God without racial oppression. Richard, who had taught himself to read and write, also opened schools for Black children, and he and his wife, Sarah, ran a station for the Underground Railroad. What God can do with people who take God at His Word! Richard leads us to pray: