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.

After his release, he took his family to Philadelphia, Pennsylvania, where he worked closely with Bishop Richard Allen on expanding the church.

He planted new congregations and established conferences of AME churches in the American Midwest and Ontario, Canada.

[1] Born on either January 8 or February 13, 1770[2] to parents who were free people of color in Charleston, South Carolina, Brown received no formal education.

They allowed them to be preachers and members, but the church congregations usually required the people of color to sit in segregated sections.

Richard Allen and 15 delegates from four northern states had founded the African Methodist Episcopal Church there the previous year.

African-American members of the white-dominated Bethel Methodist congregation were upset that white leaders had authorized construction of a hearse house on the site of the traditional black burying ground at the church.

[3] Bethel had allowed its black members, many of whom were enslaved, to meet for worship services in its basement, as was typical of many churches in the city.

After white authorities crushed the plot, arresting and killing many suspects, including Vesey, they worked to suppress the Emanuel AME Church.

Brown fled to Philadelphia with his wife and two young sons, as did former slave Henry Drayton, and parishioners Charles Carr and Amos Cruickshanks.

James Eden and most of the dispossessed African Americans in Charleston joined First Scots Presbyterian Church.

[8] During the antebellum years the Baltimore AME conference thrived; that city had a large population of free people of color.

Three AME churches were founded in Virginia before the Civil War, and in 1848 some African Americans in New Orleans requested a traveling evangelist from the General Conference.

Edward Waters, who evangelized in the Midwest, was named his assistant the following year; he was consecrated as bishop during the General Conference in 1836.

At the May 1844 General Conference, Elder Quinn reported that he had established 47 churches with 2000 members (including one each in the slave cities of Louisville, Kentucky and St. Louis, Missouri).

[11] Aware that his own limited literacy affected his preaching, Brown mentored Daniel Payne, who had moved to Pennsylvania from Charleston in 1835 after authorities closed his school.

The following year, the Lombard Street riot occurred near Mother Bethel Church, reflecting racial tensions.

At the General Conference of 1844, Brown helped Payne secure the adoption of a resolution requiring a regular course of study for ministers, which contributed to building the institution of the church.

[16] Morris Brown College in Atlanta, established in 1881 by the North Georgia Conference of the African Methodist Episcopal Church, was also named in honor of the bishop.