Sarah Ann "Sallie" Copeland Hughes (1847–1916) was an African Methodist Episcopal preacher from Wake County, North Carolina.
[3] In November 1861, the fourteen-year-old Hughes preached a service at the Church's Annual Conference Session.
Hughes then served in Wilson's Mills, North Carolina, where she oversaw the erection of the new church building's frame.
[3] Although Hughes's colleagues excluded her from committee meetings at the 1883 North Carolina Conference, she was called before the altar to be accepted into full membership in the connection.
[4] In 1887, at the North Carolina Annual Conference, Bishop Jabez Campbell ruled that Hughes's ordination had been against church law.
[4] Hughes was the last woman ordained in the AME Church until 1948 when the General Conference authorized the ordination of women as deacons.