Freedom's Prophet: Bishop Richard Allen, the AME Church, and the Black Founding Fathers - Rilegato

"Newman's lively, lilting biography of Richard Allen is the keen-eyed appraisal of a remarkable founding father that we needed, wanted, and can now cherish. Save a special place on your bookshelf for this exploration of a man who extricated himself from slavery and rose to accomplish what few white Americans of his generation could match." --GARY B. NASH, author of The Forgotten Fifth: African Americans in the Age of Revolution

"In this bold biography, Richard Newman rescues Allen from obscurity to achieve a larger goal: to recognize African Americans as active makers of the American republic. The book's title is provocative, since few people think of blacks as "founding fathers," but instead as passive victims in an era dominated by their owners... Newman's book is animated by a keen sense of the central issues and by thorough research that casts new light... A diligent and creative scholar, Newman weaves a forceful biography from slivers of scattered evidence found in old newspapers, probate inventories, court decisions, and church records. With persistent ingenuity, Newman illuminates Allen's extraordinary struggle for a republic of true freedom.... Newman reflects Allen's legacy: just as Allen sought to redeem the republic from the unbearable burden of whiteness, Newman helps to reform our national memory which insists that our Founders were all white men at the center of power." --Alan Taylor, The New Republic, 3rd June 2009

"This book is at once a wonderful breath of fresh air into 'founder mania,' as well as the new standard in our eternal quest to define the black 'leader.'" --DAVID W. BLIGHT, author of A Slave No More: Two Men who Escaped to Freedom"

RICHARD S. NEWMAN is Associate Professor of History at Rochester Institute of Technology in Rochester, New York. He is the author of The Transformation of American Abolitionism: Fighting Slavery in the Early Republic.