Author’s Note: Courage rarely announces itself. It forms through risk, resistance, and consequence long before history chooses names to remember. The Courage They Didn’t Teach moves decade by decade from the mid-1700s onward, setting aside hero worship to focus on moments when retreat looked safer but resolve demanded sacrifice. Please note that, since these people weren't readily celebrated, historical information may be light at times.
Each entry follows one life that faced danger, opposition, or erasure and stood firm without promise of reward. Some endured violence in the open. Others absorbed pressure in silence. Together, these stories show courage as a skill shaped by straining to and refined long before applause, if applause comes at all.
Richard Allen: 1760 - 1831
Richard Allen began life in bondage and earned freedom through labor, discipline, and faith. He didn't stop there; he built institutions that allowed black Americans to gather, worship, and lead without interference.
Allen's work shaped one of the first independent black denominations in the United States, laying a foundation that reached far beyond his lifetime.
Richard Allen entered the world in Philadelphia in 1760 and grew up in bondage after his family moved to Delaware. His owner, Stokley Sturgis, sold Allen's mother and siblings, breaking the family apart early. Allen taught himself to read and found direction through Methodist preaching. By his late teens, he felt called to preach, even while still enslaved.
He worked beyond his assigned labor, hauling salt and taking extra jobs to buy his freedom. Over several years, he paid Sturgis roughly $2,000.
At age 17 Allen was converted to Methodism by an itinerant preacher. Allen’s master, Stokley Sturgis, was said to have been influenced by Allen to become a Methodist as well. After his conversion, Sturgis offered his slaves the opportunity to buy their way out of slavery. In 1783, by working at odd jobs for five years, Allen managed to purchase his freedom for $2,000. In the meantime, Allen began to preach in Methodist churches and meetings in the Baltimore area. Through his Methodist connections, Allen was invited to return to Philadelphia in 1786. Upon arriving in the city he joined St. George’s Methodist Episcopal Church, where he became active in teaching and preaching.
A Methodist preacher had already pressed Sturgis on the moral wrong of slavery, which opened the door for Allen's purchase.
By 1783, Allen walked free and began traveling as a preacher across Delaware, New Jersey, Pennsylvania, and Maryland.
Allen settled in Philadelphia in 1786 and joined St. George's Methodist Church. Black worshipers filled the early morning services he helped lead. Growth, however, brought tension; white leadership forced black members into a separate gallery. During a 1787 prayer service, officials tried to pull Allen and others from their knees to enforce that separation.
Allen, along with Absalom Jones, chose a different response; they stood up and walked out, joined by dozens of others. There wasn't any shouting or chaos, just a refusal to remain where dignity had been stripped away.
Allen and Jones first organized the Free African Society, which supported widows, orphans, and the sick. From there, Allen pushed toward something permanent. In 1794, Bethel African Methodist Episcopal Church opened in a converted blacksmith shop. Bishop Francis Asbury dedicated the building, and Allen took on pastoral leadership.
When yellow fever struck Philadelphia in 1793, many people fled the city.
In 1787, Richard Allen and Absalom Jones established the Free African Society (FAS). This civic organization drew freemen, freedom seekers, and Haitian refugees. They assisted people in finding work and homes, provided literacy and financial education, and assisted in community projects. One such event that employed members of FAS was the Yellow Fever Epidemic. Doctors promoted the falsehood that African Americans could not contract the illness, and FAS members were hired as nurses, collected human remains, and buried them for the city of Philadelphia. Many of them died of the illness.
While Methodist authorities challenged Bethel's independence for years, even attempting to control or sell the property, Allen fought through the courts and secured legal independence in 1815. The next year, he brought together leaders from multiple states and formally established the African Methodist Episcopal Church, becoming its first bishop in 1816.
Allen also wrote and published, defending the role of black Americans in relief efforts and calling for discipline and moral growth within the community. His work moved him beyond preaching while building systems that could stand without him.
Allen spent the remainder of his life tending his station on the Underground Railroad, along with his wife Sarah Bass. He also worked with community leaders to open schools for African Americans. His life’s work established ways African Americans (both freed and enslaved) could organize, learn, and help one another. These efforts set the wheels in motion for others to lead across the country. Allen passed away at his home on March 26, 1831 and is buried in the basement of Mother Bethel in Philadelphia.
The African Methodist Episcopal Church grew far beyond Philadelphia, shaping communities across generations. Freedom gave him a starting point, not a finish line, staying where resistance ran deepest and building something that couldn't be pushed aside or erased quietly.
The farmer who plants in stubborn ground never expects ease, but he works anyway, trusting roots will find a way through what resists them. Years later, shade spreads across the land he once struggled to break, sheltering lives he never knew.
Next up in the series: Robert Fulton
Focusing on Robert Fulton’s overlooked collaborators instead of Fulton himself.
Progress rarely carries a single name, even when history prefers one. Robert Fulton often receives credit for advancing the steamboat, yet earlier builders laid the groundwork long before his success drew attention. John Fitch designed and launched working steam-powered vessels in the 1780s, proving the concept under conditions that drained his finances and tested his resolve. Others, including James Rumsey, pursued similar designs, competing for patents, funding, and belief in an idea many dismissed as impractical.
Other columns in this series
- Franklin Before the Break
- The Woman Who Printed the Names
- The Man Who Refused to Stay Quiet
- Measured by the Stars
- Courage Measured in Seconds
- Margaret Corbin’s Stand Under Fire
- Hidden in Plain Sight—Deborah Sampson
- The Man Who Listened
- A 16-Year-Old Against an Army
- The Shot That Steadied a Revolution
- Mum Bett and the Law
- Phillis Wheatley and the Cost of Freedom
- Ona Judge Chose Freedom Over Comfort
