The Color of Compromise: The Truth about the American Church’s Complicity in Racism

by Jemar Tisby

One Sunday in 1792, Richard Allen and fellow black minister Absalom Jones entered St. George’s to worship. Unknowingly, they took seats reserved for white parishioners and thus violated the segregated seating arrangements. They knelt to pray but one of the church’s white trustees soon interrupted them. Allen recounts the episode in his autobiography: We had not been long upon our knees before I heard considerable scuffling and low talking. I raised my head up and saw one of the trustees, H—M—, having hold of the Rev. Absalom Jones, pulling him up off of his knees, and saying, “You must get up—you must not kneel here.” Mr. Jones replied, “wait until prayer is over.” Mr. H—M—said “no, you must get up now, or I will call for aid and I force you away.” Mr. Jones said, “wait until prayer is over, and I will get up and trouble you no more.”29 The white trustees insisted that Jones leave immediately. Another trustee came over to help pull up the black worshipers. The prayer ended, and Allen recalled, “We all went out of the church in a body, and they were no more plagued with us in the church.”30 Allen and his compatriots did not completely cut off contact with St. George’s. They met with an elder from the church who discouraged them from raising money to build their own sanctuary and threatened them with church discipline.