Religious Organizations / Education

Religious Organizations, also, Education. . , Religious Organizations , Free and enslaved African Americans played vital roles in early Washington as laborers, servants, merchants, drivers and federal workers. They created Black charitable groups, schools, and churches, which served needs the White establishment ignored. Alethia Tanner's family members helped sustain the city's earliest Black churches that broke away from increasingly segregated White congregations in the 1820s and 1830s., George Bell, Alethia's brother-in-law, organized the city's first African Methodist Episcopal (A.M.E.) church on Capitol Hill in the 1820s. George Bell and Alethia Tanner would later help rescue the church from financial ruin., In 1838, Alethia's nephew, Rev. John F. Cook, co-founded Union Bethel A.M.E. Church, which later became the Metropolitan A.M.E. Church. Alethia was one of the earliest members of the church. Cook turned away from Methodism and established Washington's first Black Presbyterian church, today known as 15th Street Presbyterian., Education , Black schools and churches in early Washington were intertwined. Sunday schools were important institutions that taught many African Americans how to read and write. Alethia Tanner and her family were active in establishing schools for free Blacks., In 1807, George Bell, Alethia's brother-in-law, and two other men opened the city's first school expressly for Black students. It was called the Bell School., Alethia Tanner and her nephew, Rev. John F. Cook, were closely linked to the early Black school led by Henry Smothers at 14th and H streets, N.W. When the Smothers schoolhouse went up for sale in 1827, Alethia purchased it at auction and saved the school. In 1834, John F. Cook assumed leadership of the Smothers school and renamed it Union Seminary. A year later, he fled to escape racist mobs that destroyed Black schools and businesses in what became known as the Snow Riot. When he returned to Washington in 1836, he resumed teaching., [Caption:] , Alethia Tanner lived at the corner of 14th and H streets, N.W. She owned Lot 10 in Square 250 indicated with a star on the map above. 1872 Map of Washington by A. Petersen and J. Enthoffer, Library of Congress.