"He Identified Their Situation with That of the Israelites"

"In 1817, following a dispute over burial ground with white members of Charleston's Methodist Episcopal church (reportedly, white congregants built a 'hearse house' on black burial ground), some 1,400 black Christians formed a separate congregation, according to the National Park Service website on Charleston. A year earlier, the African Methodist Episcopal church denomination had been formally established in Philadelphia, and the church community in Charleston set up their church in that denomination in 1818. Free black man and church leader Morris Brown is widely credited as the founder of Charleston's African Methodist Episcopal church, but many cite Denmark Vesey as a co-founder, including the church’s website. Even before Vesey and his associates began discussing plans for an uprising, the church was seen as a threat to the white domination of Charleston. Within months of the church’s establishment, the Charleston city guard arrested 140 free men and slaves for worshipping in violation of city ordinances. Egerton theorized that Vesey might have been among them. In early 1821, Charleston's city council warned against church leaders allowing African Church classes to become 'schools for slaves.' By December of 1821, Vesey was plotting the slave uprising that would make him famous."


On the day after the Charleston shootings, Naomi Shavin in The New Republic remembers Denmark Vesey.