Historical person
Absalom Jones
1746–1818
Absalom Jones was born enslaved in Delaware and later purchased freedom in Philadelphia. With Richard Allen he organised the Free African Society, a mutual-aid body that supported Black Philadelphians and responded to discrimination within white churches.
Jones became the first African American ordained as a priest in the Episcopal Church and led the African Episcopal Church of St Thomas. His ministry, petitions against slavery and relief work during the 1793 yellow-fever epidemic made him a major institution builder in the early republic.
David Hackett Fischer’s African Founders discusses Absalom Jones within the history of Black institution-building in the early United States. Jones’s emergence from slavery, his religious leadership in Philadelphia and his role in creating independent Black civic and church organisations illustrate Fischer’s wider argument that African Americans did not merely endure exclusion but actively reshaped American ideas of community, liberty and participation.
Non Fiction
Non Fiction featuring Absalom Jones (1 book)
Biographies, histories and other non-fiction are listed separately from the historical novels above.