When freedom was fragile: How Quinn Chapel AME put its faith in action

Black people in Antebellum America wrestled to secure and maintain their freedom as America’s original sin of slavery pulled at the seams of the tapestry of the Union.

In 1787, slavery was outlawed in the territory that would become Illinois. But, in 1819, a year after lawmakers created the state’s first constitution, they passed the first of several Black Laws that threw free Black people into a new form of bondage.

These laws, also known as the Black Codes, denied free Blacks basic civil rights that should be afforded to them as citizens. The laws also made Illinois an unwelcoming place for Black people to live. They couldn’t stay in the state for more than 10 days, unless they registered their freedom papers with the respective county clerk’s office. Only white children could access public school education. Black people were even forbidden from gathering in groups of three or more.

That is, unless it was for religious observances like church meetings.

By the 1840s, Chicago’s Black population inched towards 140 people as free Blacks flocked to the city to steer clear of slavery throughout the American South. Some of them started Quinn Chapel AME, the city’s first Black church.

The year was 1844. Rev. Abraham Hall started a prayer band with six members in the home of John Day, located near State and Lake streets. Two years later, the members made their first purchase, which became the city’s first Black-owned property for religious purposes. By 1847, the church became an official congregation within the African Methodist Episcopal church and was named after Bishop William Paul Quinn, who organized AME churches across the Midwest.

Beyond its physical building, the Black Church became the “locust of community activism,” according to Jennifer Harbour, associate professor of history at the University of Nebraska Omaha.

The physical building of the church not only served as a beacon for freedom seekers, but it was also the place where free Blacks could develop. As the law closed them off from public society, the church became the center of the community. It was where people learned to read, engaged in debate club, had women’s Bible study, and singing classes.

“It is the place where people can feel safe, both spiritually and temporally. And it also is the place where Black abolitionism really has its start,” Harbour said. “I can't think of anything that's more important to the Black community than the church in this period.”

In its early years, Quinn Chapel stood as a community pillar where even the most affluent members organized their role in the emancipation movement, and today the church remains a relic of when the Christian faith fueled action toward Black liberation.

Faith in Action Toward Liberation

Six years after the church was founded, the Fugitive Slave Law of 1850 was passed. It permitted slave catchers to travel across the country to recapture enslaved people who sought freedom.

In response, Quinn Chapel members held a special meeting to denounce the law and make it known where they stood on the issue. According to Quinn Chapel’s National Register of Historic Places application, the members are reported to have said, “We will stand by our liberty at the expense of our lives, and will not consent to be taken into slavery or permit our brethren to be taken.”

Though Quinn Chapel members were free, they knew their freedom was precarious. Harbour said the Fugitive Slave Law strengthened Quinn Chapel members’ commitment to emancipation everywhere.

“African Americans are prescient enough at this stage to say ‘just because I’m not in the South now doesn’t mean I can’t be transported there overnight. None of us are really safe,’” Harbour said.

With the threat of re-enslavement always breathing down their necks, Quinn Chapel members knew it was imperative to always carry their freedom papers.

The church’s location — along the Chicago River, with close proximity to Lake Michigan — made it a strategic station along the Underground Railroad. For those on foot to freedom, this location made continuing their journey to Canada easier.

Harbour said Christianity was a major fuel behind the power of the Underground Railroad.

“So the Underground Railroad is a very physical thing that helps people get from point A to point B,” Harbour said. “But when you talk about the maturation of social activism in the Black community, that it’s funneled through Christianity. It’s funneled through the church.”

The church made organizing collective efforts possible. Among Quinn Chapel’s members was a courageous group of women, known as The Big Four, who led the church’s emancipation strategy: Emma Atkinson, Mary Jane Richardson Jones, Joanna Hall, and a woman known as Aunt Charlotte.

The women would consider questions like “Are we going to give money to the people coming through the Underground Railroad,” Harbour said. “It’s way more than just mules and men.”

At times, both the church building itself and the homes of some members, including The Big Four, doubled as refuges to conceal the enslaved. Freedom seekers were tucked away in a crawl space, with barely enough room to breathe, all to remain hidden from slave catchers.

The church’s activism also included direct protest of the Fugitive Slave Act by collaborating with the Liberty Association vigilance committee. The Liberty Association was an extension of the Liberty Party, a political party of the 1840s and 1850s designed to run candidates to end slavery through political action.

In Chicago, the association was a sort of Black police force “where people are going to go out and watch to see if there are slave catchers coming from the South,” Harbour said.

At the time, the Black Codes were still in effect, which made their emancipation tactics risky. There were severe consequences – through both local and federal laws — for violating the Fugitive Slave Act or helping to emancipate an enslaved person.

Under the Illinois Black Codes, people could be fined $200, if they brought a freedom seeker to Illinois under the pretense of emancipating them. If they couldn’t pay the fines, they’d be forced to use their labor to pay off the debt owed, which was essentially slavery by another name. And if freedom seekers were caught more than 10 miles from the home of their owners, they’d face a penalty of up to 35 bare back lashings.

The veil of class, wealth, and mixed ancestry did not fool Quinn Chapel members into thinking they couldn’t be returned to slavery or taken into bondage for the first time. Harbour said this sober reality motivated them to defy the risks and to commit themselves to emancipation for all: “We got a nice house, and we've arrived, and we've built these beautiful churches. … But none of us have freedom until all of us have freedom.”

Quinn Chapel Elite Lead the Way

The free Black people who led Quinn Chapel’s emancipation work were among the city’s Black elite. They were leaders in the business community and politics. Key leading families were the Atkinsons and the Joneses.

Emma Atkinson and her husband, Isaac Atkinson, arrived in Chicago at some point between 1847 and 1853. They were born of free ancestry, which included Black, Scottish, and Cherokee Native American. Isaac started a transportation company that helped Black people travel along Chicago’s early roads by horse and mule. Emma rose in leadership as a key leader of Quinn Chapel’s “Big Four.”

The Jones family also stood among Chicago’s early Black leaders, paving the way for emancipation and for Black people to access their endowed rights as citizens.

The patriarch, John Jones, was born free, in 1816, in North Carolina to a mixed-race mother and a father of German descent. Jones was regularly plagued by the fear of being enslaved. At an early age, his mother sent him to become an apprentice to a white man to keep him out of reach. Years later, when his father passed away, Jones was concerned that his white brothers might enslave him as part of their inheritance. Jones befriended a blacksmith of a socially ranked Black family. He joined that family on their voyage to Illinois. This is how he met his wife, Mary Jane Richardson, who would become one of Quinn Chapel’s Big Four.

The couple arrived in Chicago with $3.50 to their names. John taught himself how to read and slowly built a business as a tailor, leveraging the skills he’d learned from his father who was a master tailor. He used the wealth he accumulated not only to sustain his family but also to support people who made their way to Chicago via the Underground Railroad.

The Joneses’ home was located on Monroe and Dearborn, not far from where Quinn Chapel stood on Jackson and Dearborn. Both provided refuge to freedom seekers. Will Miller, Quinn Chapel’s historic preservation chair, said that as the homes doubled as stations, they made “sure that those people were housed and then got to the next location.”

In addition to aiding freedom seekers, John Jones also spoke out against the Black Codes. In 1864, he published a 16-page pamphlet called The Black Laws of Illinois and a Few Reasons Why They Should Be Repealed. Two years after the Emancipation Proclamation was signed, on February 7, 1865, the Illinois legislature rescinded the Black Laws.

Years later, in 1871, his activism propelled him toward a successful bid to become a Cook County Commissioner, making him the first Black person elected to public office in Illinois.

A Portal into the Past

The same year of Jones’s historic rise to political office, the church’s second home, which was built in 1853, was lost in the Great Chicago Fire.

Quinn Chapel moved a few times before settling at its current location. The church needed to purchase land, which was difficult for Black people in those days. So, Rev. Jon T. Jenifer, the church’s leader, leveraged his fair complexion, passed for white and bought the land at 2401 South Wabash. He then deeded it to the church. In 1891, they broke ground, and in 1893, the building was complete.

“This piece of land is the longest continually held piece of property by African Americans in the city of Chicago,” says Quinn Chapel Senior Pastor Troy Venning, who marvels at knowing that this building has remained all this time.

One step inside the church offers a portal into the past. There’s a massive organ that the church purchased from the 1893 World’s Columbian Exposition German pavilion.The church members, ever focused on the church's financial wellbeing and future, held the first ever June Rose benefit concert to pay for the organ. While they’ve cleared the debt, they’ve hosted the concerts for more than 130 years. Venning said “It's kind of a homecoming for everybody.”

Above the organ is a mural that was unique for its time. Painted in 1904 by Proctor Chisholm, it was his rendition of the Risen Christ mural, featuring Mary alongside Jesus, with cherub children floating in their respective auras. What sets this rendition apart is that the images are depicted as sub-Saharan African people. Like many art pieces, Venning said this was a form of resistance.

“If you think about 1904 and what was happening in the country at that time, this was a direct slap in the face to what folks were saying and what they thought about Black people,” Venning said.

The historic auditorium, or sanctuary, still has the original woodwork, including the pews. One of the pews is part of a collection in the National Museum of African American History and Culture in Washington, D.C. In light of the federal government’s removal of historic references of Black history in America, Venning said, “We haven't gotten it back from those folks in Washington yet. We don't know if it's coming, but if they start to get rid of stuff at that museum, we want our pew back.”

To memorialize all the patriotic sacrifices Quinn Chapel members made, the church was designated a Chicago landmark in 1977, and in 1979, it was listed in the National Register of Historic Places.

The building was surprisingly warm in the dead of a winter morning in February. Venning said they recently completed a $650,000 HVAC upgrade to keep it cool in the heat of summer, and warm in the frost of winter. The upgrades are part of a decades-long $12 million renovation that will be paid for, in part, by $9.4 million earmark from the State of Illinois, and $227,000 from the National Fund for Sacred Places, with matching funds the church raised.

At the edge of the pulpit is a lectern where many historic American figures once stood, including, the Rev. Dr. Martin Luther King Jr, Susan B. Anthony, Frederick Douglass, and Ida B. Wells. They denounced hate and amplified messages of freedom and equality.

Venning said the fact that Quinn Chapel still stands today is a testament to faith and the power of the divine. Quinn Chapel was built on the edge of the historic Prairie District neighborhood, an area dubbed “Millionaire's Row” where Marshall Field and George Pullman once lived.

It was an area where residents likely “didn’t want Black folks nearby,” Venning said. “We’d like to say that the Holy Spirit inspired them to leave us alone because they heard it was going to be a church, and so they didn’t bother us.”

And 133 years later, that church is still standing.