Allen Chapel African Methodist Episcopal (A.M.E.) Church

Allen Chapel, originally known as the Little Mission, is an African Methodist Episcopalian Church in Indianapolis. It was founded in 1865 as a Sunday school by a group of African Americans who migrated to Indianapolis from the south at the end of the Civil War. The Sunday school was funded and operated by a group of local white Quakers (see Society of Friends). Because few public schools in Indianapolis welcomed African Americans into the school system, literacy became the primary focus of the benefactors.  

In 1866, at the 27th Annual Conference of African Methodist Episcopal Church in Quincy, Illinois, the Sunday school was promoted to a mission. Bethel A.M.E. pastor Reverend Whitten Lankford became its first minister. It is unclear why Reverend Lankford moved from one Indianapolis A.M.E. to another, but some historians speculate Reverend Lankford may have had a dispute with Bethel A.M.E.’s board. The two churches became rivals upon Allen Chapel’s promotion from Sunday school to mission.  

By 1867 the mission was promoted to a station (full church) within the A.M.E. Conference. It boasted a membership of 200 and had constructed the “Old Allen Chapel” at Pomeroy and Broadway streets. This building would also go on to host the first Black public school on the east side of Indianapolis in the late 1860s. 

The congregation and its activities grew through the late 19th and early 20th centuries. The church served as the host site of African American artist John Wesley Hardrick’s first major exhibit of 56 paintings and drawings. In 1927 Reverend W. B. Shannon oversaw the groundbreaking and cornerstone laying ceremonies for a new church at Broadway and Eleventh streets. The “New” Allen Chapel was completed in 1928. Hardrick returned to the church to contribute a mural, titled Christ and the Samaritan woman at the Well, to the new building.  

Allen Chapel has served as a crucial hub of social life for its surrounding community since its start. By the 1890s, it hosted an A.C.E. League (a Christian youth organization of A.M.E. Church) and in the 1920s, it organized African American Boy Scout Troop 33 and Girl Scout Troop 20. The church also supported a basketball team, bowling league and founded a youth competition based on biblical knowledge known as the Bible Bowl. Additionally, Allen Chapel ran a government backed credit union and a family health clinic, as reported by its 1969 Annual Report. Allen Chapel remains an important part of Indianapolis’s A.M.E. Conference and Indianapolis’ east side community. 

Further Reading