Welcome to the Lehigh Valley Landmarks with Leon podcast series, celebrating 250 years of independence. I'm your host, Rachel Leon. Since being elected in 2022 and serving as Vice President of Bethlehem City Council, I'm humbled by the opportunity to serve the diverse communities that make up our great city. But to understand where we're going, we need to understand our past. Each week, I'll share a short feature with a big story about the 250 years that made the Lehigh Valley and Bethlehem, Pennsylvania, known as the Christmas City, as we explore historic landmarks.
On August 16th, 1893, the Moravian newspaper announced the formation of the African Methodist Episcopal Church and stated, “We are glad to note that the colored people of Bethlehem are likely to have a church before long.”
The early history of Black communities in the Lehigh Valley is not well-documented, but some of the story intersects with the Moravian Church and Count Nicolaus Ludwig von Zinzendorf, a man who played a pivotal role in Bethlehem by naming the settlement in 1741.
In 1730, while Count Zinzendorf was attending a ceremony at the royal court of the Danish King Christian IV he was said to have been approached by a Black man named Anthony who was in the king’s retinue. Anthony asked Count Zinzendorf to send missionaries to enslaved people on the Danish islands of St. Thomas and St. Croix.
Zinzendorf sent missionaries David Nitschmann, who was a founder of Bethelehm and Johann Leonhard Dober. They received aid from the Danish Queen and successfully established missions, winning over 13,000 converts.
The efforts demonstrated an early connection between the region's history and Black individuals seeking religious support.
Some historians believe that the first Black communities to come into the Lehigh Valley arrived as laborers to build the Lehigh Canal in the 1820s. Later, according to the late historian Lance Metz, by the 1830s they were employed as mule drivers on the canal boats.
South Bethlehem’s Black community began to expand with the arrival of the Lehigh Valley Railroad in the 1850s. By the 1860s the U.S. Census listed 32 Black people living in Bethlehem.
Among the first to employ Black communities as domestic labor was Tinsley Jeeter, a Virginia born son of an enslaver who developed in the 1860s and 70s what became Fountain Hill, an independent borough that sits directly next to parts of south Bethlehem.
In the book, “Bethlehem of Pennsylvania: The Golden Years” W. Ross Yates describes where many of the black families lived - “They clustered together originally in the area around Broadway and lower Brodhead Avenue and the lower edge of Fountain Hill. As their numbers grew, they settled extensively in the poorer sections of Northampton Heights. Eventually they spread the length of the South Side, along Second and Third streets, mostly in what used to be Mechanic Street housing and around the coke works near Hellertown.”
When one of Jeter’s employees who had been worshiping at the Episcopal Church of the Nativity realized she was not included in a list of its membership, a small group of Black people in Bethlehem decided to establish their own church.
At 10am on August 6, 1894, the Northampton County Court of Common Pleas at Easton approved a charter for the establishment of a church that was to be called Saint John’s African Methodist Episcopal Zion Church. By 1901, the Black congregation had acquired enough capital to build their own church under the pastoral leadership of Rev. C.H. Brown. The small building on Pawnee St. in Fountain Hill, Pennsylvania still stands today and holds a big legacy as the first Black congregation among the interdenominational communities of faith in Bethlehem.
Information for this episode was provided by the South Bethlehem Historical Society, Historian Frank Whelan and Professor Wandalyn Jeanette Enix, Bethelehm’s first black council member.
