First published in 1956, Rev. David S. Bradley Sr. wrote what was at the time and remains today the most thorough, scholarly history of the beginnings and growth of the African Methodist Episcopal Zion Church. Beginning with the birth of A. M. E. Zion Chapel in a humble chapel in New York City, Part 1 traces the growth of the church into a powerful and agile denomination, expanding from the settled coast into the frontiers of upstate New York and western Pennsylvania. The advancing denomination, with natural and inherited ""antagonism to slavery,"" attracted ""freedmen, seeking spiritual freedom,"" including the famous black Abolitionist activists--Sojourner Truth, Harriet Tubman,