Qualla: Metropolitan African Methodist Episcopal Church

Metropolitan African Methodist Episcopal Church: Introduction

Sun, 31 May 2026 00:00:00 GMT

Photo credit Frypie, CC BY-SA 4.0. On February 3, 2025, a judge in D.C. Superior Court handed Metropolitan AME Church the trademark to the Proud Boys. The $2.8 million default judgment - the result of a lawsuit the church had filed in 2021 - gave the historic Black congregation legal control over the name and intellectual property of the white nationalist group whose leader, Enrique Tarrio, had directed his followers to tear a Black Lives Matter banner off the church's wrought-iron fence in December 2020 and burn it in the street. The act had been a small one in a much larger storm. The judgment was a different scale of event. The church on M Street had been winning hard battles for almost two centuries. This was simply the most recent one.

Image: Frypie | CC BY-SA 4.0

Metropolitan African Methodist Episcopal Church: Union Bethel, 1838

Sun, 31 May 2026 00:00:00 GMT

Photo credit AgnosticPreachersKid, CC BY-SA 4.0. The congregation began in 1838 as Union Bethel A.M.E. Church, an offshoot of the larger African Methodist Episcopal denomination founded by Richard Allen in Philadelphia in 1816 - the first independent Black Protestant denomination in the United States. Washington in 1838 was sti...

Image: AgnosticPreachersKid | CC BY-SA 4.0

Metropolitan African Methodist Episcopal Church: The Oldest Black-Owned Property

Sun, 31 May 2026 00:00:00 GMT

Photo credit AgnosticPreachersKid, CC BY-SA 3.0. According to the church, Metropolitan AME stands on the oldest continuously Black-owned property in the original ten-mile-square District of Columbia. The building - a substantial Victorian Gothic sanctuary at 1518 M Street NW - has occupied the site since 1886. The congregation ...

Image: AgnosticPreachersKid | CC BY-SA 3.0

Metropolitan African Methodist Episcopal Church: Frederick Douglass to Rosa Parks

Sun, 31 May 2026 00:00:00 GMT

Photo credit AgnosticPreachersKid, CC BY-SA 4.0. On February 20, 1895, Frederick Douglass died at his home at Cedar Hill in Anacostia. His funeral was held at Metropolitan AME on February 25. Douglass had been the most prominent Black American of the nineteenth century - abolitionist, orator, autobiographer, presidential adviso...

Image: AgnosticPreachersKid | CC BY-SA 4.0

Metropolitan African Methodist Episcopal Church: Endangered, Then Defended

Sun, 31 May 2026 00:00:00 GMT

Photo credit Evedawn99, CC0. In May 2010, the National Trust for Historic Preservation added Metropolitan AME to its list of America's 11 Most Endangered Places. Water damage and structural deterioration required an estimated $11 million in repairs. The Obamas attended services there on inauguration mornings...

Image: Evedawn99 | CC0

Metropolitan African Methodist Episcopal Church: Trademark and Veterans

Sun, 31 May 2026 00:00:00 GMT

Photo credit ajay_suresh, CC BY 2.0. On February 3, 2025, the case escalated. Judge Tanya Jones Bosier issued a $2.8 million default judgment that included transferring the rights to the name Proud Boys and the group's trademarks to Metropolitan AME Church. The Proud Boys had lost their own name to the church they h...

Image: ajay_suresh | CC BY 2.0