African Methodist Episcopal Church, a branch of the Methodist Episcopal Church, organized in Philadelphia under Richard Allen in 1816, exclusively for the benefit of the colored people. Four years later the African Methodist Episcopal Zion Church was organized. Each of these organizations, while independent of the mother church, is conducted under the same rules and polity as the church from which it sprang. The African Methodist Episcopal Church had in 1906,858,323 members, and the Zion Church had 583,106. See METHODIST EPISCOPAL CHURCH.