Negro churches
was proposed in 1849 and was a fruitful theme for several years.[4] In
fact, it was due to this effort that the organization of Union Wesley
A. M. E., the John Wesley, and Ebenezer Churches followed. John Brent,
a member of Mt. Zion, led in the first named movement, and Clement
Beckett, another reformer, espoused the organization of Ebenezer in
1856, as a church "for Negroes and by Negroes."[5]

The beginnings of the Israel Colored Methodist Episcopal Church
centered around the evangelical activity of David Smith, a native of
Baltimore, the most energetic of individual forces in the organization
of the first African Methodist Episcopal Church in the city of
Washington. The presence of a Negro preacher was objectionable to many
Negroes themselves. As early as 1821 Mr. Smith was assigned to
Washington but his coming was the signal for personal attack, and he
was mobbed by members of his own race, communicants of the Methodist
Episcopal Church, who were opposed to the African Methodists. He
persisted, however, and having secured an old school house for $300,
entered upon his work with such zeal and energy that he commanded
success. Among the men and women active in the first efforts were
Scipio Beans, George Simms, Peter Schureman, George Hicks, Dora Bowen,
William Costin, William Datcher, William Warren and George Bell, one
of the three colored men who fifteen years before had erected a
building for a Negro school.

Israel promptly became a member of the Baltimore Conference, one of
the oldest conferences of the African Methodist Episcopal Church. The
first Negro conference to meet in Washington was held in Israel during
the administration of Andrew Jackson. Its assembly caused a sensation
and gave the church and the denomination a standing surpassing that of
all other Negro churches in the community. It was also largely through
the personalities of the ministers in charge of Israel that its
influence on its congregation and through them on the community must
be judged. Among those in the period of its African Methodist
affiliation were David Smith, Clayton Durham, John and William
Cornish, James A. Shorter, Daniel A. Payne, Samuel Watts, Jeremiah R.
V. Thomas, Henry M. Turner, William H. Hunter, George T. Watkins,
James H. A. Johnson, and finally Jacob M. Mitchell, the last of the
African Methodist Episcopal pastors at Israel. Smith and Durham were
colleagues of Richard Allen; William Cornish was in the