l friends.[14] The building was finally completed. By a vote
of the African Methodist Episcopal Conference in 1872 the name was
changed from Union Bethel to Metropolitan.

The same forces tending toward separation were at this time at work
also among the Negro Baptist members in the white churches. This was
the case of the First Baptist Church (white) organized in 1802. Its
Negro members worshipped at first on the basis of equality with the
whites, but this came to an end when the Negro members were assigned
to the gallery, just as other churches of this time were gradually
segregating them. When the new white Baptist Church, which was
afterward sold and converted into a theater later known as Ford's
Theater, was built on Tenth Street, the Negro communicants were given
the gallery, but this was not satisfactory to the majority, who chafed
under the new arrangement. O. B. Brown, the pastor, however, tried
under the circumstances to treat the Negro members with as much
charity as his prejudiced members would permit, as he was a
kind-hearted man and did not believe in distinction on account of
color. When the Tenth Street Church was occupied in 1833, therefore,
these discontented members bought the old church on the corner of 19th
and I Streets, Northwest, which is still held by that congregation and
known throughout the country as the Nineteenth Street Baptist Church.

This was the first church of the denomination among the Negroes of the
District of Columbia. It was organized August 29, 1839, by Sampson
White, a Negro, assisted by John Healy and S. P. Hill, white pastors
of Baltimore, and Moses Clayton, a Negro minister, who was the founder
and pastor of the first Negro Baptist church of Baltimore. The
original members were William Bush, Eliza Bush, Lavinia Perry and
Emily Coke. The accession of Sampson White and wife increased the
membership to six. None of these had been members of any church in the
District of Columbia. They held letters from churches elsewhere, and
so were free to form a church of their own in this city. But the white
Baptist church, which had worshipped at 19th and I Streets, Northwest,
from the year of their organization, from 1802 to 1833, had many Negro
members who worshipped at 19th and I Streets for six years before
Sampson White organized his small congregation.

These Negro members of the white church, being separated in worship
from their white brethren, and having become sole owners of th