First African Methodist Episcopal Zion Church, ca. !!!!.

The denomination known as the A.M.E. Zion Church traces the origins of its congregation to the John Street Methodist Church in Lower Manhattan. The John Street Methodist Church was a mixed-race congregation, which welcomed Black worshippers as many Methodist churches did following the Great Awakening. Though allowed to worship freely, Black members of the church still experienced overt discrimination, leading them to eventually break off into and form another church. The smaller churches that separated from the John Street Methodist Church were attended by only Black congregants, though the ministers were still exclusively white, causing tension among those who attended and those who led the church. The church separated for a second time, following Minister James Varick, an early attendant of the John Street Methodist Church. Varick, a Black man, became the first bishop of the newly-formed and independent African Methodist Episcopal Zion denomination. By 1866, the A.M.E. Zion denomination had 42,000 members and, by 1868, its size had quadrupled. At the end of the Civil War, the church was sending missionaries to the South to educate newly emancipated freed men. A.M.E. Zion is sometimes referred to as "Freedom Church" for its connection to Abolitionism.

The First A.M.E. Zion Church in Bedford-Stuyvesant was originally part of what was known as the Fleet Street Church, which was organized in 1885 by a small group of 15 people who applied to join the A.M.E. Zion denomination. Like many other historic Black churches in the borough, the group had separated from the Bridge Street A.M.E. in Downtown Brooklyn. The church's first building was the largest of the A.M.E. Zion denomination. By 1942, they purchased the building seen here at Tompkins and MacDonough Street, which seats about 6,000 people and is even today one of the largest A.M.E. Zion buildings.