Those Left Out of The Burned-over District : African Americans, Revivalism, and Reform in the Antebellum United States

This essay reexamines Whitney Cross’s classic study The Burned-over District by centering the experiences and religious thought of African Americans in antebellum New York. While Cross linked revivalism to reform among white evangelicals, his omission of Black religious life obscured a different dynamic: for African Americans, reform often preceded and inspired religious conversion. Drawing on recent scholarship on Thomas James, Richard Allen, and the African Methodist Episcopal and AME Zion Churches, the essay argues that Black evangelicalism emerged as both a theological and political response to segregation, slavery, and inequality.