On February 11, 1783, Jarena Lee was born in Cape May, New Jersey. She would go on to become the first woman preacher in the African Methodist Episcopal Church and a pioneering religious author.
Born into a free Black family, Lee was sent to work as a live-in servant at age seven and received no formal education. She taught herself to write and encountered Christianity as a young adult after moving to Philadelphia. There, she joined Mother Bethel AME Church under the leadership of Richard Allen, whose preaching inspired her conversion.
Lee soon felt a call to preach, but Allen initially denied her request, citing the lack of provisions for women preachers.
After the death of her husband in 1817, Lee renewed her ministry. In 1819, when a preacher faltered during a service at Mother Bethel, Lee rose and preached. Allen publicly affirmed her calling and endorsed her as a traveling exhorter, opening the door for her itinerant ministry within the African Methodist Episcopal Church.
Lee traveled thousands of miles, often on foot, preaching across the North and South at great personal risk. In 1836, she became the first African American woman to publish an autobiography, The Life and Religious Experience of Jarena Lee, a landmark in both religious writing and Black women’s literature.
Despite later church rulings barring women from preaching, Lee continued to advocate for abolition and women’s spiritual authority, earning her a place as a foundational figure in American religious history and in the struggle for women’s leadership in the Black church.
