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SALISBURY, MD---African Americans have been part of the formation of Methodism since it was established in the United States in the early 1700s.

The Rev. David W. Brown explores these ongoing connections during the talk “This Is My Story; This Is My Song: Connecting the Shared History of African Americans in United Methodism” 7 p.m. Wednesday, April 15, in Perdue Hall’s Bennett Family Auditorium at Salisbury University.

His presentation was rescheduled from last semester.

The author of the 2010 book Freedom Drawn from Within: A History of the Delaware Annual Conference, Brown chaired a year-long research effort that included clergy and historians interested in preserving and telling the story of the African-American experience within Methodism.

According to the book, the Delaware Annual Conference for African-American Methodist Churches in the Mid-Atlantic States, founded in 1864, was the first annual Methodist conference defined by the race of its membership. The conference continued for a century before ending in 1965, when it merged with other regional conferences of the Methodist Church.

Through conflict, compromise and collaboration, the Delaware Conference had an impact in helping to shape the nation’s treatment (and eventual abolition of) slavery, the higher education of African Americans and the fight for equal rights, the book said.

Brown is a deacon in full connection with the Eastern Pennsylvania Conference of the United Methodist Church. He currently serves as executive director of the West Philadelphia Alliance for Children (WePAC), a non-profit focused on increasing child literacy by opening and operating previously closed public elementary school libraries. He also is also founder of The Marketing Collaborative, a non-profit that provides strategic marketing services to other Philadelphia non-profits.  Brown was named a “Champion of Change” by the Obama administration for his work in the public, private and faith communities.

Sponsored by SU’s Charles R. and Martha N. Fulton School of Liberal Arts and Edward H. Nabb Research Center for Delmarva History and Culture, his presentation is the inaugural lecture from the Rev. Frost Pollitt Memorial Endowment through the Salisbury University Foundation, Inc.

Pollitt (1789-1872) was born a slave and freed in 1828, and spent most of his life in Somerset County. He was a founding member of the Delaware Conference and the first president of its Missionary Society.

Admission is free and the public is invited. For more information call 410-543-6030 or visit the ³ÉÈ˶¶Òõwebsite at www.salisbury.edu.