The return of the bust, which has been at Ohio's Wilberforce University, overlooked and ignored since late 1877, marks the climax of dedicated sleuthing by members of the A.M.E. church and a Temple University art historian.
Norris noted that this year marks the 250th anniversary of Allen's birth and that the return of the bust, on loan from Wilberforce for at least a year, "highlights the significance" of Allen and sheds light on the treatment of African Americans at the time of the centennial, held in the summer before the end of Reconstruction in 1877.
Born enslaved, Allen bought his own freedom and in 1787 cofounded the Free African Society, a self-help group and the first organization formed by blacks in North America. He went on to lead, with Absalom Jones, a black effort to care for the city's dead and dying during the great yellow fever epidemic of 1793.
The next year, Allen founded Mother Bethel African Methodist Episcopal Church on land he owned at Sixth and Lombard Streets, where the church still stands. He was a staunch abolitionist and an early force for the Underground Railroad, and he organized the first Negro Convention - a national gathering of black leaders - in 1830.
"There was only one African American exhibit at the centennial of the nation," Norris said. "That exhibit was supposed to be from the A.M.E. church. And that didn't happen."
Why it didn't happen - actually, it partially happened - is a major element of the story.
Members of the A.M.E.'s Arkansas Annual Conference came up with the idea of a monument to Allen for the centennial, obtained agreement from centennial officials, raised the money, hired a sculptor, and arranged transportation, said the Rev. Mark Kelly Tyler, pastor of Mother Bethel.
