Richard Allen and Absalom Jones form the Free African Society in Philadelphia. The society was designed to provide socioeconomic guidance to the some 2,000 newly freed slaves in the city. It would serve as a model for banks later formed in the Black community.

Also, on this day, in 1960, writer, anthropologist and folklorist Zora Neale Hurston dies in Fort Pierce, Florida, at the age of 69.

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