Haviland. One noted action was sending Calvin Fairbank to Lexington to retrieve the family of Gilson Berry. Another was the rescue of Lewis Hayden in 1844 and Alex Duvalls in 1851. In 1845, Brown joined the Boston Vigilance Committee. Religious career In September 1846 he became a deacon in the AME church and moved from Detroit to Columbus, Ohio. He also became principal at the Union Seminary, which became Wilberforce University. In August 1852 he moved to Pittsburgh to preach, and later that year or early in 1853 to New Orleans. In New Orleans he helped raise the money for the Morris Brown chapel, but his work was generally opposed by local whites and he was imprisoned at least once for each of the five years he was in that city for allowing slaves to attend his sermons. In 1857 he asked that he be relieved of his position, and Bishop Daniel Payne assigned him to Louisville, Kentucky, in April, and then to Bethel church in Baltimore in May 1858. In Baltimore, he also began editing a church periodical. In December 1863 he was asked to superintend the organization of AME churches in Virginia and North Carolina, and in 1864 he became editor of the Christian Recorder. He was also elected corresponding secretary of the Parent Home and Foreign Missionary Society of the AME Church. Along with James F. Sisson, William B. Derrick, and William E. Matthews, he was very important in the work of creating new schools and churches throughout the South for the AME church. In May 1868 he was ordained bishop of the AME church, first serving a district consisting of South Carolina, Georgia, Florida, and Alabama. He organized the Alabama Conference of the AME church in Selma, Alabama on July 25, 1868, and organized the Payne Institute in South Carolina which became Allen University in Columbia, South Carolina. In 1872 he changed district, then becoming bishop of Texas, Louisiana, Arkansas, and Tennessee. In this role he helped establish the Paul Quinn College at Waco, Texas, and organized West Texas, South Arkansas, West Tennessee, and Columbia conferences. He also helped Bishop T. M. D. Ward establish the North Georgia Conference in 1872. In 1876 he again moved districts, then overseeing Baltimore, Virginia, North and South Carolina, serving there until 1880. He then moved to a district consisting of Philadelphia, New Jersey, New York, and New England. In