John Mifflin Brown (September 8, 1817 – March 16, 1893) was a bishop in the African Methodist Episcopal (AME) Church. He was a leader in the underground railroad. He helped open a number of churches and schools, including the Payne Institute which became Allen University in Columbia, South Carolina, and Paul Quinn College in Waco, Texas. He was also an early principal of Union Seminary which became Wilberforce University. Early life Brown was born September 8, 1817, in Odessa (then called Cantwell's Bridge), Delaware. His grandfather was a Methodist minister. At the age of ten he moved to Wilmington, Delaware where he lived with William Seals, a Quaker. Even as a student, he was frustrated by segregation in education, and moved from a Presbyterian Sunday school to a Roman Catholic school to avoid the segregation. His mother was Methodist, though, so he did not convert to Catholicism. After two years in Wilmington he moved to Philadelphia where his sister lived. He lived with Emerson and Henry Chester, a doctor and a lawyer, where he worked for them in exchange for secular and religious lessons. He attended St. Thomas' Colored Protestant Episcopal Church until January 1836 he joined Bethel AME church. In 1837 began to apprentice to be a barber with Frederick H. Hinton. He also attended an evening school taught by James N. Glouster. He also took time off from his apprenticeship to attend a manual labor school in Amherst, Massachusetts. Among his classmates from Philadelphia were Edward H. Ferris and A. G. Crippen. Shortly later he returned to Philadelphia, but did not remain, instead moving to Poughkeepsie, New York where he attended a school led by Rev. Nathaniel Blount and working as a barber with Uriah Boston. In the summer he worked in New York City. In the fall of 1838 he enrolled at Wesleyan Academy in Wilbraham, Massachusetts to prepare for college. In 1840, he returned to Philadelphia where he studied Latin and Greek. He moved west and in the fall of 1844 he opened a school in Detroit, Michigan, and soon after became acting pastor of an AME church in Detroit, a position he held until 1847. In the fall of 1846 he enrolled at Oberlin College in Ohio. Underground railroad In Ohio and perhaps before, Brown was an important activist in the Underground Railroad. He worked closely with local activists such as Delia Webster and Laura