 In 1863 the AME Church bought the college and chose Payne to lead it; he became the first African-American president of a college in the United States and served in that position until 1877.By quickly organizing AME missionary support of freedmen in the South after the Civil War, Payne gained 250,000 new members for the AME Church during the Reconstruction era.Based first in Charleston, he and his missionaries founded AME congregations in the South down the East Coast to Florida and west to Texas.