Geneva Smitherman, Black Talk: Words and Phrases from the Hood to the Amen Corner (1994) provides this entry for the term "amen corner":
AMEN CORNER 1) In the Traditional Black Church (TBC), originally the place where the older members sit, especially older women, the Church "mothers," who are perceived as the "watchdogs of Christ" and who often lead the congregation in responsive Amens. 2) Any section of the Church where the congregation uses many verbal responses and Amens. 3) By extension, outside the Church world, a reference to any area where there are expressions of strong support and high feeling for a speaker or performer.
Taken at face value, this entry suggests that "amen corner" originated in African American churches and from there spread to apply to places of warm support for a particular viewpoint or ethos in non-church (and sometimes non–African American) contexts.
I have three questions about "amen corner":
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Where did the term originate?
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What is the earliest known instance of its use in print?
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How—if at all—has its meaning evolved over the years?
Best Answer
'Amen corner' in reference works
The extension of amen to use in nonreligious (or at least nonprayerful) contexts goes back several centuries. Albert Hyamson, A Dictionary of English Phrases (1922) offers this entry for the idiomatic expression “to say amen to”:
Given this early figurative usage, we can’t safely assume that “amen corner” originated in reference to a locality within a church—though we can hardly rule out the possibility of such an origin either.
With regard to the slang term amener, Albert Barrère & Charles Leland, Dictionary of Slang, Jargon & Cant, volume 1 (1889), includes this entry:
The sardonic edge in this usage is unmistakable, and the fact that the term was “old” in 1889 suggests that it may have been known and used in the defined sense at least a generation earlier.
Gilbert Tucker, American English (1921) devotes a chapter of his book to a critique of J. Redding Ware, Passing English of the Victorian Era, a Dictionary of Heterodox English, Slang and Phrase (ca. 1913), which Tucker finds riddled with erroneous guesses as to the meaning of various U.S. English phrases (Ware was an Englishman). Here is Tucker’s quotation of Ware’s entry for “amen corner” followed by Tucker’s assessment of that entry:
But in a contemporaneous review of Tucker’s book, Frank Mott takes him to task for disputing the church focus of the expression. From The Grinnell [Iowa] Review (July–August 1921):
From Robert Hendrickson, Facts on File Encyclopedia of Word and Phrase Origins (1998):
From Lawrence Urdang, Walter Hunsinger & Nancy LaRoche, Picturesque Expressions: A Thematic Dictionary (1985) [combined snippets]:
From Stephen Calt, Barrelhouse Words: A Blues Dialect Dictionary (2006):
Mitford Mathews, A Dictionary of Americanisms on Historical Principles (1951) has this entry for the term:
'Amen corner' in England
An explanation of London’s “Amen corner” appears in George Cooke, Walks Through London: Or, A Picture of the British Metropolis (1833):
A very similar account appears in a letter from John Carey to The Gentlemen’s Magazine* (March 1828). A slightly revised version of that story appears in “Nooks and Corners of Old England,” in Punch (1844):
That “Amen Corner” in London is an old name is evidenced by a report in John Entick, A New and Accurate History and Survey of London (1766) reports that "Dr. Harvey, who found out the circulation of the blood in 1652, built a library and a public hall, which he granted for ever to the college [of physicians], and endowed it with his estate, which he resigned to them in his life-time. ... The building perished in the flames in 1666." If the description of the Catholic processions through the area are accurate, the name must date to the early 1500s at least.
'Amen corner' in the United States
The earliest match I could find for “amen corner” in the context of U.S. usage involves an anecdote set in a Methodist church near Baltimore, Maryland. A pious member of the congregation says “Amen” when the preacher says “I, your speaker, may be dead before another morning dawns,” and again “Amen!” after he says “Before another hour your speaker may be in eternity.” The story—“An Uncalled for Amen,” from the Canton [Mississippi] Creole (April 6, 1849)—then concludes:
The joke appears to hinge in part on the reputation of Methodist congregations of that era for freely and enthusiastically expressing their assent to ongoing sermons.
Next appears this item headed “Ludicrous,” in the Evansville [Indiana] Daily Journal (October 26, 1850), reprinted from the Cincinnati [Ohio] Nonpartisan:
Both of these anecdotes reappeared multiple times over the course of several years in newspapers across the United States.
A nonhumorous item titled “Characteristic Sketches: Father Jones,” about an old former preacher, in the [Brookville,] Indiana American (October 1, 1853) starts with this sentence:
An incident involving disruptive mockery of vocal piety is treated with serious disapproval in “Indecorum in Church,” in the Washington [D.C.] Sentinel (September 10, 1854):
The reporter concludes, “He was amusing himself at the expense of decency and good order.”
And from “Grog-Selling Christians (?) ”in the [Raleigh, North Carolina] Spirit of the Age (December 20, 1854):
The earliest Google Books match for “Amen corner” in the United States appears to be the first one cited in Mathews’d A Dictionary of Americanisms on Historical Principles. From “Editor’s Drawer,” in Harper’s Magazine (January 1860):
The next is from Richard Devens, The Pictorial Book of Anecdotes and Incidents of the War of the Rebellion (1867):
From History of the Pan-Handle; Being Historical Collections of the Counties of Ohio, Brooke, Marshall and Hancock, West Virginia (1879):
Early associations of 'amen corner' with African American congregations
An African American church is identified as having an amen corner in “Practical Preaching,” originally published in the New York Exchange, and reprinted in the [Ravenna, Ohio] Portage Sentinel (May 30, 1855), in which a preacher describes his effort to chop down a fine-looking tree in order to create a new leaf for a broken table:
This sermon is said to have occurred at “an African meeting-house in the outskirts of the city” (evidently New York City, since the item originally appeared in the New York Exchange) almost six years before the outbreak of the U.S. Civil War. Another interesting report—this one from Baton Rouge, Louisiana, less than a year before the war began—appears in “Southern Sketches,” in the [Winchester,] Randolph County [Indiana] Journal (April 28, 1859):
Early in the Civil War, this item appears under the heading “Queer Advertising,” in the Cincinnati [Ohio] Daily Press (September 12, 1861):
From “Local Mush,” in the [Lexington, Missouri] Weekly Caucasian (November 30, 1872):
And from Mark Twain, Pudd’nhead Wilson (1894):
Although these early instances—some serious, others merely occasions for old-fashioned racist humor—indicate that some black religious services were marked by enthusiastic vocal assent from worshippers, the choice of “amen corner” to describe where the zealous participants sat is in each case the (white) reporter’s; it isn’t clear that the term was used originally by black parishioners themselves.
Early figurative use of 'amen corner'
The earliest occurrence that I found of “amen corner” in a figurative sense (that is, not involving an actual church setting) is from “The Situation,” in the [Columbia, South Carolina] Yorkville Enquirer (April 12, 1866):
Here, “the ‘amen corner’ of puritanism” doesn’t refer to religious Puritanism, but to ideological extremism; it is a figurative characterization (by a Southern newspaper shortly after the North’s victory in the Civil War) of supporters of Radical Republicans in the U.S. Congress.
From “Home Correspondence: From Sinking Spring,” in the [Hillsboro, Ohio] Highland Weekly News (October 20, 1870):
“Amen’s corner” may have previously been a place where like-minded Sinking Springers of leisure gathered to discuss (and agree with one another about) the events of the day.
From “Red-Hot Meeting in the Twenty-First District,” in the [Washington, D.C.] Evening Star (October 13, 1871):
Here the “amen corner” refers to a particular area of the meeting room at the Lincoln Institute; the institute is surely not a church.
From “Class Day, ’73” in The [University of Michigan] Palladium for 1873–4 (1874):
Conclusions
There is no clear connection between the geographical term “Amen corner” as used in England since the 1500s and the descriptive term “amen corner” used in the United States since the mid-1800s.
The U.S. term referred originally to an area of a (usually) Methodist church, as described in “Priscilla,” in the Columbia [Tennessee] Herald (November 10, 1871), speaking of “the Methodist puritanism of a generation ago in the West [that is, the Ohio Valley of the United States],” as follows:
Figurative use of “amen corner” in the sense of “area of reliable and perhaps unthinking support” followed fairly quickly, with examples going back to 1866.
Instances where “amen corner” appears in the context of African American worshippers go back to 1855, but it isn’t clear whether the term was being used at that date in the church itself. In any case, the earliest uses of the term (from 1849–1850) appear to involve white Methodist congregations.