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My friend and mentor, Dr. Willard Gatewood, offers the following:
The African Methodist Episcopal Zion Church was the first of the mainline African American denominations to ordain women. They did so in the late 1890's.
The first was Mary Julia Small, the wife of a AMEZ bishop, who was ordained in the denomination in 1898. She was ordained an elder, the highest ministerial office in the church.
Her ordination was controversial. Not until the 1980s and 1990s were a significant number of women ordained to the eldership. Of course, there were numerous black women evangelists but they were not ordained in mainline black denominations.
Author of Cousins of Color
www.cousinsofcolor.com
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