Like the AME Church, the AME Zion Church expanded enormously after the Civil War, sending missionaries into the South to organize the newly freed, and its membership, only about 42,000 in 1866, had nearly quadrupled within two years and continued climbing through the century. The church planted schools alongside congregations, founding Livingstone College in Salisbury, North Carolina, in 1879 to train Black clergy and teachers, a pattern of pairing evangelism with education common to the historic Black Methodist churches.
The AME Zion Church retains the connexional structure of Methodism, organized into episcopal districts under bishops elected by its quadrennial General Conference, with congregations today across the United States and, through nineteenth and twentieth century missions, in West Africa, Southern Africa, and the Caribbean. Its administrative headquarters are in Charlotte, North Carolina, where the denomination relocated its offices in the twentieth century. Membership is most recently reported in the range of roughly one and a half million, and the church remains a member of the World Methodist Council and the World Council of Churches, continuing the tradition of social engagement that marked its earliest history.