Although it was a late delivery, the Lake Union was the birthplace of the first Seventh-day Adventist systematic work for Black people in the South. The greatest opportunity opened at the end of the Civil War, yet it took another 25 years before the church responded to the need.

The chief champion of the cause was Ellen White. In 1891, she delivered a historic presentation entitled "Our Duty to the Colored People." Her words were instrumental in influencing her son James Edson White to dedicate his efforts to the work among Black people in the South.

Long before the Adventist Church was formed, William Ellis Foy, a Black minister, received visions. As a girl, Ellen White heard Foy speak in Portland, Maine, and later talked with him after receiving her first visions. She had a copy of Foy's four visions and noted, "It was remarkable testimony that he bore."1

Black people in the Millerite movement played a significant part in the preaching of the soon coming of Christ. Prominent ministers such as William Still, Charles Bowles, William Foy, and John Lewis were coworkers with Millerite leaders.

The first Black Adventist ordained minister was Charles Kinney, born a slave in Richmond, Virginia. It was the preaching of Ellen White and James Loughborough in Reno, Nevada, that convinced him to become a Seventh-day Adventist. He suggested the concept of Black conferences as a way to work more effectively among Black people, after he confronted efforts to segregate him and his members at his camp meeting ordination service in 1878.

Former baptist preacher Harry Lowe established the first Black Adventist church in 1883 at Edgefield Junction, Tennessee.

Edson White and his wife Emma acted on the burden they felt for their brothers and sisters in the South and, with the support of Will Palmer, began a ministry along the Mississippi River from the Morning Star, a steamship purchased with their own funds in Kalamazoo, Michigan. Emma served by her husband's side in every venture at great personal sacrifice.

In order to provide education and training for the new Black members and their children, Oakwood Industrial School, later to become Oakwood College, began operations in Huntsville, Alabama, in 1896. It is estimated that 85 percent of all Black leaders in the Adventist Church have spent some time at Oakwood College during their educational careers.

Designed as an evangelistic journal for Black people, Edson White began publishing The Gospel Herald in 1898 at Yazoo City, Mississippi. It's successor, MESSAGE magazine, was first published in 1934.

The first Black Seventh-day Adventist medical facility was founded in Nashville, Tennessee, in 1901 as the Riverside Sanitarium. Under the direction of Nellie Druillard, the sanitarium expanded to a hospital in 1927, and many prominent African-Americans visited the hospital for treatment.

By 1909, the growing issues of the Black work precipitated the formation of the Negro department of the General Conference. In 1943, a shocking incident occurred that caused concerned Black leaders and members to press the General Conference to take active measures.

Lucy Byard, a Seventh-day Adventist member from Brooklyn, New York, experienced a medical emergency and was admitted to the Washington Adventist Sanitarium. Although gravely ill, Lucy was discharged and transferred to Freeman's Hospital when it was discovered that she was Black. She died shortly thereafter.

The unpleasant truth of this incident helped to galvanize the cause of the Committee for the Advancement of Worldwide Work Among Colored Seventh-day Adventists. Among the prominent Black laity signing an eight-page set of demands from the committee to the General Conference was Eva B. Dykes, the first Black woman in the United States to complete the requirements for a Ph.D.

By 1944, Black membership in the United States climbed to 20,000. In response to the growing membership, the General Conference Committee approved the formation of regional (Black) self-governing conferences. After an organizational meeting was held at the Shiloh Church in Chicago, the Lake Region Conference became the first regional conference with J. G. Dasent duly elected as president. By 1947, the Northeastern, Allegheny, South Atlantic, South Central, Southwest Region, and Central States conferences were organized.

Regional conferences, with Black leadership at every level, became central in the coordination of the Black work from this point on. This new organizational configuration facilitated a period of unprecedented evangelism, leadership experience, and promotion of initiatives. It allowed for new types of intra-conference and inter-conference mobility in the Black work. In one decade, Black membership grew from 20,000 to 70,000.

One of the first advances of the newly formed Lake Region Conference was the purchase of land for a camp ground in Cassopolis, Michigan. Camp Wagoner has provided opportunities for countless children and young people to experience Christian camp life. It has become the central camp meeting place and youth camp for Black members throughout the Lake Union. It's recent development and expansion has made it an attractive retreat for many churches and schools throughout the union.

A number of Black administrators developed their leadership skills in the Lake Region Conference, including Charles Bradford, former president of the Seventh-day Adventist Church in North America. Most recently, Adventist-Laymen Services and Industries (ASI) elected Debbie Young, from Ypsilanti, Michigan, as it's president—the first woman and the first Black person to hold this office.

The development of the Black work was the providential outworking of God's plan for Adventists to take the gospel to all the world. From its beginning, God designed that the Seventh-day Adventist Church be multicultural and inclusive of all people. There is cause for celebration because progress in this area was the result of the combined effort of the entire church.

Although we still have a long way to go, we can't help but notice that God has blessed His church by providing the Lake Union with a gifted leader—it's second African-American president and a grandson of a former slave from Kentucky—in the person of Walter Wright.

The world is waiting to see an organizational model of the kind of love and unity Christ spoke about in John 17:22: "That they may be one, even as we are one."

1. Manuscript Releases, vol. 17, p. 96.

This article was adapted by Gary Burns, Lake Union Conference communication director, from "In Search of Roots" a four-part series on the history of the work among African-Americans by the Seventh-day Adventist Church, written by Delbert Baker, president of Oakwood College, and MESSAGE Magazine Special Supplement, Vol. 60, No. 3, May/June 1995, used with permission.