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Miss Anna Knight in the ATL, over a century ago.
Berean SDA Church History- Part 1
ADVENTISM GETS A TOEHOLD IN BLACK ATLANTA
Somewhere there may exist meticulous records concerning the initial establishment of the group of worshippers that is now designated “Berean Seventh-day Adventist Church, Atlanta.” The introductory material of this evolving history does not come from some hypothetical fountainhead, however. Most events that happened over 110 years ago are very lightly documented, assuming that they were even documented to begin with. The principal foundress and muse of the future Bereans was Sister (or “Miss,” if you prefer) Anna Knight.
Anna Knight’s pioneering missionary work in India, her long residency at Oakwood University, and even her intractable and unorthodox mixed-race Mississippi kinfolk and early mission work in her native state are all described in a satisfactory manner by various online sources. The time she spent in the Atlanta area, however, is less well-documented. A copy of her autobiography, “Mississippi Girl,” can only be examined by either travelling a good distance from Atlanta to one of the few dozen libraries (the nearest being near Chattanooga at Southern University) that possess a copy, or by purchasing one from Amazon for just a tad over $300. Here is the AMAZON LINK to what the site describes (most accurately) as a “rare and hard to find hardback autobiography.” Here is a link to another rare book connected to African-American Adventism that is so rare as to be unobtainable: Dr. R. (Richard) E. (Edward) Tottress’s 1955 work “Heaven’s Entrance Requirement for the Races.” Google states that there is neither ebook nor hard copy available for this limited-edition product of Comet Press, buta few thoughtful institutions have scanned it and made it available HERE. Alas, Miss Anna Knight’s autobiography is not yet available online, at least insofar as the writer of these remarks has thus far been able to determine.
An obituary for Anna Knight by Benjamin J. Baker tersely, and tantilizingly alludes to her productive sojourn in Atlanta:
Knight was appointed an administrator of a hospital for blacks in Atlanta. Knight was a sensation in Atlanta and became famous in its thriving African American community, lecturing and consulting.
A good alternate to the elusive and expensive Knight autobiography is the following useful link to Chapter Four of Josephine Benton’s book, “Called by God,” one entitled “Innovative Administrator: Anna Knight” which describes Miss Knight’s relatively brief, but extremely fruitful Atlanta adventure. Here is a spoiler: one of Miss Knight’s boldest innovations was to utilize credit in order to get important work accomplished sooner, rather than later.
Miss Knight received an unexpected invitation from the Southeastern Union Conference to help develop a new sanitarium for black people in Atlanta. This was in 1910… leaders who knew and valued her overseas mission service and had now approved her call to Atlanta. When Anna arrived in Atlanta expecting to begin work at the new medical center, she found the sanitarium in an embryonic state… She decided to sleep in an empty room of the sanitarium. She was… invited by many groups to recount her work in India. This helped break down prejudice toward Seventh-day Adventists.
…she accepted chairmanship of the board of the two-teacher church school in Atlanta. In a sacrificial act, [she] used her savings, earmarked for a winter coat [Atlanta was much colder than the Mississippi area she had immigrated from, and most assuredly colder than India], as the down payments on the stove and school desks. Some… were apprehensive about the debt. Anna assured them that the Lord… would impress the patrons to pay their tuition; and that, indeed, happened. However, the newcomer from Mississippi now had no funds for a winter coat to protect her from Atlanta’s frosty winter [God intervenes to supply Miss Knight a splendid coat, of course].
Another area of concern for Miss Knight was the fact that, although for black people there was a Young Men’s Christian Association in Atlanta, there was no corresponding institution for women; she decided to do something about it. She asked representative women to meet with her, and they proceeded to set up a local Young Women’s Christian Association for blacks… The new YWCA held mass meetings to present truths concerning health, temperance, social purity, and personal hygiene… The national YWCA parent organization commended the work being done but did not affiliate the Atlanta group just then because of its strong ties with the Seventh-day Adventist Church. Miss Knight offered to resign as secretary, but the group preferred to continue operating as an independent local unit under her leadership.
During the last year she worked in Atlanta, as many new members were added through her ministry as there had been in the church when it was organized. Included among these converts whom Anna Knight won to the Lord were several prominent citizens of Atlanta [H.D. Singleton, the first president of the South Atlantic Conference revealed this information to author Josephine Benton in a 1988 phone call] …because of her example of sacrificial giving coupled with the sound Biblical instruction she gave on stewardship, each year while she was leader of the work there the tithes and offerings doubled. Because of Anna Knight’s spirituality, ability, and productivity, she advanced to larger responsibilities [to paraphrase, Atlanta should not be granted a monopoly on her talent].
A second source of information on Anna Knight is this linked PDF: “ANNA KNIGHT,” a transcript of an interview with C.C. Crisler conducted in Atlanta on July 5, 1913. Alas! Although conducted in Atlanta, it says nothing at all about her Atlanta area activities.
A highly compromised third source of information on Anna Knight is the “Story of Anna Knight” (as told to A.W. Spalding in Atlanta, Georgia, Nov. 19, 22, 1914). A nearly illegible PDF of this interview is embedded in section 4/85 of a compendium of Black Adventist materials assembled by hardworking Delbert W. Baker titled “Telling the Story.” A free PDF is linked near the bottom of this page of FREE BOOKS from blacksdahistory.org. All of these early oral histories fall just short of describing the Atlanta work. They represent a “Parson Weems” (a romanticizing early biographer of George Washington) version of the life of Anna Knight. They are most likely dry-runs for the 1952 publication (nearly four decades later) of Miss Knight’s autobiography.
What is unambiguous about Anna Knight’s Atlanta presence is the short paper trail that remains in the wake of her Greensferry Avenue residency. it spans from 1912 to 1915. The 1915 directory designates her as “Annie.” By 1916 she is no longer listed. In 1918 the widow of a man named A.W. Knight is named Anna, but she is not our Anna. The church itselfsurely did not suspend operations in this year, yet the name of it mysteriously vanishes from the city directory.
THE GENESIS OF THE “SOUTHERN WORK”
In an series of articles that Dr. Delbert Baker wrote for the “Adventist Review” in 1993 he makes the following observation with regard to the attraction that Adventism held for its pioneering African-American members:
The message contains elements that have special attraction to blacks- offering eternal life in the world to come, as well as a better temporal existence in the present world. And the black race was in need of a system of truth that could include the total person- mentally, spiritually, and physically. The Seventh-day Adventist teachings, while challenging in their unorthodoxy [Roman 12:12 advises us to “…be not conformed to this world: but be ye transformed by the renewing of your mind”], were simple and clear, suited to be understood by the masses and ideal for black people searching for direction.
The writer must add that “what’s sauce for the goose is sauce for the gander.” It is not hard to extract a localized case of the appeal and efficacy of the Advent message from a fountainhead that is universally applicable. But American blacks (not only in the South) recognized a good thing when they happened upon it, and “masses” that might be presently seeking direction, purpose, and meaning in their lives, whatever their race may be, would do well to follow in the footsteps of an earlier generation.
This following brief timeline is culled from several sources. It will serve to introduce the beginning of a year by year analysis of the Atlanta City Directory that will attempt to trace the trajectory of the Atlanta Adventist congregation that is currently known as Berean. Dr. Delbert W. Baker refers to the era before Ellen G. White’s 1891 “call-to-arms” as the “inactive period.” In 1891 Sister White produced a tract called “Our Duty to the Colored People,” an attempt to remedy the contemporary Adventist church’s neglect of the benighted Southland. Scripture unambiguously asserts the equality of all races, but after the conclusion of the Civil War segregation and discrimination in the South (and elsewhere) actually intensified.
1876-1879– Adventist literature that trickled into the South laid the groundwork for Elder Charles O. Taylor (an “old Millerite preacher”) to ramble (in the manner of John James Audubon) about the region.
1885– Two literature evangelists (“colporteurs”), George A. King and Charles F. Curtis arrived in Georgia with some significant reading material, including Uriah Smith‘s influential tome “Daniel and the Revelation” (link is to a PDF). They returned to the North to report that Southern fields were white for the harvest.
1887– Charles F. Curtis and his wife, and another couple named Anglebarger, with a minister named Charles Bliss arrive in Atlanta to set up a mission school and evangelize the inhabitants. The “damp spring weather” in the ATL disagreed with the Anglebargers, so they relocated to arid Colorado. They were replaced by three Michigan [most likely meaning “Battle Creek”] Bible instructors, Clara Conklin, Anna Thomas, and Mrs. Charles Swartous. Charles Swartout accompanied his wife as a literature evangelist. The mission school was soon closed due to a bad economic climate.
1888– An Atlanta Adventist church was organized in the southeast section of the city in the fall of this year by Pastor S.H. Lane. Here is a moderately useful link to the history of Atlanta North SDA Church which glosses the white Adventist presence in the Atlanta area. Here is a quote from it: “The Seventh-day Adventist Church in Atlanta, Georgia started over a century ago when George King and Dr. C. F. Curtis began a Sabbath School with six adults and six children.”
1889– A “Review and Herald” office was established in Atlanta, and operated for twelve years. Southern publishing work was relocated to Nashville, Tennessee in 1901. Edson White was the instigator of the Nashville publishing house, one which came to be designated the “Southern Publishing Association.” They printed Anna Knight’s rare autobiography in 1952. They should have perhaps printed more of them!
1903– The online History of the Georgia-Cumberland Conference reveals that a sanitarium was established at this time in Atlanta. This was presumably a “white” facility. The “black” Atlanta sanitarium on Greensferry Avenue first appears in the 1910 city directory (see the extended chronology below).
1909– The responsibilities and duties of Edson White’s semi-private “Southern Missionary Society” were transferred to the new General Conference Negro Department. The Atlanta work among African-Americans had been initiated by the newly superseded SMS.
[1912, 1914, 1917, 1918, info from the website linked above]- 150 people (again, presumably Caucasian people) were baptized by Carlyle B. Haynes (a kind of abridged white edition of C.D. Brooks) “and a new church was built,” the 1918 Cherokee Avenue facility, one might provisionally assume.
1910– The African-American Adventists appear in the Atlanta City Directory for the first time.
1912– The name of Miss Anna Knight shows up in connection with Greensferry Avenue for the first time. This date probably has nothing to do with her arrival in Atlanta, however, as Josephine Benton writes that she was living in a room of the mission schoolhouse. Much of Benton’s information may come from Anna Knight’s autobiography. This timeline will get substantially revised should the writer happen upon a copy, but he ain’t about to pay no 300 bucks for one!
ON THE FIFTH FLOOR OF THE ATLANTA LIBRARY
The top floors of big-city public libraries usually house the “special collections,” and are therefore sparsely populated. This is especially the case at the Fulton County Public Library, as they have locked all of the public bathrooms. The bathrooms in the three floors just below the fifth are constantly thronged by the homeless, and excluding them from the fifth floor facilities has the peripheral effect of excluding the majority of them from the fifth floor. Only in America!
Silence in the Special Collections Room is strictly enforced, unless you happen to be a Margaret Mitchel Impersonator. You are then allowed to make a loud and noxious spectacle of yourself, and do this with the blessing of the head librarian. “Peggy” Mitchell was an unorthodox Southern Belle, but was fundamentally well-synchronized to her time and place when it came to her attitude toward African-Americans. She may have secretly put a few medical students through Morehouse, but, as they say, “one swallow does not a summer make.”
A rendering of Marcel Breuer’s 1980 “Brutalist” design for the Fulton County Library hangs by the elevators on the fifth level. With it’s unapologetically rough concrete wall surfaces, this ephemeral architectural style was in fashion just prior to the dawn of the era of computer generated, photorealistic architectural renderings (a development that served to put a lot of artistic types out to pasture).
The library’s self-promotional literature describes Breuer as “one of the founders of the modern Bauhaus school of design.” This is 98% baloney, as Walter Gropius was the true father of this operation. The Bauhaus, a German trade school, was the crucible of modern architecture, and the principal variation of Modernism that held sway from the fifties through the seventies was Brutalism. Buildings built in a style similar to the Fulton County Library are currently both unloved and underappreciated. They are currently being demolished all over the world. The “crown jewel” artifact of the Brutalist canon, the Boston City Hall, may remain safe from the wrecking-ball, but all others are prime candidates for obliteration. Breuer, like the writer’s former employer (and like Zsa Zsa Gabor) was a Hungarian-American, But unlike uber-hawk and H-bomb advocate Dr. Edward Teller (and conceivably Zsa Zsa herself), Marcel Breuer (and Tony Curtis, too) was a good Hungarian.
The library PR sheet mentions Marcel Breuer’s work for the Whitney Museum in New York as being comparable to his Atlanta design. The Whitney no longer occupies its unfashionable Brutalist structure, however. Their current facility was designed by Renzo Piano, an Italian “High-Tech” maestro who also designed the latest expansion to Atlanta’s High Museum of Art. Piano, a very good salesman, is currently “in fashion.” Piano has designed an opera house for Atlanta that has not yet been (and never will be ) built in Midtown.
What does all of this have to do with the history of Berean SDA Church? Not much! The Fulton County Library Historical Collection is nestled inside of an iconic, and inevitably doomed, work of art. This article is not about the container, but the contents. In the Special Collection there are plenty of microfilmed editions of the Atlanta newspapers available for both serious researchers and amateur genealogists alike, a nearly-complete set of Atlanta city directories, scads of Margaret Mitchell memorabilia, and (inexplicably) a copy of the largest printed book ever produced (a stunt: see below).
A smattering of homeless people (ones possessing capacious bladders) appreciate the laid-back fifth floor ambience, but must descend one floor in order to use the restroom. Area shelters eject their transient lodgers on all but the coldest winter days, and the ejectees must find a warm place to congregate before they are permitted back into their bunkrooms (the reader is advised to examine George Orwell’s memoir of his own experiences as a tramp, “Down and Out in Paris and London”).
The library is a popular, but far from ideal spot to pass a winter day in. A long line of patrons stands outside the entry just prior to the 10 am weekday opening. Passing through security is time-consuming. Every package must be inspected, and most of the homeless folk are forced to carry all of their possessions with them. Once inside the experience is rather sadistically compromised, as the decision-makers of Fulton County have insured that there exists not one comfortable chair for the public in the entire library. (Note: the benches in fast-food restaurants are designed to become uncomfortable after a quarter-hour or so; this facilitates “turnover,” Only in America!)
AN UNLIKELY LEAD, FROM AN UNEXPECTED SOURCE
Here is some information from the website of the General Assembly of Free Seventh Day Adventists. They are wonderful people, but feel compelled to embellish their separation from the main Adventist denomination with many verses of Scripture which, while justifying division, do not allude to the primary reason for their “defection.” This writer will provide one for them: “The heart is deceitful above all things, and desperately wicked: who can know it?” (Jeremiah 17:9) The white leadership of the mainstream Adventist church were certain, in their deceitful hearts, that they knew what was best for the American “negro.” Tithes by the black membership to the main office were a form of taxation without representation. Racial integration was evident in the earliest Seventh-day Adventist congregations, but the growth of post-Civil War segregation resulted in the creation of companies and churches that were racially distinct (Miss Anna Knight experienced her own misadventures as a result of this growing intra-denominational schism). Many pioneering Adventists leaders of color grew weary of the patronizing attitude of the Caucasian leadership of the Adventist Church and subsequently “flew the coop,” among them James K. Humphrey, Lewis C. Sheafe, and the man of the hour, John W. Manns.
Below are some brief, but enlightening revelations from the “Free Adventist” website:
John Manns pioneered the Seventh-day Adventist work among African-Americans in Florida and Georgia. Anna Knight [our foundress] felt that he was the most effective preacher among African-American ministers. Others said he possessed extraordinary natural leadership gifts. [from “Perspectives: Black Seventh Day Adventist and Church Loyalty,” Elder Charles E. Bradford D. D., p. 16]
Here is a LINK to the source of the preceding quotation. The source is not much larger than the extracted quote. In a short memoir by Harold D. Singleton (an inadequate internal link; here is a second, less incestuous LINK) recalls a story he heard as a child which claimed that John Manns was killed by one of his ministers, a man named Mosel,y so that the latter could take control of the Free Adventist empire. Elder Singleton emphasized that this was just a rumor, just a rumor. The story of the demise of Malcom X is similarly encumbered with rumor and innuendo (which just may be truth).
HISTORY OF THE BEREAN SEVENTH-DAY ADVENTIST CHURCH
This history goes back (according to the “Free Adventist” website linked above) to 1903 when a small company of believers, led by Sister Anna Knight, was organized into a church [this date, 1903, is, regrettably, several years in advance of the actual arrival of Miss Knight in Atlanta].
Services were held in the home of one of the believers until a building was purchased on Greensferry Avenue and named Second Seventh-day Adventist Church (this specific nomenclature does not appear in any of the early 20th Century Atlanta City Directories). Elder G.E. Peters organized the First Mission School in 1906 and Sister Anna Knight was the first teacher (the 1906 date is in disagreement with the one supplied by author Josephine Benton of 1910, unless the school operated without a teacher for its first four years).
Elder W.H. Sebastian served as the first pastor, assisted by Elder M.C. Strachan. Elder John Manns became the new pastor when Elder Sebastian was reassigned. The preceding statement was lifted directly from www.atlantabereansda.org, About Us, Atlanta Church History- This link presently (6/9/2016) leads directly to nowheresville. Even the archive.org data is missing! The current main Berean site, atlantaberean.com, does not delve very deeply into church history (an incredible understatement), but there does currently exist (12/30/2016) an official Church Historian, Stefanie Small, along with a an Assistant Historian (Berean Women’s Ministry Director Currine Harris), and a committee of nine others that includes Elder Irene Bowden, a modern type of Anna Knight (she is much too humble to accept such a comparison, however).
EVIDENCE FROM THE ATLANTA CITY DIRECTORIES
The Free Adventist website assertion that 1906 marks the founding of an African-American Adventist mission school would indicate that a search of the city directories should begin with that year. Unfortunately, this particular edition is missing from the Fulton County Library Special Collection. We shall therefore commence our investigation with the year 1907.
1907– The Greenferry Avenue location of the original African-American Seventh-day Adventist presence in Atlanta, Georgia is now firmly embedded in the Atlanta University Center, The exact parcels that were designated 209-211 Greensferry are now owned by Atlanta University. A 5 1/2 acre amalgam of former single-family plots is presently accessed at nearly 35 million dollars (2017).
In 1907 the site of the future mission school, #209, was occupied by William A. Scott and his wife Susie. His profession, like that of our Lord’s temporal father, was carpentry. Josephine Benton’s remarks about the unfinished condition of the properties Anna Knight encountered at this location provokes a romantic conjecture that carpenter Scott may have been associated with this work in some capacity.
The 1907 Atlanta City Directory includes information about an existing (undoubtedly white) Adventist church at either 507 or 509 East Fair (neither Road nor Street nor Avenue; just plain “Fair”), as two distinct entries provide two different street numbers.
Information about the incomes of City of Atlanta officials in 1907 reveals that most of the top brass (including the mayor) earned a $3,000 a year salary. An exception was the fire chief, who in those perilous times no doubt deserved the extra $1,000 a year that his position paid.
1908– No Adventists yet. No Anna Knight either.
1909– Still no data on Greensferry Avenue Adventism. The short 1909 telephone directory assigns the number “Main 1” to the Department of Public Works and City Stockade (an archaic term for the City Prison). All of the cigars and whiskey represented by the two advertisements displayed above must have served to swell the population of the stockade. The linked City of Atlanta history page discloses that “Most prisoners were incarcerated for petty crimes and misdemeanors, with the average stockade sentence being 15 to 20 days. The original prison housed both sexes and races, as well as children. The prisoners were used for physical labor within the city.” If more labor were needed, the police probably arrested more people.
1910– The Adventists have landed!
209 Greensferry Avenue is now officially occupied by “Seventh Day Adventist Sanitarium.” Anna Knight herself may even have been present. She learned the craft of nursing the sick under the direction of Doctor John Harvey Kellogg at the “big” sanitarium back in Battle Creek, Michigan. Anecdotes about her nursing activities in Atlanta furnished by author Josephine Benton reveal (as does the story of the healthy dietary choices of the captive Hebrew youth in the Book of Daniel) the superiority of Scriptural health measures to the prevailing medical quackery of that era.
211 Greensferry Avenue is now home to “Seventh Day Adventist Church.
Nestled between these two parcels at #210 is the residence of Julia E. Blue. The personal listing for her reveals her occupation to be “car clnr Pullman Co.” The paternalistic founder of this successful company, George Pullman, employed a racially and ethnically diverse workforce. He had survived a cataclysmic labor strike sixteen years earlier (1894). At its height, 250,000 workers in 27 states were involved. Wages and hours had declined, but the founder did not correspondingly lower the rents of the company-owned housing many of his laborers called home. Then President Grover Cleveland used Army troops to keep strikers from obstructing commerce. Thirty striker were killed, and many more wounded during the course of this strike.
1911– Missing! [The writer has visited the home of a former college professor who simply hung on to any reference book that he took a fancy to.]
1912– 209 Greensferry is no longer designated as “Seventh Day Adventist Sanitarium.” The new label reads “Y M C A (c),” and a second occupancy is proclaimed to be “Seventh Day Adv M School (c).” The “(c)” signifies that the institutions are “colored.” The “M” in the school title may or may not stand for “Middle,” as there is no key to abbreviations in this directory. It might even stand for “Military” in any other context than that of Adventism, but alternate listing for the school reveals that “M” stands for “Mission.” The “Y M C A” [the writer has preserved the quaint and archaic spacing of this acronym that the ancient directory employs] would soon redirect its focus under Miss Knight’s guidance.
Sleeper car cleaner Julia Blue remains, in 1912, sandwiched between the two Adventist strongholds at 209 and 211. She resides at 210 Greensferry Avenue.
211 Greensferry, like 209, also lists two distinct occupancies. The first of these reads “Seventh Day Adv ch (c),” followed by the name of Dr. John S. Cheshire. The sanitarium formerly listed at #209 may have claimed some of Dr. Cheshire’s time, but the business section of the directory reveals that he is currently practicing medicine at 16 1/2 Broad Street.
The business listings also include this enterprise: “COCA-COLA CO, THE, Asa G Candler, pres, C H Candler, vice pres, F M Robinson, sec-treas, mfrs of “Coca-Cola” he best of all drinks, 50 Magnolia, Bell phone, M-1011.
Anna Knight is finally officially recognized as a resident of Greensferry Avenue in 1912. She is not mentioned in the street directory, but her personal listing reads “Knight Anna (c), sec colored branch Y M C A, r 209 Greensferry av,” the site of both the “Y” and the school.
Largely irrelevant to this marginally useful research is the fact that former Pullman Car cleaner Julia Blue is still living at #210, but her occupation is now “cook.”
Anna Knight is not mentioned in the 1913 directory, but this omission does not point to a physical absence, for there remains much work to be done in Atlanta.
1914– The multitasking nature of the newly consolidated and diversified parcel known as “209 Greensferry Avenue” gets ignored by the 1914 Atlanta City Directory. All the street directory reveals is “Seventh Day Adv Ch (c).” It was business as usual, one presumes, beneath this Spartan masthead.
Julia Blue of #210 is back working for the Pullman Company,. her one-woman walk-out having now ended.
1915– Putting the cart before the horse, in 1915 neighbor Julia Blue has departed (for the moment, at least) Greensferry Avenue. A cook named Mary Overton (c) has taken her place.
The “horse,” Annie (sic) Knight appears to have finally acquired her own residence, one immediately adjacent to the newly amalgamated Adventist holdings. She is listed in the personal section of the city directory as residing at 207, a fifteen second walk away from her several workplaces. This spot will serve as well as any other to note that Knight biographer Josephine Benton records that energetic Anna Knight conducted upwards of 500 Bible studies while living in the Atlanta area.
1916– The purported tenth anniversary of the Adventist presence on Greensferry Avenue coincides with another scale-down of the amount of information in the city directory for this year.
#207, the new Anna Knight residence, is absent from the Greensferry address listing.
The accessory annals of #210 continue with the departure of short-term resident Mary Overton (Tenant? Delinquent buyer? Family member?), and her replacement by a person named “J. Blue” (Julia, of course).
The name of Anna Knight disappears from the 1916 Atlanta City Directory. This name recurs in 1918, but it only “an” Anna, and not “the” Anna [“our” Anna].
1917– Missing in action! Some nefarious speculator may have purloined it, sliced it into individual plates, framed it, and then sold the spoil at an antique market. Stuff like this happens, you know.
1918– Research into the Greensferry Avenue presence of the Adventist Church that would eventually `come to be designated as “Berean Seventh-day Adventist Church” hits a temporary snag in 1918. Perhaps worship was temporarily suspended due to the overarching demands of World War One. There is a fair amount of justifiable defection at this time by African-American Adventists from the myopic mainstream denomination, but membership levels in the official “Seventh-day Adventist Church” experience considerable growth, despite the attrition. In this seminal year, W.H. Green is elected to be the first Black Secretary of the Negro Department of the General Conference. The whole world is in flux.
The 1918 Atlanta City Directory lists the sole resident of 209 Greensferry Avenue to be “Elder Tate.” Any initial assumption that this person may have been a church elder is dispelled upon consulting the personal listings of the 1918 directory. The man’s first name actually is “Elder,”
Julia Blue is once again absent from #210, and a man named Hugh Austin is in.
The “false” Anna Knight previously mentioned, widow of A.W. Knight appears for the first time in the 1918 city directory. The true Anna Knight has, by this time, been deemed by the General Conference and the Negro Department to be too important to confine to the relatively narrow environs of Greater Atlanta. From a future base at Oakwood College she would be in a position to offer encouragement, leadership, and inspiration to all American Seventh-day Adventists, with an emphasis, naturally, on those of African heritage.
Anna Knight lived to be nearly one-hundred, and there are several current (2017) members of Berean Seventh-day Adventist Church (and undoubtedly of many other churches as well) who can reminisce about their personal encounters with this beloved and enthusiastic propagator of the Advent message.
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