“Angels In Ebony” by Jacob Justiss, Chapters 1-6
BLACK HISTORY MONTH BOOK REPORT: A COMPREHENSIVE SUMMARY OF CHAPTERS 1-6
In a note that proceeds the preface to his 1975 book, “Angels in Ebony,” author and career history teacher Jacob Justiss cites the Adventist work “Prophecy Speaks” (also released as “David Dare,” and plagiarized by Herbert W. Armstrong, as shown in this LINK) as being an influence not only upon his choice of religion, but upon his choice of profession as well. The author describes his approach to history as one not bogged down by dates, categories, times or places. He is primarily interested in tracing the “connected sweep of God, movements, and men.” He testifies that this approach not only drew accolades from the auditors of his presentations, but made the subject palatable to students who were adverse to a duller and dryer traditional presentation of the subject. This preface sets up a fairly high degree of expectation for whatever may follow in the 162 page PDF, available at http://blacksdahistory.org/ on their “Free Books” page. These expectations are mostly gratified.
A short introduction by E.E. Cleveland (an Adventist evangelist and civil rights leader) politely warns the reader that Jacob Justiss displays a lot of subjectivity in his approach to the subject of Black Adventist History, and also warns us that we may disagree with some of the author’s conclusion. E.E. Cleveland does, however, promise that the reader will be interested, inspired, and enlightened.
THE PREFACE
In the preface to “Angels in Ebony” Jacob Justiss relates his conversion, as a teenager living in Toledo, Ohio, to Seventh-day Adventism. He mentions four black Adventists as being particularly influential in the creation of this “eyewitness” account of history: F.L. Peterson (an Oakwood University president), G.E. Peters (secretary of the “Negro Department of the General Conference”), J.L. Moran (first black president of Oakwood, in 1932), and Dr, Harry Ford (Adventist leader and physician). Nine chapters and an epilogue follow this preface, covering the entire span of black Adventism in America (up to 1975). The literary style of Mr. Justiss takes a little getting used to, but once you are accustomed to it’s mannerisms, it is very engaging. He is not partial to footnotes and annotations, he writes, and does not apologize for not including them.
This chapter commences with a poetic description of the transportation of Africans to the New Word. It includes a list of vocabulary words, including one new to me, “coffle.” This word means “a line of animals or slaves fastened or driven along together.” Author Justiss notes that domestic African slavery allowed the slave to retain his dignity, likening it to Joseph’s service in Egypt. Perhaps slavers were deluded into thinking that similarly light yokes awaited those that were about to experience the “middle passage.” The author notes the terrible mortality rate that slaves consigned to the Caribbean suffered. This was a most unhealthy destination. The author quickly lists four regrettable circumstances the slaves encountered: (1) being re-educated to believe that “blackness” is bad, (2) being forced to eat pig, (3) the male was “emasculated,” and (4) the family became a matriarchy. As we were forewarned, no annotations or glosses attend these observations.
Spiritually, the author relates the new arrivals from Africa as having brought along their native animism (briefly touching upon it’s survival as “voodoo”). An affinity between the white indentured servants and the African newcomers is noted, and the evolution of the religion of America into Baptist and Methodist forms (soon adopted by the slaves) is described. Early worship in these churches was not segregated, states the author, except in Georgia (an intriguing assertion). Mr. Justiss does tell us that the races were segregated within the church structure, and when packed with whites, the blacks were often left to “listen at the windows.” In the South, separate services with separate sermons were often provided. Blacks made up about 25% of the roll of late eighteenth-century denominations. Harry Hosier is mentioned as being an early American black Methodist evangelist. The formation of the AME Church by Richard Allen and Absalom Jones is also noted.
The Author concludes this chapter by challenging the reader to visit both black and white versions of Baptist and Adventist churches, comparing the different versions. My observation, one which may have been less true when this book was copyrighted in 1975, is that in Pentecostal circles there exists less difference between the races in regard to worship style than there does in more mainstream Baptist denominations. I attend a black Adventist church, and it is differentiated from it’s white alternates only by sermon topics and musical styles. There exists some display of charismatic emotion, but it is not excessive. This does not mean that that the congregation is not enthusiastic, but merely that the proceedings are orderly.
Chapter 2 of “Angels in Ebony” begins by describing the Apocalyptic vision of William Miller. Author Jacob Justiss names two early black followers of Miller, Joshua B. Himes (a Boston preacher and publisher) and “Father” Charles Bowles (another Bostonian). Mr. Justiss writes that some whites threatened to throw “Father” Bowles into a pond. Bowles wound up baptizing them in the same pond. This LINK states that information on the transition of black Millerites in New England to Adventism after the Great Disappointment is not readily available, but Adventist congregations in this area were interracial. Black members could have been former followers of William Miller. A Rhode Island Millerite is added to the list of black Millerites, John W. Lewis. Here is a LINK to a biography of aforementioned Charles Bowles that was written by John W. Lewis, one which informs us that “Father” Bowles was a soldier in the American Revolution, but subsequently chose to fight under the leadership of King Jesus.
William Foy, a Boston Freewill Baptist, is remembered for a prophetic vision he received in 1842 (one that nay be read in it’s entirety on this LINK). Mr. Foy anticipated many aspects of Adventism even before the collapse of Millerism, but did not become an Adventist. Mr. Foy’s journey to heavenly realms is attended by a “guide,” a situation reminiscent of Beatrice’s guidance in Dante’s Paradiso. The experience caused William Foy to ever afterward anxiously await the return of our Lord. The similarity of this vision with those of Ellen G. White is noted. Author Jacob Justiss tells us that William Foy was a mulatto, a condition that made his message easier for whites to accept in that era. He fleetingly alludes to Southern writer “Chestnutt,” who described the unenviable lot of the mulatto. I assume he refers to Mary Chesnut. William Foy dropped off the radar screen shortly after this vision. The author blames post-Nat Turner hostility toward black preachers for this withdrawal.
The abolitionist sympathies of early Adventists are described. An article by James White urged that men join head to the South to assist the oppressed black race. Ellen White countermanded this order, according to Mr. Justiss, thereby somewhat compromising the credibility of future Southern evangelists for Adventism. The official policy was one of “non-combat.”
Adventist non-participation in the Civil War, and a relatively delayed participation in post-war efforts to improve the lot of the blacks, is lamented by the author. The urgency of the Adventist message put social concerns on the back-burner, but time has helped remedy this earlier neglect. The author ends Chapter 2 by pondering how the history of Adventism may have been different had prophet William Foy not dropped out of the running.
CHAPTER 3: “LAY BEGINNINGS, MORNING STAR”
After the Civil War, the first efforts to convert Southern blacks were undertaken by laymen such as Silas Osbourne (a white Kentuckian who inaugurated the work in 1871). Silas Osbourne was a layman, but was an effective preacher, and was often addressed as “reverend” by people who were not sticklers about the use of this honorific. The author states that Osbourne was eventually ordained. E.B. Lane came from Adventist headquarters to evangelize people in the Nashville area in 1871. His work led to the establishment in 1883 of a company of black Adventists in Edgefield Junction, Tennessee.
Jacob Justiss pauses in his recitation of influential persons in order to point out the awful condition of the Southern black in the era just after the Civil War. President Johnson comes in for some well-merited criticism. Charles Sumner and Thaddeus Stevens overcame reactionary forces to attempt improvement in the lives of the recently liberated slaves, The influence of Thaddeus Steven’s mixed-race housekeeper, Lydia Hamilton Smith, is mentioned by the author as contributing strongly to Steven’s quest for justice. The ascendency of Southern blacks to positions of political power during Reconstruction was tragically ephemeral.
The pioneer Adventist church in Edgefield Junction is mentioned again, this time in connection with charter member Thomas Allison’s two sons, Thomas H. Allison (a musician and evangelist to the South and West) and Jonathan W. Allison (also an evangelist). In trying to research these brothers, I came across some information about a black Adventist splinter group, founded in 1916 as a reaction to a lack of support of blacks by the home office (a negligence that neither Ellen G. White or her son Edson shared in). It is called The Free Seventh-day Adventists.
A second black Adventist church was started in Louisville, Kentucky in 1890 by Alonzo Barry, a man inspired by reading the Review and Herald. This LINK is to a sketchy biography of Barry, one that reveals that in 1901 the General Conference paid him $9 a week to preach. First Church of Washington, DC was founded a year previously, in 1889, but it was integrated, and not all black. Since Edgefield junction is out of business, this makes A. Barry’s Louisville church the oldest black Adventist church still in operation. It was formerly called “Magazine Street Temple Seventh Day Adventist Church,” but the use of the term “Temple” has fallen out of fashion, and it is currently named “Magazine St. SDA Church.”
Ellen G. White wrote her speech “Our Duty to the Colored People” in 1891.This work inspired many to seek to evangelize Southern blacks, including her son Edson White. Author Jacob Justiss relates an anecdote that highlights Edson’s sometimes irritable nature. In relation to Adventist Southern work, R.M. Kilgore is mentioned briefly as being creator of an educational primer geared toward potential black converts (he was director of Adventist activity in the South throughout his career). In 1895 Edson built a boat, the “Morning Star,” stocked it with primers and some white associates, then headed down the Mississippi in an attempt to promulgate some good works. At this point I must yield to temptation and furnish a meaningful link to Joseph Conrad’s novella “Heart of Darkness.”
The South was in a particularly nasty mood in the 1890’s, and vicious attacks upon blacks and their white supporters were common. Edson fared little better then did some of the later Freedom Riders during the Civil Rights era. Edson and crew managed, despite opposition, to plant up to 50 schools, and founded a publishing house in Nashville. A product of this operation is available as a free PDF file from the black Adventist site “Black SDA History .” It is an extremely outmoded humor book about slavery days titled “Black Smiles (or the Sunny Side of Sable Life),” by black poet Franklin H. Bryant, and seems aimed for the same audience that read Joel Chandler Harris’s work. The book is not entirely written in dialect, as it ends with a serious religiously themed poem.
CHAPTER 4: “ORGANIZING THE WORK IN PERILOUS TIMES”
This chapter begins with a very short history of the Southern Union Conference. The Southern Missionary Society was integrated into the Conference, and was responsible for black membership throughout the South. This branch was so impoverished, it sometimes sent it’s ministers magazines that they could sell for themselves, instead a cash salary. When membership had grown to over 900, in 1909, the North American Negro Department was established. This shared the field with the Southeastern Union Conference, formed in 1908. For purposed of economic support, the big cities of Tennessee were divided among the two entities. Tennessee suffered yet another division during the Depression (for the same reason as before) in order to help support the Georgia Cumberland Conference. Some of the prominent personalities associated with the earlier divisions are credited by Jacob Justiss as having created the “backbone” of black Southern Adventism in the first decades of the twentieth century.
The first head of the North American Negro Department was a white man, J.W. Christian, but he only served a year due to health problems. It would be 9 years before a black man, W.H. Green, would head the department. This was a result of an improved racial climate following WWI, according to the author. W.H. Green was selected, in part, because he had previously argued a case before the Supreme Court (just like Thurgood Marshall had done for the NAACP). Green was not allotted office space at the denomination’s Washington headquarters.
J.K. Humphrey’s Harlem church was similarly expelled from the primary fold in 1930 over an episode known as the “Utopian Park affair.” J.E. Jervis was an associate pastor at the Harlem church during this “affair.” He had had his share of problems with the home office, as well (He had been denied admission to Union College, an integrated Adventist seminary, because he was not native to the college’s district). After the death of W.H. Green, black Adventist leaders lobbied for their own autonomous conferences, The whites on the committee studying this proposal voted them down. 3 to 1, and “distressed” them (a polite word used in the Oakwood article) by telling them never to raise the issue again.
A Chicago church under J.R. Buster rented a storefront on State Street in 1910, but relocated 8 years later to Prairie Avenue. Previously noted G.E. Peters preached to 250 members at this Prairie Ave. location, but doubled the attendance during his tenure, making it one of the biggest in the country. Peters helped found two other Illinois congregations. He was a diplomat, and faithfully remitted black tithes to the home office, even as they seemed to slight black churches. He was succeeded in Chicago by Frank L. Peterson, a “singing evangelist” and Pacific Union graduate whose intense Adventism left those who focused only on “race” to wonder where his loyalties truly lay. G.E. Peters resumed the helm 10 years later. Frank L. Peterson went on to become an Oakwood President.
Jenny Ireland, a nurse and Bible worker who matriculated in Battle Creek, initiated missionary activity in 1906 Los Angeles. By 1908, 23 souls formed the first black [Adventist] church west of the Ohio, in the “Furlong Tract,” which was between Watts and downtown LA.
Chapter 4 closes with an extended excerpt from an unpublished manuscript (at least in 1975) by “Spalding” that restates the history of inter-Adventist race relations, and the descent from initial enthusiasm to reluctant caution. Even Ellen White made concessions to a “separate but equal” state of affairs, but only pending an improvement in the signs of the times. My opinion does not count for much, but I am currently operating just as if Ellen White has given the green light to ditch every provisional stopgap measure she had to endure in her day. We should all proceed just as Galatians 3:28 specifies: “There is neither Jew nor Greek, there is neither bond nor free, there is neither male nor female: for ye are all one in Christ Jesus.”
Chapter 5 begins with events in 1943 that constitute a reaction to the internal segregation that characterized Adventism, centered around the Ephesus SDA Church in Washington DC (now called the Du Pont Park SDA Church , in a building that looks very similar to my church, Berean SDA Church in Atlanta). James O. Montgomery stood at the end of a service and wondered aloud why it was that he could not send his kids to an Adventist college, nor be served in an Adventist cafeteria. He then related a third outrage. He had taken his light-skinned wife to an Adventist hospital. She was admitted, but when the paperwork was filled out, they discovered that she was “colored,” so she was ejected to the hallway. She was eventually admitted to Freedman’s Hospital, but died of Pneumonia shortly thereafter. White Australian General Conference President W.G. Turner was sent to placate the distraught congregation of Ephesus. He cited Peter 4:12: “Beloved, think it not strange concerning the fiery trial…” James O. Montgomery replied to the assembly, in so many words, that this citation by the President did not cut the mustard.
A group of distinguished members of Ephesus sprang into action. I am reminded of similar “calls to arms” in scripture, where body parts are delivered to the various tribes of Israel as a presage to coordinated action. As their proposed field of action was global in extent, the named themselves “The National Association for the Advancement of World-Wide Work Among Seventh Day Adventists.” These people were all laymen, and were free from the diplomatic restraint that ministers were obliged to exhibit in their dealings with top church brass. The Author now relates a story about an abortive previous attempt to create all-black conferences following the death of W.H. Green, one that provoked derision from the upper echelons of the denomination. J.H. Wagner advised the new Ephesus committee that the failure of the previous campaign was due to a lack of communication with the rank-and-file membership of the black church, who perceived it as some bureaucratic power-play that did not concern them directly. The new committee would learn from the previous effort. The new effort would bear fruit, but perhaps not of a type they had originally envisioned.
The next morning, President McElhaney was absent, due to illness. G.E. Peters stalled the meeting long enough to confront McElhaney in his sickbed, informing him that, were he absent that day, he would never again be able to face his colored constituency. McElhaney yielded to this urgent appeal. Among the many issues at stake was the provision of adequate summer camp facilities for black youth. Preliminary activity in this field, mostly in the Midwest, had spread until there was a call to create a national youth organization, the National Association for the Advancement of Adventist Youth.
New York’s Atlantic Union purchased a building at 560 West 150th Street, and quickly entered into the activity of furnishing social services (such as youth camps and nursing homes) to it’s constituents. The author provides a list of the leaders from it’s inception, up until the publication of “Angels in Ebony” in 1975. Hardworking H.D. Singleton is mentioned, a leader responsible for some large-scale evangelism efforts in the South.
The Northeastern Conference is mentioned , mainly in regard to the phenomenal rise of Ephesus Church in Harlem (the former “Harlem Church Number Two”). After the loss of Church Number One (a result of the “Utopian Park” affair), Ephesus (not to be confused with it’s Washington namesake) really came into it’s own, and had 2500 members when a fire gutted it in 1969.
The South Atlantic Conference is mentioned next (current President William Winston hates me, but this may just be paranoia on my part). It’s old HQ building is across the street from my church. J.H. Wagner relocated from the Alleghany Conference to serve as president of newly-minted South Atlantic.
South Central Conference is headquartered in Nashville, one of Edson White’s old stomping grounds, and a cradle of black Adventism. Herman R. Murphy was first President. When Jacob Justiss wrote his book in 1975, conference headquarters was located across the street from Riverside Sanitarium and Hospital. This facility, with Oakwood University, constitute the two largest black Adventist institutions in the nation. They both happen to be in South Central.
The Southwestern Mission was formed, now referred to as Southwestern Union, headquartered today in Burleson, Texas. W.W. Fordham was the first President. It started in Dallas, and includes Texas, Arkansas, Oklahoma, and exotic Louisiana.
The Lake Region Conference is barely noted in “Angels in Ebony.” The book does mention its Presidents, of whom J.G. Dasent was the first. It is based in Chicago.
The balance of Jacob Justiss’s overview of Black Adventist History primarily covers institutional works, such as schools and medical establishments. In general, it is a little like a walk into Death Valley. The farther you travel, the drier you get. The heroism of the early days yields to administrative competence and technocracy. The enthusiasm the author displays in his earlier chapters revives, however, in the epilogue. Oakwood, that most salient of black Adventist institutions, has been covered so exhaustively that any further mention of it might only serve to upset people. The profession of medicine is like the profession of flying airplanes: long periods of rote drudgery infrequently punctuated by instants of sheer terror. These matters are of great interest to many, I am sure, so here again is a LINK to the Black SDA History.org page where “Angels in Ebony” and several other fine works are resting.
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