NOTES
- 197 Notes Introduction 1. General Conference Bulletin, Fortieth Session, vol. 9, no. 11, Mountain View, California, May 5, 19, 53. . For an impartial account of the work of the United States Sanitation Commission, impaneled on June 13, 1861, by President Abraham Lincoln to conduct scientific research on the physical, mental, and moral powers of people of African descent, see John S. Haller Jr., Outcasts from Evolution: Scientific Attitudes of Racial Inferiority, 1850–1900 (Urbana: University of Illinois Press, 1971), 19–34. 3. The names and terms with which people of African descent living in North America have resonated, or by which they have preferred to be called, have changed over the years. Negro, Afro-American, Colored, Black, African-American, and African American have all been used. Today, the preferred term is African American, with or without the hyphen. In the first half of the twentieth century, the period that is the focus of this book, Negro was the term in vogue, but in this book I have elected to use the terms African American and Black, at times using them interchangeably. Of course, direct quotes shall reflect the term used by the source referenced. Not surprising, some West Indians are ambivalent about the term African American, believing that it excludes them. Those who subscribe to this view see themselves as being Afro-Caribbean. 4. In this book, the words Black and White are capitalized, even when they are used as adjectives, as in the case of Italian, German, Irish, Jewish, etc. 5. Charles E. Bradford argues that when White European slave traders landed on the African continent, they found people who knew of Christianity. See Charles E. Bradford, Sabbath Roots: The African Connection (Barre, VT: L. Brown and Sons, 1999). 6. R. W. Schwarz, Lightbearers to the Remnant (Washington, D.C.: Review and Herald Publishing Association, 1979), 477–79. 7. Bernice Samuel, interview by author, Jamaica, New York, Apr. 17, 000. 8. Seventh-day Adventist churches in a particular geographical area are grouped together and governed by an entity called a conference. Ostensibly, a conference, sometimes referred to as a local conference, is a united body of churches, which are themselves united bodies of believers. The next level of the denomination’s organizational structure is the union, which is a united body of conferences in a region. For example, during Humphrey’s pastoral - 198 Notes to pages 5–8 tenure in the Greater New York Conference, the churches in the New York City area were a part of the Greater New York Conference, and those in upstate New York were a part of the New York Conference. Both conferences were a part of the Atlantic Union, headquartered in Massachusetts. Local conferences supervise Adventist mission and ministry in the churches, whereas the union supervises the work in the local conferences. Both the local and union conference have executive committees that assist their presidents in planning and executing their responsibilities. The organizational structure of the Seventh-day Adventist church consists of five administrative and four constituent levels. Members form the constituency of a local church, a group of churches form the constituency of a local conference, a group of conferences form the constituency of a union, and a group of unions form the constituency of the General Conference. Yet there are five levels to the administrative structure of the denomination: (1) the local church, () the local conference, (3) the local union, (4) the division, and (5) the General Conference. World divisions are simply the General Conference operating in a particular part of the world, and in 005 there were thirteen world divisions. 9. General Conference Bulletin, vol. 6, no. 16, Thirty-Seventh Session (Washington, D.C.: The General Conference of Seventh-day Adventists, 1909), 43. The Negro Department of the General Conference of Seventh-day Adventists was established with a view to strengthening and superintending work among African Americans. 10. Ibid., 86. 11. General Conference Bulletin, Thirty-Eight Session, vol. 7, no. 0 (Washington, D.C.: The General Conference of Seventh-day Adventists, 1913), 309. 1. Greater New York Conference of Seventh-day Adventists, Minutes of the Biennial Session of the Greater New York Conference of Seventh-day Adventists, Feb. 4, 190, Greater New York Conference Archives, Manhasset, New York. 13. Adventist church polity calls for churches to be voted into a local conference at a duly called meeting of the conference. 14. Greater New York Conference of Seventh-day Adventists, Minutes of the Seventeenth Session of the Greater...
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