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Joshua V. Himes, minister and radical reformer, became “the principal promoter, manager, and financier”1 of the Second Advent or Millerite movement of the 1840s and figured prominently in two denominations that emerged out of that movement.
William H. and Sadie M. Holden ministered together in the United States for more than 40 years. For many of those years, he served as a conference president and she as a conference departmental director.
James H. Howard was a federal government clerk, physician, pioneer of Seventh-day Adventism in Washington, D.C. and eloquent opponent of racial segregation in the church.
The Inter-Mountain Conference was created in 1916 when the Utah Conference, part of the Pacific Union Conference, merged with the Western Colorado Conference, which had been part of the Central Union Conference. During its first four years of operation, the new conference, its territory comprised of the state of Utah, Colorado west of the Continental Divide, and San Juan County, New Mexico, was part of the Pacific Union. E. A Curtis was appointed president by the Pacific Union Conference committee. The conference office was located in Grand Junction, Colorado.
Valarie Justiss-Vance was a social worker, educator, and activist who helped lead efforts to improve race relations in the Seventh-day Adventist Church.
Jacob Justiss was an influential pastor, educator, and historian of black Adventism.
Florence M. Kidder began teaching at a Seventh-day Adventist school in 1903 and continued teaching in church schools for 65 consecutive years until her death in 1967.
Joe Lutcher, a nationally-renowned jazz saxophonist and band leader, became a Seventh-day Adventist in 1953 and thereafter put his “converted saxophone” to use on behalf of evangelism and societal uplift.
Lilakai (Lily) Neil was the first Navajo to become a Seventh-day Adventist and the first woman to become a member of the Navajo Nation Council.
David Paulson was a medical missionary physician and social reformer who, with his wife, Dr. Mary Wild Paulson, led an array of humanitarian endeavors in Chicago and founded Hinsdale Sanitarium in the city’s western suburbs.
North American Division Biography Groundbreakers Medical Workers
Mary Wild Paulson, M.D., and her husband, David Paulson, M.D., co-founded Hinsdale Sanitarium near Chicago and led a multi-faceted work on behalf of the city’s poor and disadvantaged.
Peter Gustavus Rodgers, evangelist and pastor, was one of Adventism’s most effective spokespersons in America’s black urban communities during the first four decades of the twentieth century and a leading voice in the struggle for black equality within the church.
K. C. Russell, evangelist and conference president, was a prominent leader in Adventist work for religious liberty and in its urban evangelistic initiatives during the first two decades of the 20th century.
Floyd O. Sanders, pastor-evangelist and administrator, served as president of five conferences in the Unites States over a period of 30 years.
Alma J. Scott, a prominent Washington, D.C., social reformer, served as vice-chair of the Committee for the Advancement of the Worldwide Work Among Colored Seventh-day Adventists that helped bring about landmark change in church race relations during the mid-1940s.
One of Adventism’s first Oakwood-educated ministers, Sydney Scott was a prominent leader in the rise of Adventism among African Americans in the South and Midwest.
Fred H. Seeney, pastor-evangelist, raised up the earliest Black Adventist congregations in Delaware and Maryland, and was prominent in the early development of the church’s work in Washington, D.C.
During his four decades of varied service as a canvasser, minister, teacher, and conference leader, Henry S. Shaw fostered the early progress of Adventism among African Americans in the South and helped organize the denomination’s work in western Canada.
Lewis C. Sheafe was Adventism’s foremost black evangelist during the formative years of the church’s work among African Americans around the turn of the 20th century and one of the most widely-acclaimed albeit controversial preachers in the church as a whole.
Rosetta Douglass Sprague assisted her renowned father, Frederick Douglass, in his work for the abolition of slavery and for Black equality. During the 1890s she took a more public role as an activist for racial justice and women’s equality, and during that same time period became a Seventh-day Adventist.