Ellen G. White and Church Race Relations

Preface

This book is concerned with the writings of Ellen G. White on certain aspects of race relations in the life and work of the church in the United States, against the background of the historical situations at the times they were written. This is not an exhaustive study in which all phases of her writings on race are considered. Brief but comprehensive excerpts from her writings setting forth her view on this subject are provided in the Appendix. Other important counsel on this subject may be found in her book entitled the The Southern Work. EGWCRR 7.1

The attempt here is to discover whether her statements concerning such things as separate church services spring from any latent theory of “Natural Law” forbidding racial contact, or from any possible belief on the part of Mrs. White in the theory of the inherent inferiority of the Negro. Belief in either of these two theories would be, by definitions used here, racism. It is often argued that Ellen White’s counsels regarding separation of the race were an expedient. However, such a position could be used to cover hidden racism. Did Ellen White actually believe that black Americans were, in essence, fully equal to white Americans? These questions arise naturally from statements found in Testimonies for the Church 9:199-226 (sometimes referred to as volume 9), which contain her best-known but by no means her most comprehensive statements pertaining to racial relations. To fully understand Mrs. White’s attitude toward the Negro race it would be necessary to discuss not only her statements on interracial marriage but all her writings concerning the Negro, from her antislavery writings ¹ during the Civil War to her death in 1915. Her great interest in the work of her son, James Edson White, among the Negroes in Mississippi is also relevant. This story is partially told in Ellen G. White and Church Race Relations. The study undertaken here cannot be a complete picture, but it is hoped that it will add to a better understanding of Ellen White’s counsel. EGWCRR 7.2

This book does not discuss the contemporary relevance of Ellen White’s counsel. It is an attempt to answer the question What did she say? not the question What does it mean to us today? This should not be understood to imply that the answers to these two questions are always different, but that the questions are different, and therefore may or may not have different answers. EGWCRR 8.1

Some of the sources used here may have significance that is not immediately obvious. First of all, there are the Ellen G. White letters and manuscripts. ² The bulk of these manuscripts were written between the year 1891, when she made her first major appeal for missionary work among Negroes, ³ and 1908, when she prepared the volume 9 material. The manuscripts and letter written from 1895 onward are particularly significant, since it was in January of that year that her son James Edson White began his pioneer work among the black people of Mississippi, beginning at Vicksburg. ⁴ EGWCRR 8.2

Another source used in this study is a collection of seven scrapbooks entitled “The Negro Problem,” the property of the library at Oakwood College in Huntsville, Alabama. These scrapbooks contain newspaper clippings collected by Clarence Crisler during the years 1903-1912. ⁵ Crisler was a secretary to Mrs. White during this time, and was probably collecting this material in anticipation of a book concerning Seventh-day Adventist work among Negroes. Such a book was prepared by A.W. Spalding, in cooperation with Clarence Crisler and W.C. White, but was never published. ⁶ EGWCRR 9.1

The bulk of the scrapbook material consists of clippings from the New York Age, which billed itself “An Afro-American Journal of News and Opinions.” According to Dr. Rayford Logan, of Howard University, it was one of the leading Negro dailies, at least in the late nineteenth century. ⁷ There are a few clippings from other newspapers, as well. The value of the material is enhanced, however, by the tendency of newspapers during this period to reprint stories from other newspapers and magazines. EGWCRR 9.2

We do not know whether Ellen White ever studied these scrapbooks. It is likely she was aware of them. They nevertheless speak eloquently of the conditions during the times in which she wrote. ⁸ EGWCRR 9.3

For a general overview of the history of race relations during the period of 1895 to 1910, the following works have been consulted: John Hope Franklin’s From Slavery to Freedom, a standard one-volume Negro history; Rayford W. Logan’s The Betrayal of the Negro; ⁹ and C. Vann Woodward’s The Strange Career of Jim Crow ¹⁰ and The Origins of the New South. ¹¹ Franklin and Logan are Negro writers, Woodward a white Southerner. EGWCRR 10.1

This book would have been impossible without the facilities of the Ellen G. White Estate at its Washington office and its Berrien Springs branch, and the cooperation and assistance of persons connected with the two offices. Mrs. Hedwig Jemison, who supervises the Berrien Springs branch, spent hours helping the author locate Ellen White letters and manuscripts on the subject. Arthur L. White, secretary of the Board of Trustees and supervisor of the Washington office, was very helpful in arranging access to Crisler’s scrapbooks, as were the Oakwood College and Andrews University librarians. EGWCRR 10.2

At the Washington office the author was given access to the letters of James Edson White, and the correspondence between W.C. White and A.W. Spalding. EGWCRR 10.3

The Trustees of the Ellen G. White Estate have granted permission for the use of heretofore unreleased and unpublished Ellen White manuscripts, and encouraged the publication of this study in book form. EGWCRR 10.4

A word of explanation is in order concerning the use of terms to designate the two races. Ellen White generally used the term “colored” in reference to that of African descent, but also “black” and “Negro.” Sometimes she even referred to them as the “Southern race” or the “Southern people,” ¹² just as she used “Southern work” and “Southern field” for “the work for the colored people” in the South. ¹³ EGWCRR 11.1

This book uses the terms Negro and Caucasian as proper nouns referring to the two races, and the terms black and white. Negro has not been capitalized when it appears in a quotation with a lower-case letter. The controversy over which terms should be used raged then as it does now, and it is hoped that readers will understand that an attempt has been made to use proper terminology. EGWCRR 11.2

As has been suggested, much will remain to be done, no matter how thorough and detailed the present study might be. It is the hope of the author that eventually the history of the Negro Seventh-day Adventist will be fully studied, and that that history will contribute to racial harmony and communication within the church, and to making more men of the type Ellen White characterized as “closely connected with Christ” and therefore “lifted above the prejudice of color or caste.” ¹⁴ EGWCRR 11.3