Photos, 1902-1906

Photos, Part I: 1859-1888 ~ Photos, Part II: 1888-1896 ~ Photos, Part III: 1896-1902

Above: Washington, D.C.'s first Seventh-day Adventist Church, organized in 1889, building acquired in 1893 at 624 8th Street, NE.  Sheafe and his white colleague, J.S. Washburn, served as co-pastors, preaching on alternate Sabbaths, at the racially-mixed congregation, during the first few months of the General Conference evangelistic thrust launched in 1902.  Right above: Fred H. Seeney, who assisted Sheafe with the tent meetings, and later followed him as pastor of the People's SDA Church. Right: One of the earliest of the several positive press reports of Sheafe's meetings; Colored American, July 5, 1902.

Below, clockwise: Program for the Bethel Literary & Historical Association, where, wrote historian Rayford Logan, "some of the most noted colored men and women of the day spoke to large audiences."  Sheafe spoke at the Bethel on several ocassions; regretably, no flyers or printed programs seem to have survived; however, note below that one of the speakers for 1899-1900 was Dr. James Howard, charter member of the first Washington Adventist church, and powerful spokesman for racial equality in Christ.  The Metropolitan A.M.E. Church, which hosted the association's programs, known as the "national cathedral of African Methodism."  Armond W. Scott, prominent attorney and yearst later, the third African American appointed D.C. Municipal Judge, had to handle the delicate situation when the Sheafe was "disinvited" from another prominent forum in November 1902, the Second Baptist Lyceum.  Rev. S.L. Corrothers of the Galbraith A.M.E. Zion Church, with whom Sheafe sometimes was associated in social and political causes, such as the D.C. Suffrage League.  At more than one event, including the Emancipation Proclamation 40th Anniversary celebration in 1903, Sheafe was on the program with Kelly Miller, Howard University professor, later Dean, and influential scholar-activist, known as the "Sage of the Potomac."

Above, clockwise: Washington Post report on the division of the city's Adventist church in 1902; one of the church's members, Mrs. Rosetta Douglass Sprague, daughter of Frederick Douglass. W.C. White, son of Adventist prophet Ellen G. White, seemed cautiously supportive of Sheafe's work, but missed an opportunity to move swiftly to help Sheafe secure property for his church during the summer of 1904.W.A. Spicer, General Conference Secretary, who, with Atlantic Union Conference President H.W. Cottrell and Chesapeake Conference President O.O. Farnsworth, was sent to Washington by General Conference President A.G. Daniells with a firm directive see the division implemented.

 

Below, clockwise: The Methodist church acquired for the Second, or Memorial SDA Church, featured on the front cover of the Review & Herald as part of a successful campaign to raise $10,000 to pay for it, and below it the first buildings for the General Conference office and the Review and Herald Publishing Association constructed in Takoma Park. Architect John Lankford's drawing of the True Reformers' Hall built on U Street, NW, in 1903, with every aspect of construction and financing done by the black community.  The People's SDA Church, launched under Sheafe's leadership in December, 1903, became one of the earliest "tenant" in the multi-purpose building that anchored  black Washington's center of cultural activity. In 1905, the People's SDA Church acquired an ideal building (right) from the New Jerusalem Society, in an ideal location just three blocks from True Reformers Hall at 10th and V Streets, NW.  This acquisition, also costing around $10,000, was financed entirely by Sheafe and the People's Church, and the failure of the General Conference to support it as it had the all-white Memorial Church became a major source of alienation.