Commentary Recounts 1943 Denial of Hospital Treatment to Lucy Byard and Racial Segregation in Adventist Institutions

Adventist Today published a commentary by Cleran L. Hollancid on May 29, 2017, examining the legacy of race in Seventh-day Adventist culture. The author, a life-long Adventist and a PhD candidate in the sociology of religion, writes that segregation and racial discrimination have affected Adventist institutions beyond education. He cites, among other examples, the exclusion of Black people from White campgrounds, particularly in Michigan, and from the dining facilities of the General Conference and the Review and Herald. He also writes that Adventist hospitals did not treat Black patients.

The author describes the case of Lucy Byard as a central example. In early winter 1943, he writes, Byard and her husband, both Black, brought her to the Washington Sanitarium and Hospital, later named Washington Adventist Hospital. He says hospital personnel reversed course after reviewing her chart and realizing she was Black, denied her treatment, and then telephoned other hospitals until one across state lines agreed to admit her. According to the author, Byard was then taken to Freedmen’s Hospital, the forerunner of Howard University Hospital, where she died of pneumonia that he attributes to a cold draft and light clothing while she waited in a hallway. He notes that accounts differ on the cause and timing of her death, and he raises the question of whether she would have died had she been treated at the Adventist hospital. [Proverbs 31:8-9] shows the need to speak up for those who cannot advocate for themselves, a principle the author links to the Byard case in his argument.

According to the author, Black Adventist members faced prolonged discrimination. He writes that they financially supported the church yet were denied access to its hospitals, and that their children were barred from church schools. He says that in the period after the Byard incident, Black lay members and some ministers drafted a response seeking equal treatment, respect and leadership representation. Citing Ricardo B. Graham’s 1996 chapter, he writes that these requests were made to General Conference president J.L. McElhany, and that White leadership instead decided to grant official segregation in the form of separate regional conferences. The author states that this decision was made at the spring council meetings in 1944 and links it to the Byard episode, though he also traces earlier antecedents.

The commentary also recounts the history of Charles Kinney, whom the author describes as born a slave in the antebellum period and as the first Black minister ordained in the Adventist Church. The author writes that at Kinney’s 1889 ordination service, Black members were not permitted to enter through the same entrance as White members or to sit with them. He quotes Kinney as having been concerned about the “unity of the Third Angel’s message,” and he says Kinney considered separate structures for Black members for the sake of peace, though the author characterizes this as a reluctant choice made under pressure from prejudice.

Hollancid states that he does not intend to characterize all White Adventists or all White people as racist, which he calls a misrepresentation. He says his use of terms such as “racist” is meant to convey the depth of the problem and that facing the past honestly can help the church understand its present. He describes the piece as part of an eight-part series intended to offer beginning steps toward racial reconciliation in the Adventist faith community.

The author also poses the question of whether the “separate but equal” framework could be justified within the Adventist Church. He notes that in 1944, Adventist Irene Morgan was arrested for disobeying a Virginia state law on segregation after refusing to give up her seat on a bus. He writes that her case, Irene Morgan v. Commonwealth of Virginia, with legal counsel that included Thurgood Marshall, reached the U.S. Supreme Court, which ruled the state law unconstitutional.

Source: Read the original report