As we celebrate Black History Month in February, we want to highlight a few African-American visionaries and leaders in Adventism or the healthcare industry. We’re starting the month off with one of the most influential figures in the Seventh-day Adventist Church (SDA), Anna Knight.
Anna Knight was born in Gitano, Mississippi on March 4, 1874. Her father, Newton Knight, was a well-known figure in his own right – his rebellion during the Civil War having recently been dramatized in the movie, Free State of Jones.
Anna was smart, strong-willed, and eager to learn. But educational opportunities for poor black children in her community were almost non-existent. Not to be deterred, she taught herself to read and write by listening to the white children she played with and scratching letters into the dirt with a stick. Craving reading materials, she responded to an offer of free literature in a church-sponsored magazine. It was through the materials she eventually received that she first learned of Adventism.
Her attempts to interest her family in Adventism were unsuccessful, but it didn’t stop her from following God’s call and going to Graysville, TN in 1893 to be baptized into the Seventh-day Adventist Church. Under the sponsorship of Dr. John Harvey Kellogg, she obtained her nursing degree in Battle Creek, MI. Impressed by her intelligence and passion, Kellogg sent Anna to the Battle Creek General Conference in 1901 as a representative. Soon after, she was inspired to go to India as a missionary, and left for Calcutta the same year.
She set many milestones with her work in India. Anna became only the second black Adventist to be sent by the church on a foreign mission as well as the first black woman in the SDA to do so, and the first black person to do any missionary work in India.
Upon her return from India in 1907, she returned to her native Mississippi to establish a church and school. Then, she was sent to work in Atlanta, GA as a nurse, teacher, and Bible instructor. She became well-known in the city’s black community, lecturing and consulting. Later, she joined the Southern Union Conference’s education department and helped open Oakwood University in Huntsville, AL, an Adventist Church founded for African-Americans in 1896. It was at this school that Anna lived and worked for most of her life.
In 1922, Anna became the first President of the National Colored Teachers Association of Seventh-day Adventists. In her time as leader of this group, she had several important responsibilities, including: financing education for students, improving Oakwood facilities, opening several schools, assisting struggling students, advising dozens of schools in the South, and speaking at conventions on pedagogy and school administration.
Anna Knight was a beloved figure at Oakwood University for nearly half a century until her death on June 3, 1972. In honor of her many educational contributions, the building that houses the education department on-campus is named Anna Knight Hall. Just last year, the campus opened the Anna Knight Center for Women’s Leadership.
If you’d like to learn more about Anna Knight’s inspirational life and accomplishments, check out her autobiography Mississippi Girl.
