Edson White

In 1893, Edson White (1849-1928), the son of Adventist pioneers James and Ellen White, experienced a personal spiritual awakening and became determined to serve impoverished and still oppressed African Americans in the Jim Crow South. He purchased and renovated a riverboat, the Morning Star, which he sailed down the Mississippi River as a mobile church and school.  White and his co-workers delivered sermons and offered literacy training to black children and adults from the boat until some 50 permanent Adventist schools had been established to bring education to the black community in the Deep South.

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