Early Life and Conversion

When Charles Marshall Kinny accepted the Adventist message after attending meetings in Reno, Nevada, in the summer of 1878, no one could have guessed the weight his decision would carry for generations to come. He would soon become a pioneer in a movement that had yet to imagine its future among African Americans. His journey—from obscurity to leadership, from isolation to vision—would shape the foundations of Black Adventism in the United States.

Born on April 1, 1855, Kinny spent his early childhood in the slave state of Virginia. Whether he was enslaved or a free person of color remains unknown. After 1870, Kinny and members of his family settled in Reno, Nevada, in search of better opportunities.

In Reno, Kinny attended evangelistic meetings led by J. N. Loughborough. During the series, Ellen White preached on the love of God—an experience Kinny never forgot. At the age of 23, he accepted the Adventist message, becoming the only Black member of the Adventist church in the city.

Kinny quickly became active in church outreach. By 1882, he was serving as secretary of the Nevada Tract and Missionary Society. Though the Nevada membership was small, the position carried significant responsibility.

Reports published by Kinny in The Advent Review and Sabbath Herald reveal a zealous worker. He corresponded widely and distributed literature across the country. “A colored teacher in Richmond, Va., has accepted the truth,” he reported in 1881, “and others are interested.”

Mission to Kansas

Impressed with Kinny’s dedication and ability, church leaders helped him pursue further education at Healdsburg College in California. In 1885, he began evangelistic work in Kansas, a major destination for Black migrants from the post-Civil War South.

Kinny faced strong resistance. Black ministers from other denominations opposed his efforts, and on one occasion, he publicly defended the seventh-day Sabbath before a crowd of hundreds. Aware of the deeply rooted religious traditions of the communities he served, he focused on personal evangelism—house-to-house Bible studies and distribution of Adventist literature. His work in Kansas, and later Missouri, resulted in a small but committed group of Black Sabbath-keepers.

Racial Conflict in St. Louis

In St. Louis, Kinny encountered a challenge that would shape the rest of his ministry: racial prejudice within the church. Less than a year after Kinny left the city, Ellen White felt similar tensions there firsthand and wrote of having experiences “that I can never think of without a feeling of dread.” She addressed the issue head-on in her 1891 talk to church leaders entitled “Our Duty to the Colored People.”

Foundations of the Black Work

As his ministry took him farther South, Kinny would be compelled to grapple with the color line as never before. Under assignment from the General Conference Committee, he arrived in Louisville, Kentucky, in June 1889, to strengthen a small group of Black believers. That fall, he attended a major church council in Nashville, Tennessee, convened by R. A. Kilgore, superintendent of General Conference District No. 2 which covered the South.

At the council, Kinny became the first African American ordained as a Seventh-day Adventist minister. The Nashville council also set a precedent for the Adventist Church’s grappling with prejudice. It was suggested that white people who otherwise might have been interested refused to attend a recent Nashville camp meeting because of reports of race-mingling on the grounds. In his report on the council in The Advent Review and Sabbath Herald, Kilgore asserted that those experienced in Adventist work in the South realized that any effort “to break down the distinction between the races, thus ignoring the popular prejudice, is simply fanatical and unwise.”

Kinny addressed the council directly. He pointed out that separating the races at general meetings tended to destroy the unity of the Third Angel’s message and caused “great embarrassment and humiliation not only to me, but to my people also.” He did not want “the colored people” to be “driven from the truth by our position on this question.” At the same time, he acknowledged that “the very presence of the colored people in church relations and in our general meetings” hindered the message from reaching many white people.

He then set forth propositions to resolve the dilemma. While Kinny believed in the power of the gospel to change lives, he accepted the sociological reality of living in a racist society and viewed his proposals as the best way to adapt without harming the church’s mission to either race. Though he did not believe in segregation, he was willing to work within its narrow confines for the ultimate good of the church.

Where integrated worship was impossible, he reasoned, separate churches and meetings were preferable to second-class participation. Black congregations should develop their own churches and, eventually, conferences—fully equal within the denomination’s structure.

Though far ahead of its time, Kinny’s vision laid critical groundwork. He continued traveling throughout the South, raising up churches, encouraging small companies of believers, and urging the denomination to invest more intentionally in work among Black communities.

Progress was slow. Appeals for funding and staffing often met resistance, yet Kinny persisted. At the 1891 General Conference Session, he spoke candidly about the challenges facing the Black work and called for additional support. Ellen White strongly endorsed his appeal. Her son, Edson, soon devoted himself to missionary work among Black communities in the South, helping advance the cause Kinny had long advocated.

After 1898, Kinny spent several years in largely self-supporting missionary work, traveling widely despite limited resources. He married schoolteacher Viola in 1902 and later returned to salaried ministry, though ongoing family health challenges limited his activity. He lived to see the church he helped shape grow far beyond its fragile beginnings. Kinny died in 1951 at the age of 96.

Reflecting on his legacy, historian Ronald Graybill called Kinny the “Founder of Black Adventism,” noting that no one else faced the lonely task he carried. Others would later make more converts, but none laid a foundation under more difficult circumstances. By the time of Kinny’s death, Black Adventist membership in the United States had grown to more than 26,000, and the separate conferences he envisioned decades earlier were finally taking shape—testimony to a legacy built patiently, faithfully, and against overwhelming odds.