Video: What Happened to Lucy Byard?

Are you planning to visit Washington, D.C.? There is a neighborhood that has several landmarks of historical significance to Adventists.

Stop by the former “People’s Church” (2105 Tenth St., NW) on your way to Freedmen’s Hospital (13th and R Streets, NW), where Lucy Byard died. Nearby, on the campus of Howard University (2400 6th St., NW and Georgia Ave.), Adventist women formed the Committee for the Advancement of Worldwide Work Among Colored Seventh-day Adventists in Spring 1944. The committee discussed how Black people would have full representation in the Church. These conversations, combined with Lucy Byard’s story, were the catalysts for the formation of regional conferences.

Though the building has since been torn down, Dodson’s Bookshop on Georgia Avenue was the first site for Allegheny Conference’s headquarters, established in 1945.