Charles Edward Bradford was born in Washington D.C. on July 12, 1925, to Robert Lee and Etta Littlejohn Bradford. Charles was the youngest of eight children, the third son. His life would span the historic steps of our epoch. His grandfather was born in slavery, his father lived through Reconstruction and Jim Crow, and he would become the first African American to serve as president of the Seventh-day Adventist Church in North America—a denomination with