Black people and early Mormonism

The Church of Jesus Christ of Latter-day Saints (see also Mormon) forbade black men from holding their priesthood from 1849 to 1978. Although black men were generally excluded from holding the priesthood and participating in ordinances in the temples, they were not excluded from holding general membership in the Church. When slavery and anti-slavery thought clashed in the mid 1800s prior to the American Civil War, the Latter Day Saints openly professed their opposition to slavery in Missouri (a slave state) during a time when it was very unpopular and even dangerous to do so.

The official position of the Church is that both the policy excluding blacks from the priesthood and the 1978 reversal of this policy were directed by God.

Historical and doctrinal background

Many early Americans believed that black people were the descendants of Canaan, the son of Ham.[1] According to the Bible, Canaan was cursed because his father, Ham, "saw the nakedness of his father" while Noah was intoxicated in his tent (see Genesis 9:25-26). The curse was that Canaan was to become "a servant of servants" to his brothers. This was used as a justification for the practice of slavery in the United States. Many Protestant denominations established this practice, even to creating theology that would be considered blasphemous to Christian doctrine. The Mormon founders, following this tradition, went one step further, by making their church cannonize the practice as a commandment from God.

"For behold, the Lord shall curse the land with much heat, and the barrenness thereof shall go forth forever; and there was a blackness came upon all the children of Canaan, that they were despised among all people." - Moses 7:8

"And Enoch also beheld the residue of the people which were the sons of Adam; and they were a mixture of all the seed of Adam save it was the seed of Cain, for the seed of Cain were black, and had not place among them." - Moses 7:22

"You are some classes of the human family that are black, uncouth, uncomely, disagreeable and low in their habits, wild, and seemingly deprived of nearly all the blessing of the intelligence that is generally bestowed upon mankind. Cain slew his brother. Cain might have been killed, and that would have put a termination to the line of human beings. This was not to be, and the Lord put a mark upon him, which is the flat nose and black skin." - Brigham Young First President of the LDS Church.

Mormon Doctrine (1966 ed., p. 109) "As a result of his rebellion, Cain was cursed with a dark skin; he became the father of the Negroes, and those spirits who are not worthy to receive the priesthood are born through his lineage. He became the first mortal to be cursed as a son of perdition. As a result of his mortal birth he is assured of a tangible body of flesh and bones in eternity, a fact which will enable him to rule over Satan."

Although people believe this idea was incorporated into Latter-day Saint belief by converts from other Christian denominations, the fact that that the LDS founder Joseph Smith, published the passages above refutes this notion. Smith's own translation of the Bible, he stated that part of Noah's curse was that "a veil of darkness shall cover [Canaan], that he shall be known among all men" (JST Genesis 9:30).

LDS leaders also taught that blacks were descendants of Cain, the son of Adam, who was cursed for rejecting God and committing the first murder, and marked forever to signify his sin (see Messenger and Advocate (1835) stating that black skin may come upon any as a mark of sinfulness).

The Book of Mormon, published in 1830, used a dark-skin motif as a sign of the cursed, sinful state of the Lamanites (considered by Latter-day Saints to be ancestors of the Native Americans), whom God cursed because of rebellion:

"And he had caused the cursing to come upon them, yea, even a sore cursing, because of their iniquity. For behold, they had hardened their hearts against him, that they had become like unto a flint; wherefore, as they were white, and exceedingly fair and delightsome, that they might not be enticing unto my people the Lord God did cause a skin of blackness to come upon them." (2 Nephi 5:21).

Later, the book explained, "And this was done that their seed might be distinguished from the seed of their brethren, that thereby the Lord God might preserve his people, that they might not mix and believe in incorrect traditions which would prove their destruction." (Alma 3:8).

Blacks in the early Latter Day Saint movement

Despite the common conception among early Latter-day Saints that dark skin was a mark from God, the Church never restricted its membership based on race, and indeed several black men were ordained to the priesthood during Joseph Smith's lifetime. The first known black Latter-day Saint was Black Pete, who joined the Church in Kirtland, Ohio. Two African Americans, Elijah Abel in 1836 and Walker Lewis in 1844, were ordained to the priesthood during Smith's lifetime. In later years, William McCary (later excommunicated) would be ordained in 1846. Two of the descendants of Elijah Abel were also ordained Elders, and two other black men, Samuel Chambers and Edward Leggroan, were ordained Deacons.

Early black members in the Church were also admitted to the temple in Kirtland, Ohio, where Elijah Abel received the ritual of washing and anointing (see Journal of Zebedee Coltrin). Abel also participated in at least two baptisms for the dead in Nauvoo, Illinois.

Though membership, priesthood, and church practice were not restricted based on race per se, the early Church did make it clear, to appease non-Mormon settlers in Missouri, that the church would not baptize or proseletyze slaves against the will of their masters. In 1833 in Independence, Missouri, William W. Phelps, the editor of the Mormon newspaper Evening and Morning Star, published a controversial article that was interpreted by angry Missourians as "inviting free Negroes and mulattoes from other states to become 'Mormons,' and remove and settle among us". The Church officially assured Missourians that it had no intention to invite African Americans to settle in Missouri, and in 1835 the Church issued a revelation stating that it was not their policy to "interfere with bond-servants, neither preach the gospel to, nor baptize them contrary to the will and wish of their masters, nor to meddle with or influence them in the least to cause them to be dissatisfied with their situations in this life, thereby jeopardizing the lives of men." (D&C 134:12). Despite these reassurances, however, the racial issue was one of many factors that eventually led to the Mormon expulsion from Missouri.

By 1839 there were about a dozen black members in the Church (Late Persecution of the Church of Latter-day Saints, 1840). Nauvoo, Illinois was reported to have 22 black members, including free and slave, between 1839-1843.

Beginning in 1842, Smith made known his increasingly strong position of anti-slavery. In March 1842, Smith began studying some abolitionist literature, and stated, "it makes my blood boil within me to reflect upon the injustice, cruelty, and oppression of the rulers of the people. When will these things cease to be, and the Constitution and the laws again bear rule?" (History of the Church, 4:544). In 1844, Smith ran for President of the United States on an anti-slavery platform aimed at ending all slavery by the year 1850 by having the government buy the freedom of slaves using money from the sale of public lands.

According to statements made by Church members who received the Endowment in the Red Brick Store (many of whom were members of the Quorum of the Twelve Apostles, Council of Fifty, or Anointed Quorum), Smith gave specific instructions as to the policy of ordaining black men to the priesthood during one meeting. Parley P. Pratt referenced this discussion during the 1846 migration of the Mormon Pioneers when the policy was first publicly acknowledged.

Adoption of the priesthood ban

After the assassination of Joseph Smith in 1844, remaining Church leaders initially continued to condone the ordination of blacks to the priesthood, although the tenor of Church dialog on the subject began to change slightly. In April, 1845, an article appeared in Times and Seasons (edited by John Taylor) stating, "The descendants of Ham, besides a black skin which has ever been a curse that has followed an apostate of the holy priesthood, as well as a black heart, have been servants to both Shem and Japheth, and the abolitionists are trying to make void the curse of God, but it will require more power than man possesses to counteract the decrees of eternal wisdom." (6 Times and Seasons 857).

On April 27, 1845, Orson Hyde taught the doctrine that blacks were cursed with servility because of their actions in the Pre-existence ("Speech Delivered Before the High Priests Quorum in Nauvoo", MS in Utah State Historical Society). However, Orson Hyde apparently did not, at this time, advocate a ban on ordaining blacks to the priesthood, because on October 1846 he baptized and ordained to the priesthood a black Native American named William McCary. (Voree Herald, Oct. 1846)

It may have been the actions of McCary that led, in part, to the eventual ban on ordination of blacks to the priesthood. On March 26, 1847, Brigham Young confronted McCary concerning some of McCary's alleged sinful behavior, and stated, "its nothing to do with the blood for of one blood has God made all flesh, we have to repent (and) regain what we av [sic] lost--we av [sic] one of the best Elders an African in Lowell [i.e., Walker Lewis]." In April, 1847, Apostle Parley P. Pratt questioned McCary's right to hold the priesthood: "This black man has got the blood of Ham in him which linege [sic] was cursed as regards to the Priesthood". Then in fall 1847, McCary took several women into unsanctioned polygamous marriages. He was quickly excommunicated.

In any event, soon after McCary was excommunicated, Brigham Young declared black members ineligible to participate in certain ceremonies in temples. On February, 1849, Brigham Young announced the policy that black members could no longer be ordained to the priesthood "because Cain cut off the lives [sic] of Abel ... the Lord cursed Cain's seed and prohibited them from the Priesthood."

Other early Latter-day Saint views on race

Brigham Young also taught that interracial relationships would be punished by God. In Journal of Discourses Vol. 7, pg 290-291, he says:

Shall I tell you the law of God in regard to the African Race? If the White man who belongs to the chosen seed mixes his blood with the seed of Cain, the penalty, under the law of God, is death on the spot. This will always be so.

Whether one interprets this as the promise of an immediate act by God, a call for the immediate death penalty or a 'death' in a spiritual sense, it's a harsh condemnation of interracial couples. Some believe Brigham Young had reference to a few dozen Southern white slave-holders who had joined the Church and moved to Utah. Sex between white masters and black female slaves was common in the South at that time, and Brigham Young was threatening the white man and not the black female slaves (i.e. "If the White man....mixes his blood...the penalty...death on the spot"). It is important to note that this statement has never been recognized as the stance of the church. Young's views were also quite typical of other Americans of his time.

It is also significant that the church always allowed black membership in all its congregations, and taught that they were entitled to the same blessings in heaven as all people. Technically, the priesthood ban typically applied to men of African descent regardless of skin color, although it occasionally applied to other races or lineages (including some Caucasians). Dark-skinned South Pacific Islanders were ordained to the priesthood, for example, while light-skinned Africans were not. Native Americans were always eligible for priesthood ordination, despite being the descendants of a people who had a mark similar to Cain's.

A relatively modern Prophet, Spencer W. Kimball, taught that after accepting the Gospel, dark-skinned people would gradually be made white, a process that would take place over a number of generations. After visiting a mission site in South America, he said in his General Conference Report of October, 1960 (quite a number of years before he became the president of the church), which was published in Improvement Era, December 1960, pp 922-923:

I saw a striking contrast in the progress of the Indian people today.... The day of the Lamanites is nigh. For years they have been growing delightsome, and they are now becoming white and delightsome, as they were promised. In this picture of the twenty Lamanite missionaries, fifteen of the twenty were as light as Anglos, five were darker but equally delightsome The children in the home placement program in Utah are often lighter than their brothers and sisters in the hogans on the reservation.

At one meeting a father and mother and their sixteen-year-old daughter were present, the little member girl--sixteen--sitting between the dark father and mother, and it was evident she was several shades lighter than her parents--on the same reservation, in the same hogan, subject to the same sun and wind and weather....These young members of the Church are changing to whiteness and to delightsomeness. One white elder jokingly said that he and his companion were donating blood regularly to the hospital in the hope that the process might be accelerated.

Kimball's use of the phrase "white and delightsome" refers to a Book of Mormon prophecy regarding the future status of the Lamanite people, generally accepted by Latter-day Saints as the ancestors of modern American Indians. It is unclear, and probably doubtful, that he meant for this change to apply to Blacks or other groups. (For a Mormon apologetic examination of this issue, see the SHIELDS web site.)

Reversal of the priesthood ban

There has been some dispute as to whether Brigham Young's adoption of a racial exclusion policy was a matter of doctrine and revelation, or whether it merely reflected the personal feelings of Brigham Young and other early Latter-day Saint leaders. In 1949, the Church's First Presidency stated:

"The attitude of the Church with reference to the Negroes remains as it has always stood. It is not a matter of the declaration of a policy but of direct commandment from the Lord, on which is founded the doctrine of the Church from the days of its organization, to the effect that Negroes may become members of the Church but that they are not entitled to the priesthood at the present time."

However, not all Church leaders agreed with this statement. Most notably in dissent was the Apostle Hugh B. Brown. Moreover, the historical record does not support the claim that racial exclusion has been Church doctrine "from the days of its organization", and no revelation, canonized or otherwise, has ever been produced as evidence that the practice was a "direct commandment from the Lord."

By the late 1960s, the Church had expanded its missionary efforts into Brazil, the Caribbean, and the nations of Africa, and was suffering criticism for its priesthood policy. In 1969, during the administration of David O. McKay, the Quorum of the Twelve Apostles and First Presidency had voted to end the policy; however, McKay was absent because of age-related disability and First Counselor Harold B. Lee was traveling on church business. When President Lee returned, he called for another vote on the issue, and this time it was defeated, upon Lee's belief that such a large change in Church policy should originate in revelation. (Edwin B. Firmage, ed., The Memoirs of Hugh B. Brown, "Editor's Afterward", Salt Lake City, Signature Books, 1988.)

Hugh B. Brown, then President of the Quorum of the Twelve Apostles and the person who had proposed the vote, later stated:

"A serious problem that has confronted us, especially during the past few decades has been our denying the priesthood to the Negro. Personally, I doubt if we can maintain or sustain ourselves in the position we have adopted but which has no justification in the scriptures, as far as I know. The president says it can only come by revelation. If that is true, then change will come in due course. It seems to me that if we had admitted the Negro to the church as a full member, at the time of Joseph Smith, we would have had more trouble with the government than we then had. Holding ourselves aloof from that until after the Civil war gave us the opportunity to establish the church without that question coming to the front. It was, in other words, a policy, not necessarily a doctrine." (Memoirs of Hugh B. Brown, page 129)

The civil rights movement also contributed to external pressures for change, and there were internal pressures as well. Sterling McMurrin, a prominent Mormon philosopher and writer, publicly opposed the "Negro doctrine." Many other members were privately uncomfortable with the policy, and some took actions to publicly express their concerns. John W. Fitzgerald, a retired elementary school principal in Salt Lake City, was excommunicated in the 1960s after writing a series of articles for the Salt Lake Tribune. In 1973, Mormon scholar Lester E. Bush wrote an influential historical study questioning many popular assumptions about the policy that was published in Dialogue: A Journal of Mormon Thought. Byron Marchant, a member of the church and scoutmaster of a Mormon-sponsored Boy Scout troop, notified the National Association for the Advancement of Colored People in 1973 that an official church "correlation policy" required all troop leaders to belong to the Mormon Aaronic Priesthood, effectively preventing him from promoting two non-Mormon black scouts who were members of his troop. After the NAACP filed a lawsuit against the Scouts, the church publicly apologized and abandoned the correlation policy that affected its scouting programs, but Marchant was excommunicated in 1977 following repeated public statements in which he continued to challenge the priesthood ban. Another internal dissenter, attorney Douglas Wallace, was excommunicated in 1976 after he conducted a public protest by baptizing and ordaining a black man named Larry Lester in front of news reporters.

In June of 1978, under the administration of Spencer W. Kimball, the Church announced that "all worthy male members of the Church may be ordained to the priesthood" regardless of race, reversing earlier policies (see Doctrine and Covenants, Official Declaration--2). In a statment on June 8 of that year, an official declaration was given, citing a revelation from God received by Kimball on June 1, who was by then President of the Church.

LDS Apostle Bruce R. McConkie was one of thirteen men who was present when the revelation was recieved. He later recounted:

On this occasion, because of the importuning and the faith, and because the hour and the time had arrived, the Lord in his providences poured out the Holy Ghost upon the First Presidency and the Twelve in a miraculous and marvelous manner, beyond anything that any then present had ever experienced. The revelation came to the President of the Church; it also came to each individual present. There were ten members of the Council of the Twelve and three of the First Presidency there assembled. The result was that President Kimball knew, and each one of us knew, independent of any other person, by direct and personal revelation to us, that the time had now come to extend the gospel and all its blessings and all its obligations, including the priesthood and the blessings of the house of the Lord, to those of every nation, culture, and race, including the black race. There was no question whatsoever as to what happened or as to the word and message that came...Well, this is a glorious day. This is a wondrous thing; the veil is thin. The Lord is not far distant from his church. He is not far removed....

Regarding the history and doctrinal ramifications of the change in practice, he continued:

"There are statements in our literature by the early brethren which we have interpreted to mean that the Negroes would not receive the priesthood in mortality. I have said the same things, and people write me letters and say, 'You said such and such, and how is it now that we do such and such?' And all I can say to that is that it is time disbelieving people repented and got in line and believed in a living, modern prophet. Forget everything that I have said, or what President Brigham Young or President George Q. Cannon or whomsoever has said in days past that is contrary to the present revelation. We spoke with a limited understanding and without the light and knowledge that now has come into the world. We get our truth and our light line upon line and precept upon precept. We have now had added a new flood of intelligence and light on this particular subject, and it erases all the darkness and all the views and all the thoughts of the past. They don't matter any more." ("All Are Alike unto God," address in the Second Annual CES Symposium, Salt Lake City, 1978.)

Unfortunately, like the comments that he addresses, Bruce McConkie's statements are not considered "canonized scripture" and do noting to repudiate or erase the authoritative scripture that was established by Joseph Smith and Brigham Young. Until it is revealed that Smith, Young, and others had erroneously translated and/or incorrectly interpreted God's word, it will be impoossible to reconcile these two morally dichotomous positions.

References

Lester E. Bush, "Mormonism's Negro Doctrine: An Historical Overview," Dialogue: A Journal of Mormon Thought, 8/1 (Spring 1973). (Full text)
Armand L. Mauss, "Dispelling the Curse of Cain," Sunstone 134 (December 2004). (PDF file)

External links

Black Mormon: A Web Site Dedicated to Black Members of The Church of Jesus Christ of Latter-day Saints
The Genesis Group - An organization established to meet the needs of Black members of LDS Church
FAIR Topical Guide: Revelation on the Priesthood
African Americans and Mormonism - A critical look at Blacks and the Priesthood in the Mormon Church