Let’s Talk About Race and Priesthood

The history of the race-based priesthood and temple ban in The Church of Jesus Christ of Latter-day Saints is complex. In the early days of the Church, Joseph Smith and other leaders of the Church ordained Black men to the priesthood. A ban took hold by the 1850s—and wasn’t reversed until 1978. This interview with W. Paul Reeve discusses the history of the race and priesthood in The Church of Jesus Christ of Latter-day Saints.

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Read more about race and priesthood in Let’s Talk About Race and Priesthood by W. Paul Reeve

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Table of Contents

• Importance
• Experience
• Three-part narrative
• Early converts
• Ordination
• One blood
• Winter Quarters
• Competing explanations
• Solidification of ban
• Uneven Enforcement
• Spencer W. Kimball
• Previously unpublished

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Why is it important to learn about the history of race and the priesthood?

Latter-day Saints have been directed by two members of the First Presidency to “root out racism.” In my estimation it is impossible to root out racism without examining its roots. History is thus a valuable way for Latter-day Saints to learn what racism looked like in the past so we can better understand its consequences in the present and help shape a more just and equitable future.

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What has been W. Paul Reeve’s experience in studying the history of race in the Church?

It has been both exciting and challenging. It has been exciting to uncover new sources, especially the anti-slavery speeches of Orson Pratt and to understand that he and Brigham Young were engaged in a vigorous debate. It has been challenging because of the depth of the racism the sources reveal.

It is heavy history and it raises a variety of challenging questions. I attempt to grapple with those questions in the book and share the ways that I have sorted through them for myself.

The curse of Cain was Brigham Young’s explanation.

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What is the three-part narrative of race and the priesthood?

The book is divided into three phases which lay out the chronological history of the racial priesthood and temple restrictions as I have come to understand them:

• Phase 1. In phase one there were no restrictions. Priesthood and temples were open to people of all races and ethnicities. In fact the First Presidency published an article in the Nauvoo newspaper in 1840 announcing their intent to welcome “persons of all languages, and of every tongue, and of every color” into the temple that they would start to build the following spring.

• Phase 2. Sadly, that open racial vision gave way in fits and starts in phase two to segregated priesthood and temples.

• Phase 3. In phase three, the June 1978 revelation ushered in a return to racial inclusivity and restored the Church to its universal roots.

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Who are some of the early Black converts to the Church?

There have been Black Latter-day Saints from 1830 to the present.

Some of the most well known include Elijah Able and his wife Mary Ann Adams Able, who presided over a multi-generational family of Latter-day Saints. Elijah Able is significant because he is the most well-documented Black priesthood holder in the nineteenth century. His son Moroni was also ordained to the priesthood in 1871 and his grandson, Elijah R. Ables, was ordained an elder in 1935 after passing as white.

Q. Walker Lewis was another Black priesthood holder; he worshiped in the Lowell, Massachusetts Branch and was a prominent abolitionist and a barber by trade. Brigham Young called Lewis “one of the best elders” and referred to him as a person of African descent.

The lack of consensus among leaders had prevented change.

Jane Elizabeth Manning along with six additional family members converted in Connecticut in 1842. She and her husband Isaac James and her son Sylvester and their son Silas were 1847 pioneers into the Salt Lake Valley.

In the U.S. South, at least 26 enslaved people also joined the upstart faith before the Thirteenth Amendment to the Constitution outlawed slavery. Enslaved Latter-day Saints included John Burton, Green Flake, and Samuel Chambers. Chambers became an unordained deacon in the Salt Lake Eighth Ward after he and his wife Amanda migrated to Utah following their emancipation at the end of the Civil War.

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How common was priesthood ordination during the 19th century?

As I note in the book:

In the nineteenth century the purpose of ordination was to provide each congregation leadership, not to ensure that all men held priesthood office. In 1842, the branch in Brandywine, Pennsylvania, for example reported 124 total members, which included seven elders, two priests, three teachers, and two deacons, while the branch in Salem, Massachusetts, counted 66 members, with one elder and one priest. Not until the early decades of the twentieth century did the Church systematically ordain young men to priesthood offices. The fact that a few Black men were ordained to the priesthood when white men were not universally ordained makes it that much more remarkable.

Let’s Talk About Race and Priesthood, page 14

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How were early prophets accurate in stating that God “hath made of one blood” all of humankind?

DNA evidence reveals that the entire human family is related through common ancient ancestry. Joseph Smith and Brigham Young both quoted Acts 17:26 to teach that God “hath made of one blood all nations of men for to dwell on all the face of the earth.”

They were thus both religiously and scientifically correct when doing so.

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How did Brigham Young’s experiences in Winter Quarters seem to shape his views?

On December 3, 1847, in a meeting at Winter Quarters, Brigham Young learned of two Black Latter-day Saint men who had married white women and thereafter shifted his open racial perspective.

Both explanations were disavowed.

Brigham spoke out stridently against race mixing; he even advocated capital punishment as the penalty. By 1852 he openly articulated a racial priesthood restriction and did so in conjunction with ongoing preaching against race mixing.

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What were the two competing explanations for the priesthood and temple ban?

Curse of Cain

The curse of Cain was Brigham Young’s explanation for the racial restrictions. He suggested that because Cain killed his brother Abel, all of Abel’s children (who he presumed to be white people) would need to receive the priesthood before any of Cain’s descendants (who he presumed to be Black people) could receive the priesthood.

It was a violation of the Second Article of Faith because Brigham Young held the supposed descendants of Cain responsible for a murder in which they took no part.

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Less valiant in premortality

The second explanation suggested that Black people must have been neutral, less valiant, or fence sitters in a premortal war in heaven and were thus born into a lineage that was barred from the priesthood.

Both explanations were disavowed in 2013 by the First Presidency and Quorum of Twelve Apostles.

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How did the priesthood and temple ban solidify over time?

The restrictions were not firmly in place at Brigham Young’s first utterance. Each succeeding generation of leaders were unwilling to violate the precedent established under Brigham Young, even though Young’s precedent violated the open racial policies established under Joseph Smith.

Joseph F. Smith solidified the restrictions in place in the first decade of the twentieth century when he erased from collective Latter-day Saint memory the original Black priesthood holders.

See How the Church Changed in Remarkable ‘Saints 3’

See more

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What are some examples of how the priesthood and temple ban was enforced unevenly?

Elijah Able’s son, Moroni, was ordained an elder in 1871 and Able’s grandson Elijah R. Ables was ordained an elder in 1935, after passing as white.

Russell Dewey Ritchie, the son of a formerly enslaved father was ordained to the priesthood in 1970 and his sisters received temple rituals long before 1978 even though their parents were denied a temple sealing in 1909. Descendants of the Ritchie family continue to exhibit African ancestry in their DNA to the present.

Spencer W. Kimball studied the issue.

One formerly enslaved woman, Rebecca Henrientta Foscue Bentley Meads, received full temple rituals and was sealed to her husband in 1863.

DNA evidence today reveals the impossibility of policing racial boundaries. If the “one drop” policy was the standard, then there has never been a period of Latter-day Saint history without Black priesthood holders and temple attenders. I discuss the Church’s “one drop” policy in chapter 13 in the book and explore its impossibilities.

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How did Spencer W. Kimball exemplify his belief that revelation only comes to those who are “reaching as high as he can”?

President Spencer W. Kimball studied the issue out in his mind, learned the history of the restrictions for himself, and sought new sources of information. He studied the scriptures and, according to his son Edward Kimball, he concluded that the restrictions “did not come from explicit scriptures but rather from interpretations by various Church leaders.”

He fasted, prayed, sought inspiration in the temple, and laid the groundwork for consensus among senior Church leaders. The lack of consensus among leaders had prevented change in the past and President Kimball recognized the need for consensus as an important component in moving forward.

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What is some previously unpublished information in the book?

The book includes quotes from the Pitman shorthand version of Brigham Young and Orson Pratt speeches, some of which had never been transcribed before. Orson Pratt gave two strident anti-slavery speeches. In one of those speeches he stated that there is no evidence that Black people are descendants of Cain, which was Brigham Young’s only explanation for the priesthood restriction.

Read George D. Watt’s 1851 Journal from Liverpool to Chimney Rock for the First Time

See more

The book also includes evidence from Joseph F. Smith’s 1879 notes when he interviewed Black priesthood holder Elijah Able. It includes the fact that Joseph F. Smith set apart Elijah Able for his third mission in 1883.

It includes a variety of Black Latter-day Saints from the Century of Black Mormons database hosted at the Marriott Library at the University of Utah. Most readers of the book will likely have never heard of many of these Black pioneers before. Their stories offer evidence of the ways that the racial restrictions played out in the lives of Black Latter-day Saints and personalize the policies in new ways.

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About the interview participant

W. Paul Reeve is the Simmons Chair of Mormon Studies in the History Department at the University of Utah where he teaches courses on Utah history, Mormon history, and the history of the U.S. West. He is Project Manager and General Editor of a digital database, Century of Black Mormons, designed to name and identify all known Black Mormons baptized into the faith between 1830 and 1930.

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Further Reading

• How Well Do You Know Brigham Young?
• Who Was Jane Manning James?
• How Has the Book of Mormon Influenced Race Discussions?
• How Did Race Factor Into Pioneer-Era Latter-day Saint Settlement and Missionary Work?
• What Did Spencer W. Kimball Write About the Priesthood Revelation?

Race and Priesthood Resources

• Let’s Talk About Race and Priesthood (Deseret Book)
• Century of Black Mormons Database (Marriott Library)
• Spencer W. Kimball and the Revelation on Priesthood (BYU Studies)
• Race and the Priesthood (Gospel Topics Essay)
• Discussing Difficult Topics: Race and the Priesthood (Religious Educator)
• The Autobiography of Jane Manning James (Church History)

Interviews from the Let’s Talk About series

• Let’s Talk About Polygamy (Brittany Chapman Nash)
• Let’s Talk About the Translation of the Book of Mormon (Michael Hubbard MacKay)
• Let’s Talk About the Book of Abraham (Kerry Muhlestein)
• Let’s Talk About the Law of Consecration (Steven C. Harper)
• Let’s Talk About Faith and Intellect (Terryl Givens)
• Let’s Talk About Temples and Ritual (Jennifer C. Lane)
• Let’s Talk About Race and Priesthood (W. Paul Reeve)