Community Experience

 Perspective on Mormon Black History

I attended the forum hosted by BYU’s African Studies and the Office of Civic Engagement, “Perspective on Mormon Black History” where “Dada” Darius Gray spoke. When I was a missionary in Berlin, Germany, we would ask people on the street what they knew about Mormons. Among the answers that we often received was the idea that Mormonism was an especially racist religious sect. As a Mormon missionary I sometimes tried to explain why blacks were not allowed to fully participate in aspects of our church until 1978, aspects of the church that included being ordained to priesthood office and participating in temple ordinances. I didn’t fully understand myself, but I knew that God loves all of his children. I thought that this forum might help me better understand, so I was excited to attend and to participate.

The main point of the forum was that “Black Church History” and “Church History” are one in the same; just because the most common recount of church history focuses mainly on white males does not mean that other groups did not contribute or were not important. The church was established in 1830, the first black member was baptized in 1832, and President Brigham Young’s announcement of the ban on men of African descent receiving the priesthood didn’t take place until 1852. The stories of Jane Elizabeth Manning James and Ben Hope were told, both showcasing the great discrimination that black members of the church faced and the faith that they lived despite that discrimination and persecution.

Jane Elizabeth Manning James was said to be the most famous of the Black Mormon Pioneers. She and her family joined the church in Wilton, Connecticut and then traveled to the church headquarters in New York. They were allowed to ship their luggage on the boat where they secured passage, but they were not allowed to board the ship because they were black. In result, they traveled 800 miles on foot. Later, Jane and her family crossed the plains to arrive in Salt Lake City, and she asked to enter the temple and was allowed to perform proxy baptisms for her dead ancestors, but was not allowed to receive her temple endowment. She asked, “Is there no blessing for me?” because of her being refused based solely on the color of her skin.

Ben Hope was born in 1893. He searched for truth and for baptism and studied many religions before joining a church that he felt good about. After being baptized into that church, God told him that there was still something more. Eventually the missionaries found him, gave him a Book of Mormon, and taught him the gospel. Ben felt impressed to be baptized, but the elders encouraged him to really study everything out before committing himself to baptism to make sure that he wouldn’t be swayed by the difficulties of the world and the devil. They provided him with various different texts, all of which he read through and be the end, and he “hungered to be baptized” but was required to fight in the war. The Book of Mormon proved to be a source of safety and protection, and he came home from war even more convinced that he wanted to be baptized into the church, and so he was baptized. After joining the church, there was a point where he was captured by a mob of KKK who threatened his life because they thought he was over-stepping his bounds and trying to leave behind his “black-ness” by joining the Mormon church. He was able to escape and shared his experience with some of the church members the next day. These members played off his experience by saying something along the lines of “Brother Hope, this is just a persecution of the devil and we all have to endure this.” At first the members minimizing Ben Hope’s experience upset me, but his mindset of “if these beautiful people could endure persecution, why couldn’t I?” helped me to better connect the speaker’s main point that Black History and “regular” history are one in the same.

Darius Gray emphasized that there wasn’t a “black pathway” or a “white pathway” with the saints coming west, but rather one pathway that we endured together. He called the policy banning blacks from receiving the priesthood and temple ordinances a “policy that was quietly put in place rather than given as revelation of God.” This statement can be difficult for church members to stomach because we believe our prophets to be the mouthpiece of the Lord. Even with their divine calling and authority, they still make mistakes and they still were influenced by prejudice and racism. The church today now works heavily to include all denominations and welcome everyone equally world-wide, but a step in that process should be to change the way that church history is taught and not leave out the stories of black Mormons. The question of “How long will it take to incorporate the teaching of different perspectives rather than just the white male one on Mormon history?” was asked, and Garius Gray said that it could take a while because there was a lot of misinformation in church literature trying to explain why the policy was correct. The church has renounced all of that literature and published an essay on lds.org that more accurately explains the history and role of the policy. Part of the process is revealing the truth; there was discrimination and the policy was not justified. Darius Gray advised us that we (as students) can help with the process of changing to appreciate different races because we are the upcoming generation that will join wards and become teachers and leaders. He said, “don’t sanitize. Tell the facts of the story to the best of your ability.” Not everything in life is “happy-happy” and it the discrimination and persecution against black members of the church is not something easy to talk about or learn about. It is our duty to incorporate other perspectives and present the truth by showing that “black history” and “white history” are the same history because that is one way to prevent further racism.

How does this relate to discussions from class?
My cultural experience with Perspectives on Mormon Black History most directly relates to our discussions from class on race. The policy was an actively racist policy that has now been discontinued. The current issue that Dr. Gray addressed has to do with people being passive racists rather than anti-racist. By only teaching and talking about the white, male perspective from church history, we are enacting passive racism because important, diverse elements of history are being discounted and made out to be less important just by not sharing them. In this situation, and anti-racist would do their best to teach from every perspective, not just the white, male perspective. While the elements of church history that have been taught for years and years are important, black history has happened alongside it and simply been left out of the retelling.

How will this experience affect my classroom?
To be an anti-racist in my classroom I need to do as Dr. Gray suggested and teach from multiple perspectives. For the curriculum, I can choose multicultural authors and stories. I can teach my students using structural ideology and break down the barriers in place of their success rather than attributing their difficulties to their race or trying to change them instead of the incorrect system. I also need to be willing and prepared to address, discuss, and study difficult concepts in my classroom that will prepare my students for their current and future lives. I need to be respectful of my students’ religions, but I need to stop bullying that occurs because students justify their actions with religious beliefs concerning race or homosexuality or gender. The goal is to show that our cultures have similarities and we can all relate to one another instead of fostering a hateful environment that separates students because of their differences.