When I was very young, we had a black nanny/housekeeper who lived with us for several years. Many times when my mother wasn't around, our nanny/housekeeper was more of a mother to me than my own mother was. She cooked dinner for us every night, and then ate alone in another room while our family ate together in the dining room. The Jim Crow laws were popular then. I was too young at that time to see any injustices. My family stayed in touch with her over the folliwing years. We all loved her. She was elderly and dieing in a hospital bed shortly before I went on my mission. I gave her a priesthood blessing a week before she died, wanting to heal her and knowing somehow deep inside that it wasn't going to work. I always asked myself what exactly she did in the pre-existance to deserve a curse in this life. Whatever it was, it didn't matter because we loved her anyway. Of course I realized years later that god did not curse her, only the earthly men in our church did.

It is under these conditions that this issue is important to me. When you see documentaries on tv about mormonism and the priesthood ban that was in place until 1978, they always say that blacks were not allowed to hold the priesthood. They leave it at that. They never go in to what that ban actually meant. For nearly every person who sees this on tv, it means something entirely different than the truth of what it really meant. Nearly everyone outside of the church is used to a church where only the minister who leads the congregatiin holds the priesthood. No one else in any other church holds the priesthood. So okay, no black person could be the one and only minister (equivalent of the mormon bishop). That is prejudicial still, but with minimal consequences. What they don't see is that every young boy from age twelve and up, is a priesthood holder in the mormon church. In the mormon church, you and your family are almost completely ostracised if the male membeds of the family don't hold the priesthood. Most activities and blessings exclude non-priesthood holders. They never talk about that on tv. Most of the world may never know just how prejudiced everyone in the church was until 1978, and just how thoroughly ostracised every black person really was. This included myself at the time, even though that's not what I wanted.

+100000

I don't see how the church will ever get past this. When I was a mishie in the deep south 20 years later it was still such a nasty subject. The old black men without fail knew the Mormon church and could see through the bull shit. They usually expressed their disgust. Women and young adults/teenagers not so much.

I will never understand why we let the church get away with 'priesthood ban' to describe their behavior.

The average person hears that and thinks Blacks couldn't be pastors. Even younger Mormons hear it and think it only affected a few priesthood functions.

They shut out every woman and child as well, and that never comes up once the problem is defined as 'priesthood ban'.

This is a great post. It was much more than just the "priesthood". No black women as RS president or ANY position of consequence, No black women getting endowments, no black boys or girls doing baptisms for the dead.

In England before the ban was lifted we had black Primary Presidents, Black RS Presidents. The men were always Sunday School Presidents as that was the best job we coukd give them. In London there were quite a few black members before the ban was lifted. Bur everybody hated the ban . When the ban was lifted the ward was literally all crying tears of joy! But now to find out it was never doctrine just BY being racist just makes the whole thing just more disgusting!

Thanks! That's pretty cool to know about the black RS presidents, etc. in England. Never would have happened in my neck of the woods.

Not only that, but pre 1978, missionaries in the U.S. were instructed to not teach blacks and, when encountered during tracting, missionaries were told to encourage them to attend the Church of their choice and wish them good Unbelievable...

Sharapata,
Correct. The summer before my mission (pre 1978), I went on splits with the full time elders once/week. This is EXACTLY what we were told.

From the current essay on Race and the Priesthood:

"Today, the Church disavows the theories advanced in the past that black skin is a sign of divine disfavor or curse, or that it reflects unrighteous actions in a premortal life; that mixed-race marriages are a sin; or that blacks or people of any other race or ethnicity are inferior in any way to anyone else. Church leaders today unequivocally condemn all racism, past and present, in any form."

Thus throwing every prophet from Joseph Smith to Spencer Kimball prior to the change in policy under the bus as RACISTS and unable to KNOW the TRUE will of God concerning how HIS children should be treated.

Don't listen to anything the current leaders tell you that in your own mind you know to be wrong. God gave you reason and the ability to communicate with him directly.

Beware of ANY MAN that tells you he or other men cannot lead you astray. THEY CAN AND THEY DO.

TBM's who lurk here take note. If you believe in God and you believe in agency, be prepared to answer this question:

"Why didn't you use it when you knew things were not right?"

I've often thought about that essay. Makes me think, couldn't have God just slapped one of those Smith-Kimball guys in the head and said, "Look, you're my prophet---KNOCK THIS SHIT OFF! Everyone is my child and I love them all".

To my knowledge, the Mormon Church is the only denomination that has its African American resources run almost entirely by apologists. Take a gander at the whois for "blacklds.com:"

Domain Name: BLACKLDS.COM
Registrar Registration Expiration Date: 2016-05-31T01:33:00.00Z
Registrar: ENOM, INC.
Registrant Name: DOMAIN ADMINISTRATOR
Registrant Organization: FAIR
Registrant Street: PO BOX 491677
Registrant City: REDDING
Registrant State/Province: CA
Registrant Postal Code: 96049
Registrant Country: US
Registrant Phone: +1.4355034752

Everyone here knows what would have happened to a person's church membership if, in 1977 they said something to other church members like "Brigham Young was wrong. His words about black people were based on racism when he said that if a black and white person marry, they should both be killed on the spot." or if you said something like "black people were not unvalient in the pre-existance". There would have been a church court for you. If you refused to take it back, you would have been excommunicated for apostacy.

So in the essay on the church website where they condem all racism past and present, they condem themselves, and those who preceded them in the succession of their calimed priesthood authority. And yet they admit no wrong doing directly about that. You have to study church history and figure it out for yourself. Even if these men who run the church today are completely innocent of racism (doubtful), the office they hold has a history of doing evil things. They need to answer for those things.

I was taught by church leaders that god would never allow the prophets to lead the people astray, that god would take the prophet's life before that could happen. Well guess what? It happened.

The mormon church has little hope and a grim future. They themselves are not capable of performing the steps of repentance that they have had hundreds of thousands of their missionaries teach to others, as the necessary steps to achieve salvation. They seem to believe that their own second annointing ceremonies will save and exhalt them as individuals. But what about the rest of the world? What about the damage they've done, even to a whole race of people? They seem to think it's okay to have excluded blacks because if the black people and the rest of the world don't believe that the church is true, then what's the problem? The problem is that they taught racism and institutionalized racist practices in their organization. Then they lied about what they did, and why. Then they refused to apologize for it.



Edited 3 time(s). Last edit at 08/09/2015 11:36AM by azsteve.