Excommunicated Mormon historian D. Michael Quinn (who was ostensibly stripped of his LDS membership for publicly exposing, reporting and publishing a history of the Mormon Church's pattern of ongoing lies, practices and cover-ups relating to post-Manifesto polygamy) offers a devastating timeline review of the bigoted, discriminatory and anti-civil rights actions and attitudes of the Utah Mormon Church designed to control and restrict the exercise of equal human rights by African-Americans within Utah's (and more specifically, Salt Lake City's) boundaries.
In his excerpted analysis below, Quinn also makes note of the Mormon Church's equally reprehensible and similarly-bigoted history of teachings and practices towards gays and lesbians.
(Note: Short repetitions periodically appear in the reproduced text that follows, given that some points are also reiterated in photograph sublines that accompany Quinn's article):
"Utah Mormon Discrimination Against Blacks
"Even after federal emancipation of America's slaves in the 1860s, LDS church president Brigham Young referred to African-American slavery as a religious necessity. Earlier, as both church president and governor, he had instructed the Utah legislature in 1852 to legalize the slavery of African-Americans. This directly contradicted Joseph Smith's proposal in 1844 'to abolish slavery by the year 1850' by financially compensating Southern slave-owners through the sale of federal lands in the West. Utah Mormonism's reversal of Joseph Smith's social policy toward Negroes was mirrored by the refusal of LDS presidents after 1844 to follow the founding prophet's example of giving the priesthood to blacks who were not slaves.
"For more than a century, Utah restricted African-Americans from patronizing white restaurants and hotels, prohibited them from public swimming pools, and required them to sit in the balconies of theaters. During World War II, African-Americans wearing their nation's uniform had to sit in the balcony of Utah theaters, while German prisoners-of-war sat on the main floor with white servicemen and civilians. Utah law also prohibited marriage between a white person and a black (including persons only one-eighth Negro).
"Utah's racial discrimination did not occur by happenstance nor did it continue into modern times by accident. It was promoted by the highest leaders of the state's dominant church. As late as 1941, Counselor J. Reuben Clark used the word [rhymes with 'trigger'] in his First Presidency office diary. In 1944, the First Presidency authorized local LDS leaders to join 'as individuals a civic organization whose purpose is to restrict and control negro settlement' in Salt Lake City. A year later, LDS president George Albert Smith wrote: 'Talked to Pres Clark & Nicholas [G. Smith, an Assistant to the Quorum of the Twelve Apostles] about the use of [LDS] meeting houses for meetings to prevent Negroes from becoming neighbors.' The church president's diary did not indicate whether he endorsed or opposed this activity, but his brother Nicholas G. Smith described it as 'race hatred.'
"In 1947, when discussing the site of the future Los Angeles temple, First Presidency Counselor J. Reuben Clark asked the LDS church's attorney in that area 'to purchase as much of that property as we can in order to control the colored situation.'
"In 1947, the First Presidency wrote that 'the intermarriage of the Negro and White races, [is] a concept which has heretofore been most repugnant to most normal-minded people from the ancient patriarchs till now.'
"In 1953, a First Presidency secretary informed a white Mormon that 'The L.D.S. Hospital here in Salt Lake City has a blood bank which does not contain any colored blood.' According to presidency counselor J. Reuben Clark, this policy of segregating African-American blood from the blood donated by so-called 'white people' was intended 'to protect the purity of the blood streams of the people of this Church.'
"During this era of Utah's racial segregation, the First Presidency also repeatedly affirmed that no African-American could stay at the LDS church-owned Hotel Utah (which had maintained this exclusion since its opening in 1911). The LDS president was president of the hotel, and his counselors were its senior vice-presidents. The First Presidency explained this racial exclusion as simply 'the practice of the hotel.'
"When internationally renown singer Marian Anderson returned in March 1948 to participate in a concert at the LDS church's Salt Lake Tabernacle, the First Presidency relented. America's beloved contralto 'was allowed to stay at the Hotel Utah on condition that she use the freight elevator.' This world-famous black woman was not allowed to use the main entrance and lobby.
"Making specific reference to the desegregation controversy in Little Rock, Arkansas, Counselor Clark in 1957 instructed Belle Smith Spafford 'that she should do what she could to keep the National Council [of Women] from going on record in favor of what in the last analysis would be regarded as negro equality.'
"In 1965 and 1967, Apostle Ezra Taft Benson stated in televised meetings on Temple Square in Salt Lake City that 'the so-called civil rights movement as it exists today is a Communist program for revolution in America.'
"In 1963, Apostle Joseph Fielding Smith told 'Look' magazine's editor: '"Darkies" are wonderful people, and they have their place in our Church.'
"In 1967, Apostle Benson also approved the use of one of his talks as the forward to the overtly racist book 'Black Hammer,' which featured the decapitated (and profusely bleeding) head of an African-American male on its cover.
"President Smith's counselors soon extended their support of racial segregation to states beyond Utah. In 1947, when discussing the site of the future Los Angeles temple, Counselor Clark asked the LDS church's attorney in that area 'to purchase as much of that property as we can in order to control the colored situation.' A month later, during the meeting of the First Presidency and Quorum of the Twelve Apostles in the Salt Lake Temple, 'President Clark called attention to the sentiment among many people in this country to the point that we should break down all racial lines, [and] as a result of which sentiment negro people have acquired an assertiveness that they never before possessed and in some cases have become impudent.'
"In 1949, while criticizing the legislative efforts in Arizona to 'guarantee rights of Negroes,' LDS presidency counselor David O. McKay said, 'The South knows how to handle them and they do not have any trouble, and the colored people are better off down there--[but] in California they are becoming very progressive and insolent in many cases.' Likewise, in 1950 Counselor Clark wrote: 'Race tolerance: the trend is just terrible.'
"There was no mystery about why Utah law continued to prohibit interracial marriage. In 1947, the First Presidency wrote that 'the intermarriage of the Negro and White races, [is] a concept which has heretofore been most repugnant to most normal-minded people from the ancient patriarchs till now.' In other words, the First Presidency condemned interracial marriage as abnormal. In 1950, Counselor Clark added that 'anything that breaks down the color line leads to marriage.' Five years later, on behalf of the Quorum of the Twelve Apostles, Joseph Fielding Smith wrote to the First Presidency about African-American members of the LDS church in Utah and referred to the 'danger of intermarriage.'
"In 1953, a First Presidency secretary also informed a white Mormon about the less-obvious extent of Utah's racial segregation: 'The L.D.S. Hospital here in Salt Lake City has a blood bank which does not contain any colored blood.' According to presidency counselor J. Reuben Clark, this policy of segregating African-American blood from the blood donated by so-called 'white people' was intended 'to protect the purity of the blood streams of the people of this Church.'
"During this era of Utah's racial segregation, the First Presidency also repeatedly affirmed that no African-American could stay at the LDS church-owned Hotel Utah (which had maintained this exclusion since its opening in 1911). The LDS president was president of the hotel, and his counselors were its senior vice-presidents. The First Presidency explained this racial exclusion as simply 'the practice of the hotel.'
"Internationally renown singer Marian Anderson endured this racial discrimination in Utah. When she gave her first recital at the University of Utah's Kingsbury Hall, this African-American was denied entry to any of Salt Lake City's hotels and had to stay with one of the concert's promoters. When she returned in March 1948 to participate in a concert at the LDS church's Salt Lake Tabernacle, the First Presidency relented. America's beloved contralto 'was allowed to stay at the Hotel Utah on condition that she use the freight elevator.' This world-famous black woman was not allowed to use the main entrance and lobby.109 Likewise, invited to speak at the University of Utah, Nobel Peace Prize recipient Ralph Bunche was allowed to stay at the LDS church's hotel in 1951 only after this black man agreed to use the freight elevator, 'have his meals in his room and not come to the dining room.'
"Due to their international fame, Anderson and Bunche were exceptions to the Mormon rules of race. As Hotel Utah's senior vice-president, J. Reuben Clark explained: 'Since they are not entitled to the Priesthood, the Church discourages social intercourse with the negro race... ." Therefore, African-Americans were denied equal access to the LDS church's hotel in order "to preserve the purity of the race that is entitled to hold the Priesthood.'
"With such beliefs, the LDS First Presidency did what it could to block national efforts for the civil rights of African-Americans. As previously noted, Counselor McKay in 1949 instructed an Arizona stake president against that state's proposed legislation to 'guarantee rights of Negroes.' Making specific reference to the desegregation controversy in Little Rock, Arkansas, Counselor Clark in 1957 instructed Belle Smith Spafford 'that she should do what she could to keep the National Council [of Women] from going on record in favor of what in the last analysis would be regarded as negro equality.' At that time, Spafford was a vice-president of the National Council of Women.
"As American views began changing toward race relations from the 1940s onward, the Mormons of Utah continued to follow the example of LDS leaders against civil rights for African-Americans. There was widespread use in all-white neighborhoods of Utah's Uniform Real Estate Contract, Form 30, which prohibited the purchaser of real estate and his/her heirs from reselling the property 'to any person not of the Caucasian race.' The Salt Lake City School District prohibited blacks from being teachers and from fulfilling student-teaching requirements of their university training. In addition, 40 percent of Utah's employers refused to hire Negroes. Employers who did hire blacks also discriminated against them in job assignment, promotion, and salary. Blacks were prohibited from eating at the lunch counter of Salt Lake's City-County Building. All of Utah's bowling alleys excluded African-Americans, and LDS hospitals segregated black patients, sometimes requiring them to pay for private rooms. This was also the policy at Utah's Catholic hospitals.
"In these respects, Utah and the Mormons were representative of the rest of America's white society until the 1960s. In 1961, a survey of Salt Lake City by the NAACP showed that 12 percent of cafes, restaurants, and taverns declined to serve blacks, while 80 percent of the city's beauty shops and barber shops refused to do so. Likewise, 72 percent of Salt Lake City's hotels and 49 percent of its motels refused accommodations to African-Americans that year.
"After Counselor Clark's death in 1961, Apostle Ezra Taft Benson became the Mormon hierarchy's strident voice against the national crusade for African-American civil rights. Benson's Negrophobic rhetoric intensified after the federal Civil Rights Act of 1964 drastically changed Utah's patterns of racial discrimination. In 1965 and 1967, he stated in televised meetings on Temple Square in Salt Lake City that 'the so-called civil rights movement as it exists today is a Communist program for revolution in America.' In 1967, Apostle Benson also approved the use of one of his talks as the forward to the overtly racist book 'Black Hammer,' which featured the decapitated (and profusely bleeding) head of an African-American male on its cover. Subtitled White Alternatives, this book warned about the 'well-defined plans for the establishment of a Negro Soviet dictatorship in the South.' In 1968, Apostle Benson also instructed BYU students about 'black Marxists' and 'the Communists and their Black Power fanatics.'
"At this time, LDS president David O. McKay had a Democrat (Hugh B. Brown) as a counselor, who was mystified that McKay allowed Benson to endorse the speeches and activities of nationally known segregationists. This politically liberal counselor was unaware of the LDS church president's private views about 'insolent' African-Americans who wanted equal rights.
"In 1963, Utah ended its restrictions on interracial marriage, and Counselor Brown officially endorsed civil rights for persons of all races that year. However, until that year, every living prophet of the LDS church since Brigham Young either actively opposed the civil rights of African-Americans or passively endorsed the existing civil discriminations against them in Utah.
"In that same year, Apostle Joseph Fielding Smith told Look magazine's editor: '"Darkies" are wonderful people, and they have their place in our Church.' At best, this revealed the racial paternalism that governed LDS headquarters. However, this platitude was also a smoke-screen for the worst of what Utah Mormon leaders had done against African-American rights for the previous 116 years.
"From Anti-Black to Anti-Gay
"Just as President Gordon B. Hinckley has said that same-sex marriage has no legitimate claim as a 'civil right' in Utah or anywhere else, previous First Presidencies also stated that African-Americans had no legitimate right to unrestricted access to marriage, nor to unrestricted blood transfusions, nor to rent a room in the LDS church's hotel, nor to reside in Utah's white neighborhoods, nor to live near the Los Angeles Temple, nor to be in a hospital bed next to a white patient. Just as the First Presidency previously condemned interracial marriages as abnormal, it has recently condemned same-sex marriages as abnormal. The LDS church's opposition to gay rights is consistent with its historical opposition to African-American rights.
"Even when a general authority publicly apologized in September 2000 for 'the actions and statements of individuals who have been insensitive to the pain suffered by the victims of racism,' he claimed that the LDS leadership had an admirable history of race relations. Elder Alexander B. Morrison said: 'How grateful I am that The Church of Jesus Christ of Latter-day Saints has from its beginnings stood strongly against racism in any of its malignant manifestations.' This was a by now familiar smoke-screen for the previous behavior of Mormon prophets, seers, and revelators. LDS headquarters has never apologized for the legalization of Negro slavery by Brigham Young in pioneer Utah, nor for the official LDS encouragement to lynch Negro males, nor for the racial segregation policies of the First Presidency until 1963, nor for Ezra Taft Benson's 1967 endorsement of a book which implied that decapitating black males was a 'White Alternative.' . . .
"For persons who believe that these various actions of the LDS First Presidency were God's will for suppressing minorities, I suggest they rethink a passage in The Book of Mormon: 'For none of these iniquities come of the Lord; for he doeth that which is good among the children of men; and he doeth nothing save it be plain unto the children of men; and he inviteth them all to come unto him and partake of his goodness; and he denieth none that come unto him, black and white, bond and free, male and female; and he remembereth the heathen; and all are alike unto God, both Jew and Gentile' (2 Nephi 26:33).
"Counselor Clark told the general conference of April 1940 that the First Presidency 'is not infallible in our judgment, and we err.' I believe this applies to the statements and actions of several 'living prophets' and First Presidencies in restricting the civil rights of African-Americans and other minorities.
"LDS president Gordon B. Hinckley has dismissed Mormonism's earlier race-based policies as 'those little tricks of history' which are irrelevant now. However, his twenty-five years of promoting political campaigns against the possibility of gay rights is one more example of the LDS hierarchy's discrimination against minorities who are not its 'kind of people.'
"Furthermore, Counselor Clark told the general conference of April 1940 that the First Presidency 'is not infallible in our judgment, and we err.] He also instructed LDS educators in 1954 that 'even the President of the Church has not always spoken under the direction of the Holy Ghost.' I believe this applies to the statements and actions of several 'living prophets' and First Presidencies in restricting the civil rights of African-Americans and other minorities. According to LDS doctrine, the statements and actions of the church's president can be wrong, even sinful,145 and historically the LDS First Presidency has often been profoundly wrong with regard to the civil rights of American minorities.
"In fact, when an end came to the various tyrannies of the majority against racial groups in America, LDS policies changed as well. What various 'living prophets' had defined as God's doctrine turned out to be a Mormon social policy which reflected the majority's world view. I submit that the same applies to the LDS church's campaign against any law which benefits or protects gays and lesbians.
"LDS president Gordon B. Hinckley has dismissed Mormonism's earlier race-based policies as 'those little tricks of history' which are irrelevant now. However, his twenty-five years of promoting political campaigns against the possibility of gay rights is one more example of the LDS hierarchy's discrimination against minorities who are not its 'kind of people.'
"The Sincerity of Prejudice and Civil Discrimination
"LDS leaders have repeatedly opposed civil rights for blacks and gays while denying that such action is 'anti-Negro' or 'racist,' 'anti-gay' or 'homophobic.' The previous quotes show that First Presidency counselor J. Reuben Clark, for one, defended wholesale restrictions against the civil rights of African-Americans. Nevertheless, at the same time, he regarded himself as compassionate toward blacks.
"In this paper I have tried to acknowledge the sincere beliefs and fears of those who oppose same-sex marriage. However, an 'Appeal to Sincerity' is legitimate only when attempting to understand the personal motivation for various behaviors. Sincerity cannot logically be invoked to assess the legitimacy or ethical value of those behaviors.
"The past and present are filled with actions which most of us condemn, despite the fact that their perpetrators claimed they acted out of their sincere beliefs in a religion, or race, or social class, or country. If we regard slavery as wrong, the sincerity of slave-owners is irrelevant to the issue, even when the slave-owners were our revered national leaders, George Washington and Thomas Jefferson. If denial of rights and protections for African-Americans was wrong, the sincerity of the oppressors is irrelevant to the issue, even if we otherwise admire the oppressors as religious leaders. Likewise, the sincerity of the heterosexual majority's anxieties and fears is not an ethical justification for denying rights and protections to the homosexual minority. . . .
"In view of the fears, prejudices, and hatreds which existed both then and now, American society's sense of fairness is far greater today than it was fifty years ago. As the U.S. Supreme Court ruled in 1996 when Romer v. Evans invalidated the LDS church's behind-the-scenes victory against civil rights for gays and lesbians in Colorado, 'a state cannot so deem a class of persons a stranger to its laws. . . .
"When the Joseph Smith Memorial Building opened in 1993 as added office-space for the LDS bureaucracy at headquarters, this multi-story building had two fine-dining restaurants for the general public. The human resources director instructed the manager of these church-owned restaurants not to hire as waiters any males who 'seem gay.'
"For example, after President Hinckley's statement, Mormon leadership successfully opposed adding sexual orientation to Salt Lake City's anti-discrimination ordinance. This is understandable in light of reports that LDS headquarters actively discriminates against gays and lesbians in employment. With no claim of due process, this discrimination extends to completely secular jobs and requires no proof of 'inappropriate' sexual behavior. For example, when the Joseph Smith Memorial Building opened in 1993 as added office-space for the LDS bureaucracy at headquarters, this multi-story building had two fine-dining restaurants for the general public. The human resources director instructed the manager of these church-owned restaurants not to hire as waiters any males who 'seem gay.' Similar to visual profiling for racial discrimination, LDS headquarters apparently denies employment on the basis of stereotypical views about masculine appearance and homosexual characteristics, or stereotypical views about feminine appearance and lesbian characteristics. As indicated in the above example, this has nothing to do with 'morality' or the actual sexual behavior of persons who are subjected to this discrimination. In fact, completely heterosexual persons may also be misidentified as lesbian or gay on the basis of speech or appearance, and then suffer employment discrimination in Utah, This contributes to the climate of fear, which is why anti-discrimination laws are necessary.
"The climate of homophobic antagonism in Mormon-dominated Utah creates constant anxiety for many gays, lesbians, bisexuals, and transgender persons. It is historically similar to being a Christian in pagan Rome, a Protestant Huguenot in Catholic-dominated France, a Quaker in Puritan Massachusetts, a black in Klan-dominated Mississippi, a Jew in Nazi Germany, a Catholic in Protestant-dominated Belfast, a Muslim in Hindu-dominated Kashmir, or a Hindu in Muslim-dominated Islamabad. Its familiarity makes this pattern even more tragic in cultures which claim divine approval for exerting social oppression against their minorities.
"Just as Catholics, Protestants, and Mormons once claimed righteousness and God's blessing in denying basic rights to African-Americans and Asian-Americans, they are now claiming righteousness and God's blessing for denying basic rights to gays, lesbians, bisexuals, and transgender persons. It takes a peculiar kind of blindness to currently affirm that the majority's historical discrimination against despised racial minorities was ethically and civilly wrong, yet argue that it is now ethically and civilly right to discriminate against the despised minority of homosexuals and transgender persons."
(D. Michael Quinn, "Prelude to the National 'Defense of Marriage' Campaign: Civil Discrimination Against Feared or Despised Minorities," research paper given "Special Award for Outstanding Scholarly Research and Writing," Affirmation Conference, Long Beach, September 2001; originally published in "Dialogue: A Journal of Mormon Thought," 33:3, pp. 1-52; for entire article, see:
http://www.affirmation.org/against_marriage_equality/prelude.shtml)
Edited 12 time(s). Last edit at 05/18/2011 11:52PM by steve benson.