What has been the Historical Attitude of the Mormon Church towards the Black People?

Historically the Mormon Church has taken a very racist attitude towards the black people. This began to be somewhat modified when a revelation that black men are now eligible for the Priesthood was announced to the church June 9, 1978 by President Spencer W. Kimball. In spite of lifting the ban on black participation in the priesthood, the Mormon church has done nothing, according to the public record, to retract or to atone for the many slanderous statements against blacks.

Early on Joseph Smith, founder of Mormonism, went on record as saying, “Had I anything to do with the Negro, I would confine them by strict law to their own species” (History of the Church, v. 7, pp. 217-218). Admittedly this statement was made during a time of enormous racial injustice in the United States including slavery. But bear in mind that Joseph Smith claimed that as a prophet he had a special connection with God and spoke for God to his followers.

The Journal of Discourses, which contains many of the sermons of the early Church Presidents, records, “You see 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 blessings of the intelligence that is generally bestowed upon mankind . . . Cain slew his brother . . . and the Lord put a mark upon him, which is the flat nose and the black skin . . . another curse is pronounced upon the same race—that they should be the servant of servants and they will be until that curse is removed . . . 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. It will always be so. (c. 7, pp. 290-291)"

Racism has been a terrible blight on Christianity. Tragically it has been widely practiced but there are no grounds for racial prejudice or discrimination in the Bible or in true Christianity. This is but another example of how far the Mormon Church strays from historical, biblical Christianity.

This and many other topics are explored in my new book Mormonism and the Bible.