Join with us today as we continue to discuss the history of racism in the Mormon church with historian Matt Harris. We will discuss segregation in Utah, including blood banks, hotels, in Relief Societies, etc. In the 1950s a talk was given by Mormon leader Mark E. Petersen that generated a lot of backlash from critics. Matt Harris gives an insider’s view into the minds of these Mormon leaders and how they were not all in agreement with the priesthood and temple ban.
Episode Transcript
Host: John Dehlin · Guest: Matt Harris
This transcript is machine-generated and lightly edited for readability. The audio is authoritative. Please excuse occasional errors in names and spelling.
Introduction and Episode Overview
John Dehlin [00:00:00] Hello everyone and welcome back to another episode of Mormon Stories podcast. I'm your host for today, John Dehlin. It's June 10, 2024 and we are beginning part five of our epic series with Dr. Matthew Harris about his amazing new book, Second Class Black Mormons and the Struggle for Racial Equality. I've said in previous podcasts, for me, this is one of the top three most important books to read ever written on Mormon history, specifically if you want to understand either the priesthood and temple ban on black members. But even more interestingly for some, the inner workings of how Mormon church leadership in the 20th century, and I would argue 21st century make decisions.
John Dehlin [00:00:49] Who knew what when, how they handle scandal, how they handle disagreements in the quorum, how they handle dissenters, how they make decisions, to what extent public pressure impacts decisions, how they punish people who speak out. But this book is brilliant. We are doing this as a standalone podcast series called Inside Mormon Leadership the Struggle for Racial Equality. And this is a pilot series that we are doing with your support. So if you are valuing this series, we need you to step up and support it financially. Go to donorbox.org Matt Harris, the Maven and Julie will include that link in the show notes as well as a link to purchase the book.
John Dehlin [00:01:41] And if, let's just say 100 or two interview donate between 10 and 50 bucks a month, we will be able to continue the series all the way through to 10 or 20 episodes. And it's worth it. Today we're going to be talking about Segregation.
John Dehlin [00:01:58] It's chapter three in the book. It's entitled Segregation 1954-1962. And instead, and I regret that Gerardo and Nate aren't able to join us today, but we do have Back in studio, Dr. Matt Harris. Hey Matt.
Matt Harris [00:02:17] Hey John.
John Dehlin [00:02:18] Thanks for joining us.
Matt Harris [00:02:19] Oh, it's a pleasure.
John Dehlin [00:02:21] And Matt, instead of me recapping kind of last episode and what we've talked about, I'll let you go ahead and do any recap you want and then we'll just jump right in to a discussion of kind of how the church handled segregation in the 50s and 60s and what it believed about it. So let me just turn the time over to you, Matt.
Matt Harris [00:02:42] Yeah, thanks Sean. I'm enjoying being back today. So last episode we talked about racial passing, which is light skinned Latter Day Saints of African ancestry. They were told by their church that they had one drop of African blood and therefore they were light skinned. But yet they were deemed cursed by the church's theology.
Racial Passing and Segregation in the Church
Matt Harris [00:03:05] And this whole idea of racial passing Meant that they could pass to a. Or move to a white area, let's say, in South Africa, where they were deemed cursed. They were denied the priesthood and temple privileges. They then would pack up and move to Idaho or Arizona or especially Utah, where they would pass as white. So they knew they had cursed ancestry.
Matt Harris [00:03:32] But since they looked white, they had white skin, they had blond hair, blue eyes, they would just simply pass as white. They would get ordained to the priesthood if they were a man, they would be able to go to the temple and get sealed to their spouse as couples and have their children sealed to them. And it created a hardship in the church because a number of people who were moving away from South Africa in particular, where this is very prevalent, they had relatives back home in South Africa who couldn't trace their genealogy out of the country, Meaning they had to prove their racial purity in order to advance in the church.
Matt Harris [00:04:07] And they couldn't do it. And so some saints just simply left and went to Utah, where they could pass as white and achieve upward mobility and privilege in the church. Others stayed behind. Well, it created a hardship because some family members were ordained to the priesthood and married in the temple in Utah, but yet their uncles, aunts, brothers, cousins back in South Africa couldn't experience those privileges because they couldn't pass as white. They had to prove their genealogy, that they were racially pure, and they couldn't do it.
Matt Harris [00:04:37] So it created a hardship. And President McKay got word that this was going on, that people were passing as white, and it was an open secret in the church. One of the church's educators said that he knew of several instances of this going on or occurring in Salt Lake City, including a person who was a member of a bishopric Anyway, so President McKay decided to put a stop to it, which is that he said that in the spring of 1954, you didn't have to prove your racial purity anymore. If you looked white and you weren't quite certain if you were black or white or had African ancestry, then you could just move forward with priesthood ordination.
Matt Harris [00:05:15] And so he put a stop to it. But he also commissioned a secret committee called the Bennion committee. And this was a committee chaired by apostle Adam S. Bennion. And his cousin, a church educator named Lowell Bennion, was either a member of the committee or just an unofficial member. But anyway, the committee had looked into the possibility of lifting the ban in the spring of 1954. This is after President McKay returned from South Africa and also Brazil, where this was a problem.
Matt Harris [00:05:49] And they produced a report in which they argued that there was no scriptural basis for the priesthood and temple ban, and also that there was no scriptural support for the justifications of the ban. Whether it was the pre existent rationale or this idea that folks were cursed, there was nothing predetermined about any of it. And they told President McKay that the ban was more of a policy and a practice.
Matt Harris [00:06:19] And of course, the implication was that it needed to go. Well, President McKay couldn't just lift the ban in the spring of 1954 for two reasons. One, he didn't have the support of his fellow brethren in the high church leadership, and secondly, that President McKay, as would Spencer Kimball much later in the 1970s, they were worried about lifting the ban and the effect that it would have on the southern members of the church. And this is the 1950s. Mormons are. They have strong racial prejudices, just like their neighbors of various different faiths. So those are two realistic considerations that President McKay was faced with. And another thing would happen in the spring of 1954 that would absolutely shake the Brethren. And that is when the US Supreme Court declared segregation unconstitutional.
John Dehlin [00:07:08] And that's kind of why 1954 features as such a prevalent sort of a significant year around the race question of Mormonism in your book. Is that right? It's Brown versus Board of Education.
Matt Harris [00:07:23] Yeah. The Brethren, they're not immune to larger societal pressures. And civil rights had been. I teach civil rights at Colorado State University in Southern Colorado. And one of the things my students learn is that civil rights was a long time in the making. And there have been a lot of people in American society who had racial equality on their minds, certainly African Americans, but also progressive white and brown Americans. And so they've been agitating for change for a very long time.
Matt Harris [00:07:55] And so the, when the, when the board, when the decision came, the Brethren, there were a range of responses to the Brown decision because they were afraid that even though the Brown decision only affected public schools, they saw the writing on the wall that if you desegregate public schools, what's next? Restaurants, bus stations, all of that. So they, they feared it. And of course, the elephant in the room were, was the church's teachings on marriage, that if you have integrated people together, working and worshiping together and other things that you would do together.
Matt Harris [00:08:35] They're afraid that, of course, they'd become too cozy. They would start to date and ultimately marry, which would complicate the church's teachings on interracial marriage. So that was what was driving a lot of this stuff with their aversion to the Brown decision. They were afraid that it would ultimately lead to. To a marriage, that policy that they didn't support.
John Dehlin [00:08:56] Okay, all right. So does that take us to the beginnings of. Of chapter three on segregation?
Matt Harris [00:09:02] I think it does.
John Dehlin [00:09:03] Okay, so. So yeah, let's. Let's jump in.
The LDS Church Responds to the Brown Decision
Matt Harris [00:09:09] Well, all right. So one of the themes that we'll explore today is how the apostles respond to the Brown decision. And I think those of you who've heard me talk before and read some of the things I've written before is you'll know that not all of the general authorities speak with a unified voice. They have different views that shouldn't be shocking to people.
Matt Harris [00:09:34] And one of the things that they. To demonstrate that point was how they responded to the Brown decision. On the one hand, President McKay thought that the church ought to be just absolutely quiet about it. They should be silent, not say anything about it one way or the other.
Matt Harris [00:09:52] Another person, his counselor, J. Reuben Clark, said that we should talk about it as a church, and we should let them know why we oppose segregation. Do it respectfully, but let people know why. And then there was a third position, one of which we'll talk about extensively today.
Matt Harris [00:10:11] And that's from Apostle Markey Peterson, who made his views well known in this controversial address that he gives at the BYU Teachers Conference, as it's called, which is essentially a conference of BYU religion professors, BYU history professors, and also persons who work for the church education system.
Matt Harris [00:10:32] And so In August of 1954, he gave this address in which it was the most hard hitting, aggressive sermon that probably has ever been given by an LDS apostle in the 20th century. And it was in opposition to the Brown decision.
Matt Harris [00:10:48] Before we drill down on that, let me just paint a broader picture of why the Brethren or how segregation affected church leaders. And then we'll get into some very specifics about Reuben Clark and also, most particularly, Mark Peterson.
Matt Harris [00:11:06] So Utah didn't have segregation laws. It was a. It was a. A city that was segregated by custom, not by law. And the reason why it was segregated by custom and not by law is because, frankly, the African American population in Utah was not high.
Matt Harris [00:11:24] And so the state legislature never saw fit to pass laws that segregated black and white people in schools and restaurants and zoos. But yet they still did it all the same, out of custom. And that is an important distinction, because after the American Civil War, a number of states, particularly in the south, will pass laws that will make it illegal for black and white people to integrate, whether it be at work, whether it be in Schools or elsewhere.
Matt Harris [00:11:54] So. But Utah was segregated by custom or de facto segregation, as we call it. And what that meant was that black people couldn't go to the zoo. There would be maybe a zoo in Salt Lake that would be outlined that black people could go on Wednesdays, but white people could go on the other days.
Matt Harris [00:12:12] And a number of restaurants, not all, but a number of restaurants were segregated. And the schools were not segregated because the students were so few and far between. But black teachers were rarely hired, particularly in African American communities in Utah like Ogden and certain sectors of Salt Lake.
Matt Harris [00:12:36] And the church itself had own properties in Salt Lake and made it very clear that black people were not welcome to dine and lodge at the Hotel Utah. And in my book, I talk about a few instances where some high profile black celebrities and politicians came to the Hotel Utah and they were distraught in terms of the way the church had treated them. So the church was caught up in this.
John Dehlin [00:13:04] The. The opera singer had. Had. Was told she had to ride the freight elevator. And I believe the black congressman, and you'll know the names, I, I don't have them current was told he had to eat in his room. Isn't that right? The. The types of.
Matt Harris [00:13:18] Yeah. There was a black opera singer named Marian Anderson who gave a recital at Utah's Kingsbury Hall. And the Hotel Utah is not like any hotel. It's the nicest hotel in Salt Lake. And so needless to say that when dignitaries visited the city, they wanted to stay in the nicest hotel.
John Dehlin [00:13:36] And it's. And it's a hotel owned church, correct?
Matt Harris [00:13:39] It's a hotel owned by the church, right?
John Dehlin [00:13:41] Yeah.
Matt Harris [00:13:41] And so with Marian Anderson, they made her use the freight elevator to get to and from her room. She couldn't even use the elevator where most of the patrons would use.
John Dehlin [00:13:53] It's kind of like people can perform for us, but we don't want them mixing with us kind of thing.
Matt Harris [00:13:59] That's exactly right. There's a lot of ironies with this. Just to go off script for a quick moment in American culture in the 20th century, a lot of the states in the south had what are called sundown laws, which meant that black people had to be out of white communities after sundown or before sundown.
Matt Harris [00:14:14] And it was so weird to think of that because during the day, these black folks in white communities, oftentimes the women, anyway, they were serving as nannies in white homes and they were caretaking white babies. So they're good enough to be entrusted with your children, but somehow they couldn't be There after dark. I mean, it was just absurd. But such was the nature of 20th century American society. So Utahns are not immune to these larger societal practices. And so Marian Anderson, this prominent singer, is getting the third degree in her treatment. Also, a distinguished diplomat named Ralph J. Bunch, the first African American to win a Nobel Peace Prize.
Matt Harris [00:15:01] He was told that he had to eat the meals in his room. He couldn't enjoy eating in the dining hall with everybody else, all because of his skin color.
John Dehlin [00:15:09] Got it. So that wasn't the congressman, it was the Nobel Peace Prize winner.
Matt Harris [00:15:12] Yeah, the congressman. But one last thing about how this works is Adam Clayton Powell, a distinguished congressman from Harlem who was really well known in the United States. He visited the Hotel Utah on one occasion, and he was told by a young clerk at the front desk that, sorry, we don't allow Negroes, as he said in those days. And the congressman was just furious. And so he demanded to speak to the head of the board of directors, which of course at the time would have been the church president. And so, right then and there, I'm not sure how this works, but they called David O. McKay.
John Dehlin [00:15:45] Yeah.
Matt Harris [00:15:46] And a bystander heard the conversation, and the bystander was close enough to hear the. Everything that was being said. And both of the men, President McKay and the Congressman, had this very heated exchange. And then after the phone call ended, they allowed the congressman to stay in the hotel.
John Dehlin [00:16:03] Okay, so that gives. Gives people a sense for the environment, the segregation environment around 1954 in Utah. Right? Yeah. Okay. Okay. So what happens? What. So any other. I guess the Green Book. Is that something you want to talk about really quick?
Segregation in Utah: The Green Book and Blood Banks
Matt Harris [00:16:22] Yeah. So the Green Book is. It's a book that a lot of communities would publish, usually at the Chamber of Commerce. So that if you are an African American and you were going to a city, frankly, you want to get a copy of the Green Book. And the Green Book will tell you which establishments are safe places for black people. Restaurants that you could. There's a picture of it.
Matt Harris [00:16:48] This is Utah's Green Book, what it would have looked like in the early 60s. And so black people could get a hold of this Green Book and they could look and see which restaurants would serve them. They could get a sense of which hotels would allow them to lodge there. And as I write in my book, sadly, there were not a lot of establishments that allowed black people.
Matt Harris [00:17:09] And this is really a problem if you're traveling. Right. Because a lot of the restaurants and bathrooms at gas stations are segregated. So if you're a black Family and you're traveling, you know, one or two states away, obviously you have to stop and gas up and, and use the restroom and. But yet if there's not a gas station with a restroom that will serve you, then you're kind of out of luck. And so these, these green books were important for black families because they could time their stops according to the establishments that would serve them. And Utah, frankly, and sadly and regrettably didn't have a lot of these, but they had some.
Matt Harris [00:17:50] So anyway, Utah is suffering itself as a state from segregation. The church itself is segregating some church owned properties. And in 1954, the National Urban League, which is the civil rights establishment, said that in large areas of Utah, Nevada and Southern Arizona, they were the worst discrimination, as severe as in the South. Yeah, not sure if that's hyperbole, but that's what major civil rights organization had concluded about Utah.
John Dehlin [00:18:19] I want to make sure you include the discussion about blood banks before we jump in to the Peterson talk. Do you mind talking about the blood banks?
Matt Harris [00:18:29] Yeah, not at all. Not at all. So In World War II, during World War II, the Red Cross had, the American Red Cross had had a policy that they didn't want to contaminate blood banks. And white soldiers who needed blood transfusions during the war could not get blood transfusions from Negro blood banks or vice versa. So they had segregated blood banks in World War II and in 1942, in a very esteemed medical journal, some people had pushed back on this idea of, of segregated blood banks because it was just born out of pure racism to think that that Negro blood could somehow sully somebody's white blood.
Matt Harris [00:19:19] So they were talking about how racist that was. But nonetheless, the church had picked up on this larger societal practice. And during the Korean War, J. Reuben Clark of the governing First Presidency decided that they wanted to figure out ways that they could segregate blood banks. Because of course, they took it a step further that if a white soldier in Korea, a white LDS soldier in Korea, needed a blood transfusion and he received one from a Negro soldier, his blood would be tainted, he would be cursed, he would bear the drop.
John Dehlin [00:19:57] And so the church wanted the bad received by transfusion.
Matt Harris [00:20:05] Yeah, it's, it's hard. I mean, this is, a lot of this stuff is jarring for our modern sensibilities. There's absolutely no question about it. And Reuben Clark was so adamant that the blood banks remained segregated that he saw to it that several Utah, several hotels and, or hotels, several hospitals in Utah were segregated.
Matt Harris [00:20:26] They Segregated blood banks. And I was astonished to learn that some of these large hospitals in Utah did not do away with these segregated blood bank policies until the early 1980s. So even two and three years after the priesthood ban had been lifted.
Matt Harris [00:20:47] But more instructively is that Reuben Clark was adamant that they would try to determine pure bloodlines. And so he had contracted with an LDS scientist. This man's a geneticist named Albin Matson. He's a good LDS guy. He taught at the University of Utah School of Medicine for years, and then he moved over to, I think, the University of Minnesota School of medicine. But Dr. Matson and President Clark form this collaborative partnership in which they would work together to determine through scientific means how to scrutinize bloodlines. And Reuben Clark was swept up in this idea that bloodlines were pure. We've talked about in previous episodes that that's not nonsense, that each of us has indigenous and African ancestry.
John Dehlin [00:21:38] Blood, right? Yeah.
Matt Harris [00:21:40] Yeah. So. But Reuben Clark was emphatic, as were other people in the 20th century, that there could be such a thing as pure bloodlines. And SC science just needed to catch up with this. And so he was working day and night for a number of years, for probably at least five years with Dr. Madsen to determine scientifically if they can do this. And Dr. Madsen was going to conferences. He was conducting research on this.
Matt Harris [00:22:06] And periodically from the night about 1948 to 1953, he was sending President Clark updates about where he was at in his research. And ultimately, he concluded that it was impossible to determine pure bloodlines. And, of course, because no such things exist.
Matt Harris [00:22:26] But this is what they were thinking about in the early 20th, the mid 20th century. And the whole idea would be from Ruben Clark's mind, that you can't mix bloodlines, that black people and white people can't mix, otherwise the curse is prolonged. So that's where they're at in the mid 20th century. And little wonder why brown freaks them out, because the brown decision is going to really, really make them defend and also worry about how the Supreme Court may affect them.
Racial Zoning Laws and Church Segregation Practices
John Dehlin [00:23:01] I'm sorry, you mentioned this in the book, but I've also seen zoning maps from, like, the 40s and 50s literally were like, whites only in these areas of Salt Lake City. Could you just talk black briefly about zoning laws?
Matt Harris [00:23:18] Yeah, yeah. So in. In the mid 20th century, there were zoning laws in Salt Lake. And, of course, zoning laws mean that certain sectors of the city would be reserved for black people, and certain sectors of the city would be reserved for white people.
Matt Harris [00:23:33] And not unlike today, when this happens, they're not. Zoning laws are unconstitutional today, but there are de facto zoning laws. It's kind of just assume that, you know, black people live over there, brown people live over there, white people over there. Now, again, that's unconstitutional today in illegal, but yet it still goes on because it's de facto. And not unlike today when you see communities of color, particularly marginalized communities, they don't have access to health care. For example, in a white community, you might have a hospital a mile away, but in a black or brown community, the hospital might be 10, 15 miles away.
Matt Harris [00:24:09] And in some of these communities, particularly in Salt Lake in the mid 20th century, they were placed in an undesirable part of Salt Lake where the air wasn't as clean, the area wasn't as clean, the houses weren't as well kept up. And of course, the city officials did that on purpose because they had such little regard for people of color.
John Dehlin [00:24:32] Is that called red lighting? Julia?
Matt Harris [00:24:35] Okay, Redlining is a little. There's two ways to think about this. Zoning would be just simply, you know, black people over there, white people over there. Redlining is. Is. Goes beyond that. It says that businesses, particularly banks, won't do business in black and brown communities because they don't want the businesses or the communities to thrive. For one. And two, there's a perception that there will be a higher default rate on their loans if they loan them businesses or loan them money to start businesses. They have no evidence for that. But that's the racist assumption. And of course, what redlining does. If you can't get loans from banks to build your communities with businesses and infrastructure, whether it's schools, then obviously your communities are suffering.
Matt Harris [00:25:25] And so a lot of people in the 20th century will speak out against the practice of redlining. And this is going on in Salt Lake. It's going on in essentially the United States at large.
John Dehlin [00:25:35] Got it. Okay. Okay. Keep going. Now. I just wanted to throw those things in because I found them fascinating in the book.
Matt Harris [00:25:40] Yeah, yeah. So all of that's going on, and I want to just bring this to the church. Now. We've been talking about Utah and some of the segregated practices, and we mentioned a little bit about church properties, but the church itself had never, ever had an official policy of segregation.
Matt Harris [00:25:57] And some of the leaders themselves are really worried about this. President McKay said something like, you know, black people are better off in the segregated south because, quote, they know how to deal with them. And that's an exact quote that President McKay wrote Reuben Clark and some other church leaders were going to meetings in Salt Lake with community leaders trying to figure out ways to keep black people out.
Matt Harris [00:26:22] And again, underlying all of this is. Is the church's teachings on interracial marriage. Apostle Harold B. Lee in 1945, is a young apostle gave a spirited address to the youth, the church. I'll read part of it. And this is on a. This is a radio address on ksl. Back in those days, they would communicate ideas vis a vis the radio. And Elder Lee this.
Matt Harris [00:26:46] He'd only been in the apostleship for, I think, two years at this point. And he said, the seed of Cain has been separated from the rest of mankind. And then he issued a strong warning to the youth of the church about race mixing.
Matt Harris [00:27:00] Surely no one of you who was an heir to the body of a more favored lineage would knowingly intermarry with a race that would condemn your posterity to penalties that have been placed upon the seat of Cain by the judgments of God. And so this is to the youth of the church telling them that, look, if you race mix, if you date and ultimately marry interracially, you're going to draw the wrath of God.
Matt Harris [00:27:23] But what do you do with a black family that wants to go to church? And these are predominantly white churches in the United States at the time. And so this is kind of an interesting conundrum we talked about in previous episodes, that the church did not seek black people out.
John Dehlin [00:27:40] But.
Matt Harris [00:27:41] But if black people came to the missionaries or to the mission president or to anybody in the church and demanded baptism and passed the requirements and knew about the ban and accepted the ban, they could be baptized. We don't go to you, you go to us was the policy.
Matt Harris [00:27:57] And so that did happen. There was a limited black population in the church, including in Washington, D.C. in 1942 when Ezra Taft Benson, he would become an apostle two years later. But when he was a stake president in Washington, D.C. he was bothered by two colored sisters, as he put it, they were being shunned by the Relief Society sisters. And so he wrote the First Presidency a letter. And he said that we have two colored sisters in our. In our ward or in our stake, and the white sisters don't want to sit next to them. What do we do? And the First Presidency wrote back, and they said, you know, follow your own intuition.
Matt Harris [00:28:39] It's a delicate situation. That's an interesting thing. They recognize that this is delicate. It's a delicate situation. President Benson, follow your intuition and see what happens. So what he essentially told the sisters was that they could be in the room with the white sisters, but they had to sit to the side. They had to sit to the side by themselves. So they weren't entirely segregated, but they were.
Matt Harris [00:29:01] And that wasn't an official policy, but something else that they had to follow. The other experience deals with a black Latter day Saint couple in Ohio and Len and Mary Hope, converts of the church. They had been worshiping at a branch in Cincinnati, and some of the white members complained about their presence. And so the presiding authority, the branch president, told Len and Mary Hope that very gingerly, but said that, you know, it's probably best if you just worship at home, that some of the saints here are complaining about you. And, you know, so they decide that they're going to worship at home. And a young missionary named Marion Hanks and his companion witnessed the treatment that the hopes are receiving.
Matt Harris [00:29:49] And Marion Hanks, who would later become a general authority, is absolutely bothered by the treatment of this good black couple, this faithful black, these converts. And so Marian Hanks and his missionary companion brought them communion and would give them the sacrament and would give them a short little homily lesson, letting them know they were. They were welcome. And the Hopes decided that they. They believed in the church's message, but they didn't like the treatment they were receiving from their fellow saints in Ohio.
Matt Harris [00:30:23] So they informed this young missionary, Elder Hanks, one day, they said that we want to move to Salt Lake. And Elder Haig said, no, no, no, no, no, no, no, no. Bad idea, bad idea, because Salt Lake
John Dehlin [00:30:37] will be way better.
Matt Harris [00:30:39] That's right. So Elder Hanks is from the Salt Lake area, and of course, he knows the racial prejudice in Salt Lake. He knows the Hotel Utah is segregated. He knows that. He knows that this black couple will not be welcome there. And adding insult to the injury, this is the headquarters of the church, and so it has a great capacity to harm this young couple. But in spite of Elder Hanks pleading with them not to move to Salt Lake, they decide to do it anyway with their eyes wide open. And Elder Hanks allows the Hopes to stay with his family when they first come before they could find lodging. This is one of the great general authorities who are racially progressive, who believe in racial equality even if many of people in church leadership do not.
John Dehlin [00:31:25] I love him as some of the. I'll call him heroes in the book.
Matt Harris [00:31:30] He is a hero.
John Dehlin [00:31:31] He's certainly one of them. Matt, I just want to call your attention. I was really shocked by this missionary policy of we won't come to you you got to come to us. Tell us again how you describe it in your book.
Matt Harris [00:31:47] Yeah, so I'm, it's. I'm just using a word that Elder Peterson, Mark E. Peterson, the apostle, used. He said that the policy of the church is we don't go to you. You come to us. And when they were meaning black, we don't. Yeah, black people. When the church was globalizing after the Second World War, we talked about this in our last episode, that they were really, really cautious to move into countries with, with majority black and biracial people. And so what they wanted to do is find out the sections of the country like in Brazil, for example, where are the white people at? We don't want to go to the areas of Brazil where there are black people. Let's just go where the white people's at. This is the same thing that happened in Cuba. Tried to figure out if there was a white community in Cuba, which is kind of comical.
John Dehlin [00:32:35] Yeah.
Matt Harris [00:32:36] So. But that's what they were doing. They didn't want to mess with this whole lineage thing with black people.
John Dehlin [00:32:41] And when some of the critics or dissidents within the church are trying to argue against the, the priesthood and temple ban or the, you know, the, the teachings around cursings, they, they'll often say that they're unchristlike. As, as I'm reading in the book, and I just want to highlight one just teaching of Jesus Christ. I'm in Mark, chapter 16, verses 15 and 16. And Jesus, this is the King James Version, it says, and he said unto them, meaning Jesus, go ye into all the world and preach the gospel to every creature. He that believeth and is baptized shall be saved, but he that believeth not shall be damned.
John Dehlin [00:33:25] And the only reason I'm showing that is just to emphasize the point that Jesus himself sent his disciples to all the world to baptize all creatures. So I think it can be argued that this we won't come to you, you come to us sort of policy around black people across the world was sort of anti Christian, maybe.
Matt Harris [00:33:49] Well, it's the great theological paradox. Right. Because they believe in this. The church leaders believe in the scripture that you just quoted and the Book of Mormon and the Doctrine and Covenants, these two other important books of scripture in the church. They also talk about bringing the gospel to every kindred nation, tongue and people. So that's the great, that's the great theological paradox, is that Jesus is telling them to do this, but yet the ban the priesthood and temple ban won't allow that to happen. And we talked about last time that they tried briefly in 1852 to go into Jamaica. And the following year in 1853, they tried to go into South Africa.
Matt Harris [00:34:26] And, and both instances it fell miserably because they didn't realize that with the ban in place, be impossible to do that. And probably in a, in an episode upcoming, we're going to talk about, they're going to try this again. They're going to experiment by going into Nigeria in the early 1960s. And that too is an will fail because you can't have all white missionaries running all black churches.
John Dehlin [00:34:50] Right. Okay. Well, if you think it's time. One of the main features of today's episode for me is to talk about the summer of 1954. Famous CES meeting.
The 1954 Church Education System Meeting
Matt Harris [00:35:03] Yeah, this is, this is an interesting thing because, because it's one of those rare moments for me as a scholar and as a historian, where I got access to the minutes of a private meeting that, that was not meant to be public.
Matt Harris [00:35:21] And this was a form at byu. This is where the meeting took place. This is a form where the church educators could ask Apostle Markey Peterson and Joseph Fielding Smith questions off the record. And their answers would be, of course, they wouldn't be published. So they can speak without any filtering, if you will, and not have to worry about how their words would be perceived.
Matt Harris [00:35:47] And what started this private discussion of BYU religion educators and CES religious educators. And for those who aren't maybe familiar with LDS terminology. So the BYU Religion department at Brigham Young University, the Church's university, they have a religion department where every young man and woman who go there, they have to take religion classes. And so the BYU religion faculty teach them. Some of these faculty have legitimate credentials. They have PhDs in ancient history and ancient languages and Biblical studies and religious studies. Others have graduate degrees in fields outside of religion.
Matt Harris [00:36:25] And the other nomenclature is what we call ces, but it's an acronym for the Church Education System. And these are people who teach LDS youth at secular universities. So in the mid 20th century, early to mid 20th century, the church had started to build what are called institutes at universities, state universities in particular, where there were heavy LDS populations. So, for example, Idaho State, which is where I served my mission, I was a missionary at Idaho State. There was a big institute there.
Matt Harris [00:37:04] And so students could go take their regular classes in zoology or English literature or whatever they were taking, and then they could reserve an hour or two a day or a few hours a week to go take a Bible class or an LDS theology class or A class on LDS marriage. And it's a, it's, they're called institutes. These are buildings that are adjacent to the university campuses.
Matt Harris [00:37:26] And it's also a time to mingle with other LDS students. Ping pong tables in there, they would have a tv, you could just let your hair down and watch tv. They'd have gyms, you could play basketball. So really a nice space for LDS students to meet and associate with each other. And so each of these, a lot of these universities in Arizona, Idaho, Utah, like at Utah State University of Utah, they would have these institutes also California, right? Usc, UCLA California, ucla, Stanford.
Matt Harris [00:38:00] And so basically it's anywhere where there's a large LDS population of college age kids at the church owned universities. BYU Idaho, it was called Ricks College at that time. BYU Provo and BYU Hawaii. They don't have institutes because you can take the religion courses as part of your curriculum.
Matt Harris [00:38:22] Anyway, at this teachers conference In August of 1954, there was a combination of BYU religion faculty and then the CES faculty who taught these college age youth and institutes. And also there were seminary teachers there. These are people who teach high school youth seminary lessons. And anyway, so it's a big conference and a number of the apostles would come from Salt Lake during this summer, this August of usually I think it was July and August of 1954. So over a two month period they would hear various instruction from apostles on a variety of themes.
Matt Harris [00:39:02] Harold B. Lee gave a give a talk about modern day revelation, how it works. And two, two talks given that summer raised a lot of waves. One talk was by a senior apostle, Joseph Fielding Smith. We've talked about him extensively in previous podcast episodes. But he gave this anti evolution talk that absolutely sent the liberals in the church education system into a tizzy.
Matt Harris [00:39:30] And so he didn't believe in some of the science. He was a reader of fundamentalist texts that argued that evolution was not compatible with Christianity. And Apostle Smith bought into this and some of the more liberal scientific minded educators rejected it.
John Dehlin [00:39:48] But
Matt Harris [00:39:50] the most controversial address that year was given by an apostle who'd only been in the quorum of the 12 for less than 10 years at that point, or about 10 years actually. A guy by the name of Marky Peterson who worked for the church in their publications, record or department prior to his call into high church leadership. And Apostle Peterson, of all the general authorities, he was the most exercised over the Brown decision.
Matt Harris [00:40:17] And so when he gave his talk on race, this is August of 54, the Brown decision had only been rendered two years earlier and so it was fresh on everybody's mind. And Markey Peterson, during much of the talk, he talked about interracial marriage, how it was against the church's teachings.
Matt Harris [00:40:40] But he reaffirmed some of the most radical theology in the way to perfection. And by radical theology, he appealed to the Bible to argue that God intended to segregate the races. He argued that if you had dark skin, it's because you did something to inherit God's wrath and a premortal existence. He argued that people had privilege in middle class, let's say Caucasian homes. You did something that gathered God's favor, guarded God's favor. And so he's tying conduct in mortality or one's situation, mortality to decisions that they had made in a pre earth life. But it goes deeper than that.
Matt Harris [00:41:24] Markey Peterson argued that black people would only be fit to be the servants to white people in the hereafter, borrowing this biblical trope that Canaan's descendants would be his cursed descendants, would be the servants to non cursed lineages. And this is of course the biblical justification for slavery. And so Mark E. Peterson is talking about this. And I remember reading this talk for the first time years ago and I was absolutely astonished by the talk simply because here we are on the cusp of a national civil rights movement with the brown decision, and we have a high ranking church leader talking about black people being servants to white people in the hereafter.
Matt Harris [00:42:08] And I mean this is not the majority opinion in my view of all the church leaders. This is a radical opinion within the quorum, only shared by maybe a handful of apostles. But Spencer Kimball, who would later lift the ban, David O. McKay, who's now the current church president, they would never teach such things. And they didn't. So this is a radical opinion. And Peterson was astonishingly unaware of which way the winds were blowing in 1954.
John Dehlin [00:42:37] Do you mind sharing a couple more things about it? One was just how God was the author of segregation. Do you mind talking about that?
Matt Harris [00:42:46] Yeah, yeah. So Peterson, in addition to saying something radical like you know, this whole idea of black people being servants to white people in the hereafter, he borrowed a line from southern clergymen, biblical line, which was that God was the author of segregation.
Matt Harris [00:43:03] And one of the famous lines that Mark E. Peterson quotes in his talk to these religious educators, I'm going to make sure I get it right. He says that, he says that, quote, I think the Lord segregated the Negro, end quote. And so. But Mark Peterson is not, I know some critics don't want to hear this because they just seem to always want to criticize the church. But Mark Peterson is not unique in arguing that a biblical defense of slavery.
Matt Harris [00:43:34] Protestant clergymen are doing it all over the place. And. And Mark Peterson is simply caught up in this. And so he believes that this is what God wants, and he believes that the races ought to be segregated in their communities along the way. He says some things that, in my view, are so jarring. They were jarring from 1954. They're certainly jarring in 2024. But this is one of the jarring things that he said. He said that we are willing that the Negro have the highest kind of education.
Matt Harris [00:44:06] I would be willing to let every Negro drive a Cadillac if they could afford it. I'd be willing that they have all the advantages they can get out of life in the world, but let them enjoy these things among themselves. I think the Lord segregated the Negro. And who is man to change that? Segregation.
John Dehlin [00:44:24] He makes this Cadillac quote multiple times. What's he odd about with. With, quote, Negroes and Cadillacs. Why Cadillacs?
An Apostle's Views on Interracial Marriage
Matt Harris [00:44:34] Well, I think the Cadillac was kind of the premier car of the day. You know, today, if he were to give a similar talk, he might use a different car. But a Cadillac was sort of the car that one could claim status. They had made it in life. They could financially afford it. And I think the. The question is, is why does he throw this line in his sermon?
Matt Harris [00:44:53] And the answer is, is he's trying to show that he's not, you know, I'm not a racist. I really do care about black people. And, you know, if they want to work and make money and they can afford a Cadillac, ah, let them. But of course, he doesn't realize how abrasive this is, because one of the worst things about segregation that Elder Peterson does not understand and that Southerners do not understand is that it goes beyond just poor schools that somehow black people want to integrate because white schools are better in some cases. In Topeka, Kansas, that wasn't even true.
Matt Harris [00:45:27] There was a black school in Topeka that was a good school. It was a fine school. The teachers were credentialed. They had textbooks. They had a decent place to learn, probably equivalent to many white schools in the South. So the question is, well, why were they pushing to integrate if they had decent schools, at least in Topeka, not in the South? And the answer is, because segregation is damaging to your psyche that even though you may have good schools with good teachers, it doesn't change the fact that you're still being told that you don't measure up, that you're not good enough, you're not smart enough to go to school with white kids.
Matt Harris [00:46:06] And so that's what's going on here. When you're, when you're zoning African Americans into certain parts of Salt Lake, it's doing something to one psyche. You're also conditioning white people in particular, you're conditioning to see African Americans in a certain way, that somehow they're inferior, they're less than, because they're not good enough to go to school and to work with white people. And that's the psyche part of it is something that gets lost in this conversation when we oftentimes talk about segregation. So that's what he's trying to say is, you know, it's okay if they want to buy a Cadillac. I'm not going to hold it back there. But he doesn't understand that segregation is still damaging.
John Dehlin [00:46:44] A couple other highlights I have from the text, you know, he, he claims it says an ancient Peterson claimed that interracial marriage was what, quote, the Negro was after. I mean, I, I wrote as a comment, they want our women, I should say white women. Like, clearly he's, he's thinking that, you know, just, just like, you know, rhetoric nowadays from anti LGBT people that, that, I don't know, gay men want our children. You know what I mean? That there's a gay agenda. It's almost that sort of agenda rhetoric that black men want our white women. Is that fair to say?
Matt Harris [00:47:24] Well, it's, it's the, it's the conservative sort of right wing media, we would say today, but this is like the, the popular impulse among people who don't want interracial marriages. They would look at a black person like Congressman Powell and they would say he would be talking about his dissatisfaction of these, what do they call them, anti miscegenation laws.
Matt Harris [00:47:48] And because he didn't like the, the nation's anti miscegenation laws, right wing media would then pick up on this idea and also conservative Christian clergymen would pick up on this idea that they want to marry white women. The truth is it's less about white women and more about the ability to marry who you want to marry and not be told that you can't marry because your skin color is different.
Matt Harris [00:48:09] And a lot of religious leaders, including Elder Peterson, they don't understand that it's not necessarily about just marrying white women. It's having the same privileges of marrying that other people have. It's the same thing today with the LBGTQ community Right. That you want to be able to marry. You want to be able to have the same privileges as a heterosexual couple. So anyway, Elder Peterson.
Matt Harris [00:48:33] So he, he's responding to Congressman Powell's a talk or a address that Congressman Powell had made. And it wasn't just that he was after this idea of marrying white women. Just wanted this. He wanted black people to have that choice. And there were some other black people in the black community who argued that, you know, look, we're not after interracial marriage. I mean, just not interested.
Matt Harris [00:48:58] But yet, of course, the media would then pick up on people like Congressman Powell who just thought it was racist to keep the races apart. And just for your listening audience, put this in perspective, that these interracial marriage laws will pop up after the American Civil War in the late 19th century into the 20th century. And then by the. About just after the Second World War, you see a number of states start to rescind their miscegenation laws because it doesn't just apply to black and white people, but these marriage laws also apply to Japanese Americans, other Asian Americans, Filipinos, Native Americans. And the idea would be that Native Americans marry Native Americans, white people, white people, black people marry black people.
Matt Harris [00:49:39] So clearly these are indefensible laws in a racially mixed country like the United States. And so a number of states start to rescind their interracial laws after the Second World War. And the Supreme Court itself will declare interracial marriage laws unconstitutional in a famous case in 1967. So this is all going on after the Second World War, up until the Civil rights movement.
God Invoked to Justify Segregation and the One Drop Rule
John Dehlin [00:50:07] At least two other shocking parts of the talk. He doesn't just sort of lay out his feelings on segregation, but he claims that they're rooted in God's kindness, that God is being kind by segregating, quote, the Negroes from, from the white people. That reminded me of the. The 2015 priesthood. Sorry, the LGBT exclusion policy where the brethren tried to say that they were doing it out of kindness and compassion for the children of, of LGBT same sex married couples. That was just something that came to my mind. But also talk about him claiming that that interracial marriage would destroy the church because of the one drop rule.
Matt Harris [00:50:51] Yeah, I mean, boy, if you start to allow interracial marriage, then of course the one drop rule means that they would be prohibited from holding the priesthood. The men and the families would be prohibited from enjoying the salvific ordinances of the temple. They couldn't be sealed in the temple.
Matt Harris [00:51:10] And on a more practical level, if you have priesthood brethren who can't hold the priesthood because of the one drop rule. You don't have anyone to run the branches and the wards. And so this is something that's really, really on their minds because a lot of the brethren are reading.
Matt Harris [00:51:27] Not all, but a lot of the brethren are reading the most aggressive literature of the time in the 20th century that's talking about the end of humanity as we know it if we allow racial distinctions to blur through marriage. I mean, this is stuff they have in their private writings. They're marking them up, they're thinking about them. And so they're not just coming up with this on their own. They're. They're reading some of the most strident magazines and articles in the day, and they often would circulate them. Ezra Taft Benson was a great circulator of his ideas, and Markey Peterson as well. They would read something, they would find it interesting and informative, and then they would pass it along to another apostle in the quorum to have them read it. And that was quite common.
John Dehlin [00:52:14] And so you have the full text of this talk, correct?
Matt Harris [00:52:18] I do, yeah.
John Dehlin [00:52:20] And I guess it was passed around at the time as well. I. I want to give people's attention to kind of who's in the room, because in some ways it's kind of a Who's who of 1950s and 1960s Mormonism. Tell me if I've got this right. Hugh Nibley's in the room, Paul H. Dunn's in the room. Lowell Bennion and T. Edgar Lyon are in the room, along with, you know, Harold B. Lee, comes Joseph Fielding Smith comes, you know, lots of apostles.
John Dehlin [00:52:50] And by the way, how can these talks be given after the Bennion Report has been shared with all the brethren? Because Peterson, Mark Peterson, would have given this talk, if I'm not mistaken, having known about and read the Bennion Report and having known that the brethren were put on notice that there was no doctrinal, you know, revelatory or even scriptural basis for the priesthood ban. Am I wrong or am I not?
Matt Harris [00:53:20] No, no, no. I think that's. That's what we do as historians. We look at time and context. And you're pointing out the Bennion Report was issued to the Brother in the spring of 1954. And here we have, you know, a few months later, In August of 54, we've got elder Peterson giving this sermon that's in direct opposition to the Bennion Report.
Matt Harris [00:53:40] And I really, really wish I knew Elder Peterson's Response to the Bennion report. I'd love to see his copy, what he said, but I can't. I don't have access to that and I haven't seen it. But I can, I can say that confidently that there were factions within the quorum and the faction would be the hardline faction. This is something I talk about in my book quite a bit. We have hardliners within the Quorum.
Matt Harris [00:54:04] Hardliners and their hard stances on the, the ban. And I don't mean just that they support the ban. I mean, a lot of people support the ban, but, but the hard line stance would be that black people will be servants to white people in the hereafter and we have to have segregation in our communities. I mean, those are hard line stances among the. Some members of the Quorum. And then there were other factions in the Quorum who may support the ban, at least with lip service, but privately they wished that the ban would go and they don't think that black people are cursed. And this would be Spencer Kimball and David L.
Matt Harris [00:54:41] McKay. And then you have yet another faction within the Quorum led by Hubie Brown, who, Who not only thought that the band was incompatible with the Gospel and the teachings of the scriptures, but also that he wanted to put pressure on the Brethren to lift the band. So you've got these three different sort of factions. And clearly the hardline faction is the most dominant in the 1940s and 50s because it's most of the Brethren, referring to the Way to Perfection, President Smith's best selling book, that really governs their views on race. And Mark Peterson and Harold Lee, those two are the biggest devotees of Elder Smith.
Matt Harris [00:55:22] They're, they follow him, they talk about race with him often. And they're lock, stock and barrel. They're, they're, they're walking together with him and trying to maintain the purity of the church, which would be, of course, the purity of the bloodlines.
John Dehlin [00:55:36] Yeah. Okay. So Peterson gives this talk and then I'm just loving the scene you set of this Q and A with like Paul Dunn and Lowell Bennion and, you know, bigwigs just doing a Q and A with, with top leaders of the church on, on these issues.
Matt Harris [00:55:54] Yeah. So these, just like you said, John and I write in the book, I mean, this is, this is the who's who in the church education system in the mid 20th century. I mean, these are, these are big name people. These are scholars who write for the church. They write magazines, they write books. Let me just give you a Brief bio, a few of them. One would be Hugh Nibley. He's the church's great apologist. He's brilliant. Received his PhD in the Classics and ancient history at the University of California, Berkeley in 1938. Spoke at least 15 languages.
Matt Harris [00:56:26] And when I was at BYU in the early 90s, he was retired then, but he still held an office in the library. And he was just so eccentric. He wore a cardigan sweater that he got at Desert Industries, a thrift store. Didn't care how he looked and his socks rarely matched. And anyway, he would, with the 15 languages that he knew, he would have these three by five cards and he'd be walking around campus just with his three by five cards. And anyone who knew Nibley, they knew that he was just doing something with languages. And so anyway, it was comical, you know, was there a Nibbly sighting today?
Matt Harris [00:56:59] And he's walking with his head down in these three by five cards and he's like running into things, you know, he's not paying attention, which is strange for a man that was probably approaching 80 at the time, not paying attention to where he was walking.
Matt Harris [00:57:12] So anyway, I personally witnessed him almost fall on his face once because he had his face in a three by five card. But so, but Nibley was brilliant. Knew a lot of languages and he would memorize sonnets and plays and ancient texts. I don't know who does this. You memorize an ancient text from the fl. 4th century. Right. But anyway, one time he was at a. A gathering of scholars in the classics and Harvard Divinity dean named George McCrae was there and Nibbly just spontaneously began quoting from some ancient text.
Matt Harris [00:57:44] And George McCrae, the story goes, put his hand over his head and he said it's obscene for a man to know that much. So that was Hugh Nibley was there, guy named Sydney Sperry was there who was the church's expert on the Bible, particularly the Old Testament. He was one of the few people at the time, or one of the earliest people at the time to be trained in biblical languages and literature at the University of Chicago.
Matt Harris [00:58:11] And so Sydney Sperry was there. Paul Dunn you mentioned was there. He was the. He was a teacher at the Institute at the University of Southern California in the 1950s and into the 60s. And this is before he was called in to be a general authority member of the first quorum of the 70, which was just a quorum in church leadership, just below the quorum of the 12. So Paul Dunn was there, great gifted storyteller, later get himself into trouble for embellishing some of his stories, but nonetheless, he was a great storyteller. And then, of course, as you mentioned, Lowell Bennion and Tiagr Line were there.
Lowell Bennion, Hugh Nibley, and Dissenting Voices
Matt Harris [00:58:44] And Lowell Bennion, I can't estimate or underestimate enough or emphasize enough how significant he was to the church. He'd been teaching the church education system for 26 years before he was fired. And we'll talk later about how that happened. But Lowell Bennion was beloved by so many people.
Matt Harris [00:59:03] He was a humanitarian. He cared deeply about people, less so about dogma and more about people. And for him, true religion was about how religion affected people. Did it make you be a better person? Did it make you be kinder in your relationships at home and among your friends and your work colleagues? And if that kind of theology didn't do that for you, then it wasn't good theology. In other words, just to draw a distinction with Lowell Bennion, he was less concerned about teaching a theology that would prepare you for the afterlife. Not to say that didn't concern him, because it did. But his modus operandi was, how would this theology help you in the here and now?
Matt Harris [00:59:39] And that's one of the biggest questions he put to the test to the general authorities and the brethren on the race issue was, how is this race ban helping us be better people, or is it contributing to extant racism in a large American society? And so, lo, Bennion approached all of these things from a different perspective than most people. And so he was at the meeting in 1954. And I want to just, if I can, John and chime in. I want to talk about a couple of highlights about the questions and answers after Elder Peterson's address.
John Dehlin [01:00:11] Please jump in.
Matt Harris [01:00:13] So this, to me, is the most informative part of this, because it's off the record, as I mentioned earlier. And the brother, the leaders, the church educators, this is the best and the brightest the church has. They're going to ask these two apostles detailed questions that they would never or otherwise be able to ask. One of the people who asked the first question was Hugh Nibley, the man who mastered 15 languages, the great church apologist.
Matt Harris [01:00:39] And he had been reading the Book of Mormon. And the Book of Mormon talks about curses, and it talks about skins of blackness. Well, the Book of Mormon applies that in a setting that connects to Lamanites or Native Americans. It says nothing about African Americans or persons of black African ancestry. And so Hugh Nibley wanted to know, how did the curse of the Lamanites apply to black people?
Matt Harris [01:01:05] And as part of that Cursed language in the Book of Mormon. It says that if Lamanites live righteous and morally upright lives, if they repent of their sins and all of that, then they could become white and delightsome, that is that their skin color would gradually fade either in mortality or in the resurrection. And so that's what the Book of Mormon says. There's a racial fluidity in this sacred text. And so Nibley wants to know, how does this apply to black people? And so this is what Joseph Fielding Smith said.
Matt Harris [01:01:35] He responded to Nibley. He said, the Lord did put a mark upon Cain. Now he's talking about black people because the, this is not in context to Native Americans. The Lord did put a bark upon Cain. And we know of cases where it really has disappeared. In other words, the curse on black people that just like the Lamanites, they were righteous, they repented of their sins.
Matt Harris [01:02:01] And when that happened, Joseph Fielding Smith said, we know of cases where that curse really has disappeared. There is nothing metaphorical about any of that.
John Dehlin [01:02:12] So God turned black people's skin white over time.
Matt Harris [01:02:16] God turned black people's skin white over time. And I know that is so incredibly jarring. I'm told about 12, 15 years ago I was talking to a dark skinned black Latter day Saint woman and she told me a story that I think it's comical. I don't know, you can decide for yourself, but it's really tragic. But she was trying to make humor of this long standing teaching. And she told of a story when she got up in the pulpit in her home ward. And again, she's pretty dark skinned. So she got up over the pulpit in her homeward to give a sermon. And at the beginning of her sermon she said as she looked at her arms, she said, I'm still waiting for my skin to turn white.
Matt Harris [01:03:02] And she said maybe half the audience gave her a polite chuckle or a polite response and the other half didn't. And I said, what does that mean to you? That half responded the way they did. And she said that, well, half probably didn't get the reference that this was an old teaching, this is not something the church teaches today. But this was an older teaching. And so maybe half didn't get it and the other half got it and maybe thought it was funny or were embarrassed that the church had once taught this. But anyway, this is something that the church had been teaching in the magazines and manuals for a very long time.
Matt Harris [01:03:39] The curse on brown and black people represented a curse. If they repented of their sins and became worthy again, that that curse would revert, would go away and ultimately revert back to a state of whiteness. And so they're asking off the record, does this apply to black people? And Smith was smart. He wasn't going to say this in public with sermon in general conference or a book he would write because this is the civil rights movement. He recognizes intuitively that this won't go over well to a larger audience, including even the church. So he says in private that we know of cases where the curse really has disappeared. And then he, the Nibbly's question, he asked a follow up. He said, well, when will it happen? And Smith said that.
John Dehlin [01:04:24] Meaning when will black people be turned white?
Matt Harris [01:04:27] When will they lose their curse and become white?
John Dehlin [01:04:30] Yeah.
Matt Harris [01:04:31] And Smith said that he didn't know and that that particular question, quote, has plagued me more than anything I ever wrote, end quote. So he had written in answers to gospel questions in a couple of other places. He had written that Lamanites or brown skinned people, indigenous people, would lose their curse and become white.
Matt Harris [01:04:53] But he never articulated when it would be. And some of the church leaders noted that it would be in mortality, that they would gradually. Keyword is gradual. They would gradually lose their curse over time. They would become wider over time.
Matt Harris [01:05:08] Others argued that it would happen in the resurrection. And the presumption was that those who would be righteous to live in the celestial kingdom, the highest state of the Mormon afterlife, would have to lose their curse and become white to bide God's presence. Because white, of course, was a trope that meant purity and holiness, the same color as God.
Matt Harris [01:05:28] And at least allegedly that's what they said. So. So Nibley's writing, asking again about black people. Does that same book, the Mormon curse, apply to black people? Will they too lose their curse one day? And Smith confesses, they'll lose their curse one day if they're righteous. But I don't know when that will happen.
Matt Harris [01:05:46] And I'm, I, I'd be, I love a nickel for Nibbley's thoughts when he's hearing this, because Nibley, as we'll later learn, is not a fan of the band, doesn't believe that there's such a thing as racial purity.
John Dehlin [01:05:59] Yeah. He refused to defend the one drop rule. We mentioned that in a previous episode because he didn't believe. He knew.
Matt Harris [01:06:06] Yeah.
John Dehlin [01:06:07] That we all had black blood in, in our, you know, DNA. You know, we all do. Right?
Matt Harris [01:06:14] Yeah. And unlike, unlike some LDS intellectuals who were willing to talk to the leaders in private and in some cases in public, they would put pressure. But either in private or public, they'd put pressure on the church to ditch this one drop stuff. Nimbley did neither. He was a loyal foot soldier. He wasn't about to put up a stink with the Brethren and the church teachings. But when his papers at BYU became available in 2009 for review, I went there and I was struck that I found several pieces of paper where it talks about, I mean, Nimbley's very clear that he does not believe in a one drop rule.
Matt Harris [01:06:50] He doesn't believe in racial purity. And after the ban, when it was lifted in 1978, Nibley will articulate his views for the first time in opposition. In a famous book called Abraham in Egypt, published in 1981, Nibley writes that God cursed land, not people.
Matt Harris [01:07:09] And it's interesting that was 1981, but in 1973 he had published a brief article in which he supported the ban publicly, especially as the church came under fire for the band. Nibley said the right things. I support the church. But in private, he does not believe in this band stuff and he doesn't believe in the one drop rule.
John Dehlin [01:07:28] Yeah, fascinating.
Matt Harris [01:07:31] Yeah, yeah. I was shocked when I heard that because when I saw his private writings and as a historian, I'm always trying to locate ideas in time. And very, very early on the 1930s and 40s, Nibley is writing little scraps of paper talking about the absurdity of believing in a pure white race. Nibley's a scholar and he's reading people like we talked about. Franz Boas, the great anthropologist, is the first person to really argue that race is a construction. And this is the anthropologist at Columbia University. And then just about early 20th century, up until the time of World War I, a little bit after, Boas is publishing all of this in books and articles and his students are doing it as well. And so Nibley's reading this stuff, Lowell Bennion's reading this stuff, and they realize that, you know, the one drop rules a fiction.
John Dehlin [01:08:25] And I guess one way to interpret Nibley is that he lacked courage to confront the Brethren. Another is just that he was very devoted to, believed in, obeying the Brethren, sustaining and supporting the Brethren. So his beliefs about loyalty and support prohibited him from really ever pushing things too far or speaking out publicly. Although later it seems like he did criticize church culture pretty vocally. But again, maybe there's a difference between criticizing church culture and the leadership. I don't know.
Matt Harris [01:08:58] I, I, I, yes, I would agree with that. 100 Nibley had no NIMBY is a liberal Democrat for, for your listeners. And when the churches, at least certain church people, Elder Benson, for one, are trying to move the church into conservative right wing circles. I mean, Nibley pushed back on that. And Nibley was always talking about social justice ideas, progressive ideas. I mean, he was talking about protecting the environment, the sanctity of the environment long before it was fashionable. And he was talking about, you know, people who do straight party ticket voting. I mean, that was just stupid.
Matt Harris [01:09:35] So he, he drew criticism for his views on politics, but he never criticized the church's doctrine, nor did he criticize leaders. Those are red lines for him. And he was always a loyal person and he loved the way the Brethren treated him. They treated him like he was royalty. Which is to say that if there was ever a criticism that required an erudite response, they always turned the nibbly. You know, can you respond to this book that was written attacking our doctrine or our leaders? And Nibbley always rose to the occasion, mostly.
John Dehlin [01:10:06] The worst example in my mind being, no, ma', am, that's not history. His response to Fon Brody's no man Knows My History.
Matt Harris [01:10:15] Yeah, yeah. David O. McKay's niece. So David O. McKay in 1946 would have been in the First Presidency. And his niece, a woman named Fawn McKay, she would marry a man named Brody. But Fawn McKay Brody wrote this.
Matt Harris [01:10:32] It was the first sustained look at the prophet at Joseph Smith. And she got access to a lot of archival materials, the church archives. And she's a brilliant writer. And her book, in 1946, was published by Alfred Knopf, Major commercial press.
Matt Harris [01:10:49] And she argues that Smith had simply absorbed the ideas of this time, that is the ideas of the 19th century, and produced, you know, plates and produced all of this stuff. She questioned, you know, the authenticity of all of this. She didn't think he was a prophet. She thought he was a fraud in many ways. And so given the connection of her, her uncle being a member of the First Presidency, and also her father, who was a general authority, the Brethren moved swiftly to excommunicator. But the book became a bestseller in the mid 20th century. People are buying us all over the place. I just looked at Amazon this morning and the book was published in 1946, I think it was reprinted 1971 might have been another reprinting.
Matt Harris [01:11:35] You can still go to Barnes and Noble booksellers and buy no Man Knows My History. And on Amazon this morning, it's still a top 10 bestseller book, which is extraordinary. But anyway, Hugh Nibley was asked by the Brethren to write A response to it, and it wasn't his finest hour. The man has a formidable intellect, but he called her Little Brody. I mean, he was completely insulting and demeaning to this very gifted woman, this scholar. And her background was not in history, oddly enough. She had a master's degree, but it was in English, I think.
Matt Harris [01:12:11] But yet, because of some high profile biographies she had written, starting with the prophet Joseph Smith and then later on with Richard Nixon, with Thaddeus Stevens, a Civil War figure, and there was a couple of other biographies. Ucla, the history department hired her even though she didn't have the credentials, but they hired her because she was really adept at writing biography.
John Dehlin [01:12:30] Did you mention Thomas Jefferson?
Matt Harris [01:12:32] Oh, of course, yeah. Her most famous book would be Thomas Jefferson. And famous because she is the first one to use circumstantial evidence that Thomas Jefferson had fathered biracial children on his plantation. And when she did this in the 60s, when the book came out, I mean, it just unleashed a chorus of critics from people, scholars, who worshiped Thomas Jefferson and didn't think he was capable of fathering biracial children. And in the 1990s, later on, with the advent of DNA and all of that, there's not anyone in the scholarly community today of which I'm aware, who argues that Jefferson did not father these children. Even the Jefferson descendants have now accepted this fact.
John Dehlin [01:13:13] Fawn Brody, the slayer of sacred cows.
Matt Harris [01:13:16] Fawn Brody, the slayer of sacred cows. Even byu, one of my old teachers at byu, went after her. Guy named Lewis Midgley, wrote a response to Thomas Jefferson and just refused to believe that Jefferson would father these children.
John Dehlin [01:13:32] All right, so back to this, back to the CES talk. Anything else about the Q and A? Any other questioners you want to mention?
Matt Harris [01:13:41] A couple of nuggets, I think. From this to one couple of nuggets, I'll share. One is, is that there is a story told of Sidney Sperry, the great biblical scholar, decided to share during the Q and A, something that happened to him as a younger man when he was transcribing patriarchal blessings for his grandfather, a man named Orson Sperry. So Sidney Sperry, as a younger man, I think he was off his mission. He was transcribing the blessings that his grandfather would give. So this is an ordained patriarch in the church, and his job, of course, in the church is to give patriarchal blessings. And so Sidney Sperry is transcribing these, and he tells the story during the Q and A to all of the educators and also, of course, Apostle Smith and Apostle Peterson.
Matt Harris [01:14:34] He says that his grandfather was preparing to give a blessing to a young couple who were about to be married in one of the fey's temples. And as the grandfather laid his hands. Let me back up. They looked like they were white. So let's be clear. They didn't have dark skin. They looked like they were white. And as the grandfather laid his hands on the young man's head, he couldn't proceed with the blessing. He told the young man that he had the blood of Cain flowing in his veins.
Matt Harris [01:15:04] Ever since that case with grandfather Sidney Sperry recounted, I have understood and have never doubted what the church authorities have been teaching about the Negroes. That's a close quote. So obviously Sydney Sperry is in full agreement with the church's teachings on race. Where you get these progressive people like Hugh Nibley and Little Bennion who are there, who don't.
Matt Harris [01:15:26] One last thing I want to share because Low Bennion is going to be very, very critical to this story. As I mentioned, he'd been teaching at the Church Institute for a number of years. He was really close friends with David O. McKay. Lo Benion had received his Ph.D. in 1934 in sociology at a university in Germany. And as is always the case, it seems in those days these young men with a lot of talent would be recognized by a church apostle. In this case, John A. Widtsoe, himself a holder of the PhD from a German university, recognized that Lowell Bennion, there was just a lot to that man, a strong core about him, and invited Lo Banion to teach for the church's institutes.
Matt Harris [01:16:09] And Lil Bennion took him up on it. And anyway, Lil Bennion was a great humanitarian, as I mentioned noted that he believed in theology that had to bless people's lives here and now and not so much worry about the next life, but just really focus on the theology of the church that really helps people be better people. And he never believed that the church's race teachings was a theology that would help people be better people because it shunned and excluded a group of people that should have been included.
Matt Harris [01:16:38] When Lil Bennion read that the gospel needed to go to every kindred nation, tongue and people, I mean, that's what it said. That means black communities. When Jesus said I'm no respecter of persons, that means everybody. When the Book of Mormon said that all are like unto God, Bennion read that literally. And so needless to say, he was a. A burr under the brother in saddle. He looked at things differently and he was good friends with McKay. He could share his thoughts about the race with issue with President McKay in. In fact, as early as 1943, he wrote President McKay a long and anguished letter and he said, I just can't believe in the church's race teachings.
Matt Harris [01:17:17] They're immoral. And McKay as the first presidency counselor, wrote him back and he said, I'm in agreement with a lot of the things you're saying. I don't agree that either. But President McKay did appeal to the pre existence to justify the exclusion, not the curse stuff, but the pre existence. And clearly he and Bennion had disagreed on that particular matter. But to President McKay's credit, he gave Lowell Bennion the space in which that he could share those heretical ideas to him in private and allow him to keep his job teaching at the, at the Institute at the University of Utah. So that's an extraordinary thing to, to come out in private opposition to the church's teachings on race and still be able to teach the church's youth.
Matt Harris [01:18:02] So anyway, Lowell Bennion was at this church, this church meeting, and of all the people to be at different ends of the spectrum is Mark E. Peterson and Joseph Ealing Smith. It would have been Lowell Bennion. And so he asked, in this great exchange, he asked Apostle Peterson, this is during the Q and A, he said that if the Negroes sinned in the pre existence, what sin could they commit for which a merciful God, as you speak of, Brother Peterson, would not be willing to forgive if they repented with a contrite heart and broken spirit? In other words, you say they're cursed. You say they've done something wrong in the pre existence.
Matt Harris [01:18:39] Wouldn't a just and loving God allow them to repent if they did that? And this is again Bennion pushing this theology, his theology, that the gospel is supposed to make you a better person. And in this case, what Peterson was teaching was not making anyone a better person. And so Benya went on to talk about something that really, really put a face to this policy and this doctrine.
Matt Harris [01:19:00] He said that I know of a student of mine at the University of Utah, and this student has blond hair, blue eyes, and quote, a fair complexion. And there was a rumor in this student's community that his family bore the curse, even though they didn't look it, they had African ancestry.
Matt Harris [01:19:20] And so the question was posed to Apostle Smith and Peterson, what do you do with this young man when he looks white, but his church has deemed him cursed. That is, his church has deemed him African or Negro, because he bears one drop.
Matt Harris [01:19:39] And Smith, Apostle Smith was asked that, and he paused for like, several seconds and he replied, quote, I would not like to give that young man any advice at all with regards to marriage. I would not like to be involved, close quote. In other words, who should this young man marry? Somebody who's white and bring the curse to that union, or somebody who's black and already cursed, but he doesn't identify as black.
Matt Harris [01:20:08] And Elder Smith, President Smith just simply says, I don't have any advice for this young man. So he's in racial no man's land. And Lil Bennion had to counsel him, you know, and commiserate with him and sympathize with them. And it was a tough situation that was never resolved.
John Dehlin [01:20:29] All right, well, what a momentous talk. What a momentous event. It's one of those, like the secret Mormon meetings of 1922 that Shannon Caldwell Montez helped bring my attention to. It's just one of those moments in church history I wish we could capture in some sort of docudrama. Right. Because what an important moment for the church, especially on the heels of the Bennion Report being shared with, with the Brethren just earlier that year. I just don't know how that meeting happened. You know what I mean?
Matt Harris [01:21:01] Yeah. You know what's interesting about Peterson, again, just to emphasize something that's important, I think, is that the Brethren are not all in this, in agreement. And even after the Mark Peterson gave this talk, even Joseph Fielding Smith, who has harsh views, even Smith turned to Peterson when they were driving back from Provo to Salt Lake. It's maybe a 45, 50 minute drive, depending on traffic. And, you know, they're talking about, you know, what went on that day, you know, the speech that Peterson gave in the morning and then the Q A that was. That followed in the afternoon. And even Joseph, feeling Smith said to Mark Peterson, you know, I think you were a little bit too harsh. I mean, that's extraordinary coming from Joseph Fielding Smith.
John Dehlin [01:21:46] Yeah, I thought it was interesting. You talk about President McKay responding, I believe, to Paul H. Dunn question, you know, basically saying that Elijah, Abel and any others that were given the priesthood as black men by Joseph Smith, that it was, that was an exception. And I just thought, well, if. If the Brethren know in the 1940s and 50s that exceptions were, were and can be made, doesn't that give them the option of granting more exceptions? Right.
Matt Harris [01:22:18] Well, it's funny you say that because President McKay does in fact do that which draws the ire of the hardliners in the 12 when. So at this point, this is 54. So President McKay would have been the church president for three years.
Matt Harris [01:22:32] And he in fact, does make lots of exceptions. I should follow up just on a thread that I introduced a minute ago when Lowell Bennion said he had the, the white student, you know, the blonde hair, blue eyes, fair complexion. Well, I, I mistakenly said that it wasn't resolved. It was resolved. President McKay told Lowell Bennion, he said, hey, look, man, let's get this guy on a mission. He looks white. And the rumors that he has a curse, let's get him on a mission. And the, the young man had a sister too, who was wanting to be married in the temple. And President McKay gave her permission to be sealed in the temple to her, her fiance.
President McKay and the Priesthood Ban
Matt Harris [01:23:08] So he was doing that a lot. And when he became the church president, it wasn't uncommon for him to revisit an, an instance where a member was deemed cursed by a previous apostolic body. But when President McKay became the president, he's, ah, they look white. We want them to serve in the church. They're faithful, they're loyal. Let's go ahead and move forward. And he did that a lot. And Hugh Brown was his counselor and he was right in there on it with them. So that did happen. And sometimes the brethren were very strategic about it that if there was a case in the mission field where a light skinned person was deemed to have the curse, the one drop, but yet looked white and was loyal and faithful, had to be cleared by a general authority.
Matt Harris [01:23:51] And it wasn't uncommon to. Let's not have Joseph Fielding meet with this young man. Let's have Hugh Brown or David. Oh, because they knew the results would be different depending on which leader you met with.
John Dehlin [01:24:02] Yeah. You also mentioned that Joseph Fielding Smith maybe suggested that the giving of the priesthood to Elijah Abel was, I believe you wrote, a mistake. Whereas in previous times, as we mentioned in past episodes, he had come up with the theory of two Elijah Abels, the two a white Elijah Abel and a black Elijah Abel, but him acknowledging that it was an accident to me is important only because they, you know, Joseph Fielding Smith would not only omit in his publications that Elijah Abel did receive the priesthood by Joseph Smith's permission, but he would, you know, he, of course he would leave it out and he would never publicly admit that it was an accident.
John Dehlin [01:24:51] So it's a clear example of omitting information from membership and from the world. When we talk about informed consent and just not acknowledging what you tell people privately that maybe it was an exception or maybe there were two Elijah Abels or maybe it was all a mistake and just not being candid and forthright with both the membership and the general public about what you're saying behind the scenes.
Matt Harris [01:25:18] I mean these are thorny issues. They're trying to create a coherent narrative that the, that the ban had begun with the prophet Joseph Smith. That obviously is a hard narrative to sustain if you're ordaining, you know, at least a few people to the priesthood.
Matt Harris [01:25:32] And they also are trying to stave off critics because there are some people in the post World War II decades, black men in particular, when they get word that there were at least one black brother in the early days of the church who was ordained, of course they want the priesthood too and they'll use Elijah Abel as fodder. And so that's why one of the reasons why the Brethren are going to say stuff like well yeah, it happened, but it was a mistake because they're afraid that other people will pick up on that and demand the priesthood. And they do.
Matt Harris [01:26:06] So you know, I think and different people can characterize it different ways, but this is just, these are just pragmatic things that the Brethren are trying to do to keep the brickbats from coming their way.
John Dehlin [01:26:20] Yeah, yeah, I mean it makes total sense from a kind of a secular point of view. Really quickly, did you talk about the one question about whether the, this is on page 74 of your book, an educator, and I think he's unnamed in your book wanting to know if the Negro as a whole is inferior to the white race and how uncomfortable that question made Peterson. Did you already talk about that?
Matt Harris [01:26:45] No. Yeah, so I thought it was kind of comical, you know, this unnamed educator. I wish I knew who it was but the mini minutes don't, don't reveal it. But it's kind of comical when I mean the entire address was about racial hierarchies and you know, the pre existence and the reason why white people are white people is because they did something in the pre existence to draw God's favor. Whereas of course dark skinned people did something to earn his wrath. So it's clear that Elder Peterson and Elder Smith have these strong views about race. But yet as they're winding down the meeting, this one guy, you know, my mind's like, oh, I've got one question, you know, he's that guy, right? Everyone's ready to go on, got one more question like ah, but anyway he asked the question about, let me see if I can find it here.
John Dehlin [01:27:39] He says 74.
Matt Harris [01:27:41] 774. Okay. So yeah, go ahead and read it, John, if you wouldn't mind.
John Dehlin [01:27:45] It just says, I'll show the text. It said an educator wanted to know if, quote, the Negro as a whole is inferior to the white race. Close quote. So that's the question.
Matt Harris [01:28:01] Yeah. And I write that, you know, this was clearly implicit in everything that had come before. But he did. But I think that the fact that he's asking such a direct question, do you believe that Negroes are inferior?
John Dehlin [01:28:13] Right. And that was jarring to straightforward answer,
Matt Harris [01:28:17] especially straightforward answer that never should have been asked because it was pretty darn clear. But anyway, Peterson was so taken aback by it that he gives this barely coherent response. He says, quote, I don't know exactly where you're going to draw the line on this matter of inferiority because everybody is his own agent and can determine his own life. And some may develop more spiritual spirituality than others depending upon their love for it. Close quote. I mean, doesn't really answer the question.
John Dehlin [01:28:46] Kind of a word salad answer as far as I'm concerned.
Matt Harris [01:28:49] Well, like I said, the word I use is barely coherent because it's not really clear what he's saying. And in my mind's eye, I'm thinking that Elder Peterson is trying to end this on a positive note. And then he gets this question that he doesn't want to field and he's not very happy about it.
John Dehlin [01:29:04] Yeah, yeah. The feeling you get is that about top church leaders. And again, I think about as much today with ordination of women or the status of LGBT people in the church. I think when I'm reading this book, I'm thinking as much about modern issues as I am the race question in the 50s. But what I'm learning is top church leaders, apostles, First Presidency members, they don't always agree. They often don't agree with each other and they don't have answers. They don't have good answers. Their answers conflict with each other and then they don't like hard questions.
John Dehlin [01:29:49] They, they, they'll even potentially punish people who ask too many hard questions. And oftentimes they prefer silence or to avoid addressing the difficult issues and then often to kind of let lower level or mid level people work out all the details and they just kind of deal with things when they get escalated because it's just too messy to try and like make authoritative public statements that try to apply some broad rule or doctrine across the entire church body.
Matt Harris [01:30:25] Yeah, I think, you know, I think you can certainly Draw parallels between LBGTQ and some of this stuff today. I mean, you know, I've said this over and over and over again. It shouldn't be radical to think that the Brethren come from different walks of life. They have different personalities and they view things differently. And so they're not always on the same page with not just this issue, but other issues. But yet the conundrum in Mormon theology is that in order to produce new doctrine or an important policy change, they have to have unanimity. And so you've got these different backgrounds who are trying in the church, presidents, trying to bring them to a consensus.
Matt Harris [01:31:07] This is in the best interest of the church. And that's one of the most difficult things. In the early years of the church, there are people that want to lift the ban, but they can't do it because they can't achieve the consensus. And that, of course, is one of the, in my opinion, one of the geniuses of President Kimball's leadership in the 1970s is because he's able to do what David O. McKay couldn't do. And in fairness, David O. McKay is doing all of this through a civil rights movement. And to lift the band during the civil rights movement would have been just tragic or catastrophic for the church because it would have signaled to the Brethren or signal to outsiders that outside pressure had forced the Church to change when the Brethren wanted to, you know, control that narrative themselves and not allow external events to dictate, you know, their theology.
John Dehlin [01:31:51] Yeah. Okay, so this talk gets given, and then at the end of this part of the chapter, I think you share kind of T. Edgar Lyon and or Lil Bennion's kind of reactions to the meeting overall.
Criticism of the Talk and Media Coverage
Matt Harris [01:32:04] Yeah, it's. So people who work for the church and people who don't work for the Church, they're not supposed to criticize the Brethren. There's an old phrase that says you're not supposed to speak ill of the Lord's anointed.
Matt Harris [01:32:16] And so here you have Lowell Bennion, who's, I mean, he's gentle about it, but he's criticizing the Lord's anointed in a, in a meeting. And just to repeat something I said a minute ago when he's saying, you know, Elder Peterson, how could you say that, that black people are, are being forced to, to deal with this ban over some sin they created or committed in the pre. Existence. That, that just doesn't seem like the Gospel. That's not the, the Bible that I read or the Book of Mormon that I read. And that's an implicit criticism. You know, you're teaching something that's unscriptural. This is an apostle.
Matt Harris [01:32:57] So when this happens, there are. There are two kinds of people in the room. And Edgar Lyon, who's a liberal like his friend Lil Bennion, he was sort of surveying the room, looking around when Bennion's challenging this apostle. And he said that there were some people in the room when they heard Bennion speak, they thought he was speaking heresy of the first order. You know, like, oh, my goodness, little Bennion, you're not going to keep your job.
Matt Harris [01:33:22] And then there were other men in the room who didn't dare speak out. They didn't have the courage to speak out like Bennion. But they loved what he was saying. They wrote him letters afterwards. They pulled him aside after the meeting. He said, you know, admire what you did. Even low Bennion or even Edgar Lyon wrote his good friend Benyan a letter afterwards. And he said, quote, you said everything that I thought, but said it in 10 times more pointedly and in a nicer spirit than I could have said it.
Matt Harris [01:33:48] So that's. That's what Lyon's saying. I agree with you, but only you could do this, Lowell, and. And put it in such a nice way as to not be offensive. But it turns out that it was offensive, and we'll get to more of that in just a minute. But so the talk gets out on the underground, it gets leaked, and people there.
Matt Harris [01:34:09] I don't know if they had copies of the talk or not. That. That's not clear to me. But the talk does leak, and the people who leak it are critics of the church named Gerald and Sandra Tanner. They obtained a copy of it, and they had reproduced it in something they had written in the early 1960s. And before I get more into that story, I want to go back just for a quick moment, and that is that this to Elder Peterson's address.
Matt Harris [01:34:39] It was a pretty extreme view, more so than the average church talk on the subject. And so it has this huge following among leaders. It becomes a hot commodity in the church, as I write, among the church's intellectuals and the general authorities.
Matt Harris [01:34:55] Spencer W. Kimball's personal copy, he marks up. He's having this dialogue with the text. He's circling things that he approves of, and other leaders are marking up the talk. N. Eldon Tanner, who would later become a member of the First Presidency, he called it, quote, the church's position on the Negro question.
Matt Harris [01:35:19] And I found this interesting diary entry from a general authority named Harold Hellam, he's passed now, but he was a member of the first quorum of the 70. And in 1958 when he was a young missionary, copies of Mark Peterson's talk was being circulated in his mission. And as a young missionary he wrote 1958, he said that this talk is very enlightening. That's an exact quote. So it's, it's, it's making the rounds and, but it also makes the rounds to the church's critics and some of the liberals in the church education system, some of the students in the church education system, including a young law student at the University of Illinois.
Matt Harris [01:35:57] He read Peterson's talk and he said, quote, the whole argument is based on conjectures which don't follow at all. And Elder Peterson doesn't even try to explain the case of the Negro that Joseph Smith ordained. He's talking about Elijah abel and then J.D. williams, who was a popular political science professor at the University of Utah. He was a member of the naacp, he was a long standing Democrat and dyed in the wool liberal. He read the talk and he made this five page critique of the talk, something I found in his private papers.
Matt Harris [01:36:34] And J.D. williams wasn't an ordinary latter day saint. He was a one time bishop in the church. So he had stature and he assessed the talk. And one of the things he said as he critiqued the talk, he said quote, that it was a gross misreading of Scripture and that Elder Peterson overlooks the most important point in Scripture. That segregation is plainly and simply Antichrist. That's a close quote. So anyway, Wallace Turner, the New York Times gets a hold of the quote and publishes it real quick.
John Dehlin [01:37:09] Matt, that law clerk from, from Illinois you were talking about Dalnay jokes, is that right?
Matt Harris [01:37:16] No, no. That would be interesting, wouldn't it? Okay, yeah, no. So Dallin H. Oaks, a member of the first presidency today, he went to the University of Chicago. Yeah, and the timing actually works, John, because Elder Oaks was at the University of Chicago Law School in the early 50s. But this, this guy was, his name is Bob Barker.
John Dehlin [01:37:37] Okay, okay.
Matt Harris [01:37:37] Not, not the game show guy, but he was at the University of Illinois. So adjacent not far from the University of Chicago.
John Dehlin [01:37:44] Okay, I just want to make sure we didn't miss that. If you were saying that Oaks had a different earlier than he later had. All right, so you were going to the New York Times, right, Talking about this.
Matt Harris [01:37:55] So the New York Times, Wallace Turner, who writes about Mormons gets a hold of the talk and writes about it and criticizes it. Wally Turner is arguing that God's responsible for segregation. That's nonsense. And so he's basically picking, poking holes in Elder Peterson's address.
Matt Harris [01:38:14] And as I write in the book, there are a number of people who in the south who are arguing something similar. So Peterson's not unique in this. I mean, if you read any kind of sermons from the mid 20th century from southern Protestant clergymen and some Catholics for that matter, you're going to see something similar. That black people are cursed, that God supported segregation. It's biblically based. And you'll also see, interestingly enough, a growing chorus of clergymen who don't think that segregation is biblically based. And they argue that segregation is wrong scripturally, morally, ethically, and that God's whole purpose was to unite the races and to bring racial harmony, and that segregation couldn't do this. So Elder Peterson's clearly following the views of some of the more strident conservative voices in the South.
John Dehlin [01:39:05] I believe you mentioned Jerry FAL Senior as being someone who had views very similar to Markey Peterson, but then Billy Graham as ultimately becoming more integration as opposed to Markey Peterson or Jerry Falwell Sr. Right.
Matt Harris [01:39:19] That's correct. Yeah. And Jerry Falwell is a very interesting man. We talk about him a lot. In one of my. I teach a class called Religion and Politics, and I signed a text on Jerry Falwell. And early on in. In the 50s and even into the 60s, Falwell's anti civil rights. But Falwell will come to this. This reckoning later in his life that his views on civil rights and his anti segregation or anti integration views were just wrong. And he'll later ask for repentance for those views.
John Dehlin [01:39:48] Fascinating.
Matt Harris [01:39:50] Or ask for forgiveness, I should say.
John Dehlin [01:39:51] Yeah. And I think that's just important for orthodox Mormons that are taught that, you know, our leaders are prophets, seers and revelators that they see into the future. They see things beforehand. They've got their own staff members of ces, more progressive, liberal kind of seeing the future before many of them. And again, there's like, just to drive this point home, lots of evangelical and or Protestant church leaders of other faiths that sort of become more progressive on civil rights ahead of Mormon church leadership. It's just important to note that we have to be thoughtful about what prophet, seer and revelator means if you're consistently behind the times of other lay members, employees, and or leaders of other congregations.
Matt Harris [01:40:47] Yeah, I mean, I hear you. That's. Those are faith questions that people, you know, would often ask me what do you think about this? Or what do you think about that? And I tend to think more historically. You know, the questions that come to my mind with these kinds of things would be what were the saints thinking? You know, we kind of get a sense of what the leaders are saying, but what are the saints thinking? And of course, what are black and brown people thinking? And with segregation, you know, we, I think we tend to think that the church, the, the membership always follow, follows lockstep with whatever the leaders are saying from Salt Lake.
Matt Harris [01:41:19] And there might be a, you know, a couple of exceptions to the rule, a couple of critics, maybe members who are criticizing the brethren, but that's not always the case in least in my research. And with the Brown decision, this is a momentous decision that affects the history of race relations in this country. And Latter Day Saints are wondering what is going on? Why is our church doing this? Why do they say what they say and do what they do? And let me just read you a quick quote that I found really fascinating. This is from the private papers of Joseph Fielding Smith. This is a close off collection in Salt Lake City and I was privileged to get access to it.
Matt Harris [01:41:53] And in the Joseph Fielding Smith's papers he wrote something. It's not unclear who the audience was. It wasn't a letter. It was just like a scrap of paper. And it was listed 1956. And Joseph Fielding Smith writes now he's the president of quorum of the twelve Apostles and also the church historian. He writes that there is a wave of non segregation that hath arisen in the country which brought forth, which brought a flood of correspondence from all parts of the church asking how the Church of Jesus Christ of Latter Day Saints stands out in opposition and teaches a doctrine of segregation denying the negro the right to hold the priesthood.
Matt Harris [01:42:31] Some of these letters border on the spirit of resentment and claim that the church is guilty of a great injustice since all men are created equal. Close quote. That that's extraordinary to me because he's recognizing that there are a lot of people who are flooding church headquarters with letters.
Matt Harris [01:42:53] And they. These letters as he writes, some of them anyway, they border on a spirit of resentment. How could you church leaders maintain an anti brown decision, an anti integration decision and claim that all people are created equal, borrowing language from Thomas Jefferson. And you know, it's really, really hard for the brethren to do that when on the one hand the gospel is supposed to be for everybody, but on the other hand it's really not. And also the incompatibility of scripture, you Know with All are like unto God and other verses that talk about racial equality.
Matt Harris [01:43:31] And the church, they really struggle with these things and sometimes they, they ignore them. The letters or other times, in Joseph Hilling Smith's case, he would take some of these letters that he would receive and the brethren would ask him to respond to the letters.
Matt Harris [01:43:46] And so the responses that he would give to difficult questions like this, not just on race, but other issues with polygamy or whatever, that became the basis for a four volume series that he published in the 1950s and into the 60s called Answers to Gospel Questions. And some of the questions in that four volume series, he would write the question that a saint, Latter Day Saint had asked and then he would give a three or four or five paragraph response. But I was privileged to see a whole list of questions that the Saints had asked him on race that didn't get published in the book.
Matt Harris [01:44:20] And so that to me was extraordinary because I wanted to get a sense of, you know, what, what are Latter Day Saints thinking at this time about the church's teachings on race and segregation?
John Dehlin [01:44:30] All right, so Matt, I, I think what I want to do, I want to talk about a few more things around Peterson in this talk and then let's go ahead because we're almost up on two hours. Save the discussion of the fate of Lowell Bennion and T. Edgar Lyon and then the sterling McMurran NCAA talk, the second half of this chapter. Let's save that for next episode if that's okay. But for, but to close out this episode, it, it your book suggests that Markey Peterson ends up regretting that this talk that he gave and even casting suspicion as to whether he even gave it. So let's talk about Peterson and you know, the damage control and regret about, about this 1954 talk that follows him into the 60s. Right.
Matt Harris [01:45:22] Yeah. Okay, that's great. Let me, before I get to that, if it's okay, I want to talk about all the people who rushed to his defense, please.
An Apostle Defends and Later Denies the Talk
John Dehlin [01:45:30] Including. Right. His wife.
Matt Harris [01:45:33] Yeah, it's kind of, you know, it's interesting that people that come to his defense and a couple of them, one would be, one was a religion professor at BYU named James Clark. He was the nephew to Reuben Clark of the governing first presidency.
Matt Harris [01:45:50] And Professor Clark had written a, had it had written and had his students perform, quote, a drama with a prologue and five acts, end quote, reinforcing segregation as God's will. So this is whole play that he writes in which he had his religion students perform, in which that segregation was Part of the scriptures. It was part of God's will. And I'm reading this, you know, this, this prologue and this drama, and I'm thinking, what an interesting way to defend Elder Peterson. But that's what he's doing.
Matt Harris [01:46:25] And another defender was a church education employee named Arthur Richardson. He wrote, quote, segregation of the blacks and the whites has a very ancient, honorable, and authoritative history behind it. And he said he wanted Latter Day Saints to know that, quote, living oracles would hold to the color line by God, end quote. So he's supporting Elder Peterson. And the last person to support Elder Peterson was his wife, Emma Peterson. And Emma Peterson, she wrote this novel called Choose Ye this Day. And the novel is addressed to the youth of the church, just as James Clark. And Arthur Richardson's defense was they're talking about college age students.
Matt Harris [01:47:09] Well, in Emma Peterson's case, she's writing this novel for LDS teenagers. So these are high school students. And the church magazine, when they, when they promoted the, the book, they called it, quote, a carefully based work upon fact. Close quote. So it's being. This book is being touted in church magazines as this work of fact, but it's a fictional account where she talks about a black athlete at a community college in Los Angeles named Milo Peterson, and she's talking about three other athletes on the team. And the upshot is, is that these, these three Latter Day Saint young men on the team are having this conversation among themselves about whether they should play football with Milo Peterson, this black athlete.
Matt Harris [01:47:57] And they seek out the wisdom of a hamburger store owner named Hank Weston, who is a staunch Latter Day Saint man. And they ask him, you know, what do we do? Should we play football with this black teammate of ours? And Weston being the great sage that he was, I'm being a little facetious because this is just so bizarre, but Hank Weston, who's a friend to nearly all the students on campus, he tells the boys that they shouldn't play with him because God favors segregation.
Matt Harris [01:48:29] He says that he has heard, quote, some of our church leaders teach that even the Negro can go to the celestial kingdom if he is faithful. However, he can only be a servant there. Close quote. So Emma Peterson's just recounting back through these fictional characters the main points of her husband's talk.
Matt Harris [01:48:49] And it's obviously, they're trying to reach the youth and to inculcate them with these teachings. It is not okay to cross the color line. And so anyway, so the talk gets out. It's. It wasn't, it wasn't supposed to be. It wasn't going to be published.
Matt Harris [01:49:06] And it gets out, it gets leaked. It's not clear who leaks it. But there's a barber in Salt Lake City named James Wardle who's a member of the Reorganized Church of Jesus Christ of Latter Day Saints. Now this is the Community of Christ. And for your listeners who may not know the rlds, as they were called at the time, they were the biggest offshoot of mainstream Mormonism. Their followers decided to follow Joseph Smith iii, Joseph Smith Jr's son. And so the church stayed behind in Independence, Missouri. And then of course, the followers of the Utah church followed Brigham Young west to the Great Basin. So James Wardle, who was a long standing RLDS member in Salt Lake, and by this point the church is not experiencing the good relationships that they have today with the Community of Christ, formerly rlds.
Matt Harris [01:49:54] I think both churches are on good terms today. But back in those days there was tension. And so James Wardle felt no compunction about taking this talk and showing it. And so he had a barber shop and he shared it with Gerald and Sander Tanner and probably others. And when the Tanners recognized, saw the talk, they recognized that this is something that's explosive. This is just beyond the pale of usual LDS rhetoric. And so what they did was they published it in a publication that they had done in the early 60s and they had advertised it for $1. And they claimed that you couldn't get this talk anywhere else and sort of up the ante, made it more attractive.
Matt Harris [01:50:34] And so Mark Peterson, when he found out that the talk was being published by the Tanners, he was furious. And he thought that somebody at the church teachers conference had leaked the address, which. It's possible that that happened. I don't know. Benyan never would have done that, but maybe somebody else.
Matt Harris [01:50:52] And anyway, so he demanded Ernest Wilkinson, the president of byu, Elder Peterson, demanded that President Wilkinson find out who the leaker was and punish them. And Ernest Wilkinson just said, you know, basically, he's a very strong personality. He's one of the few people who could stand up to the brother. And. But Ernest Wilkinson turned to Elder Peterson and said, yeah, I'm not going to do that. It's a waste of time. It.
Matt Harris [01:51:18] So let's, let's not do that. And we're not going to put legal pressure on the Tanners like you asked. That's just dumb. That'll bring more attention to it. So he rebuffs the apostle, Ernest Wilkinson rebuffs the apostle. And so the apostle instead Turns to, well, writes a letter himself and he threatens Gerald Tanner with legal action. If you don't cease publishing this address, I will sue you.
Matt Harris [01:51:45] And I asked Sandra Tanner, his wife, who's still alive, I said, what did your husband think about the, the letter? Was he threatened? Did he feel the need to withdraw it? And she's like, no, Gerald wasn't going to be threatened by anybody. And so, so Gerald just ignored Elder Peterson's letter and continued publishing this address. In the meantime, the dress starts to circulate on the underground. That's a huge thing in Mormon intellectual circles. The when something's controversial that they'll circulate copies that shouldn't be circulated, but they do it nonetheless. And so this talk is circulating on the underground and word gets back to Lowry Nelson, figure that we've already talked about.
Matt Harris [01:52:25] Lowry Nelson gets a hold of it in 1975. And Lowry Nelson, he writes Elder Peterson a letter. 1975. Now just to remind listeners that Peterson was once a student of Professor Nelson's at BYU back in the 20s. And so Lowery Nelson writes Elder Peterson a letter and he just says basically this is a terrible address.
Matt Harris [01:52:51] He says, I'm going to give you a little talk about ethnocentrism. So he's lecturing his former student who's now a grown man and men apostle, I'm going to lecture you about ethnocentrism, basically racism. And Elder Peterson writes back and he says that, he says that, you know, it's alleged that I gave this talk, you know, 20 plus years ago, BYU, I'm, I'm not sure we're talking about the same thing. And I don't know what you're talking about. Elder Peterson knows what he's talking about.
Matt Harris [01:53:20] And you know, one could argue, logically argue that yeah, 20 plus years gave a lot of sermons. But there's two reasons with Elder Peterson's response to denying that he ever gave the talk. One is it was a controversial talk from the get go. He knew it and he took a lot of heat for it. Even BYU students got a hold of it and one of them called him a Nazi, which is beyond the pale. So he knew it was controversial. And the second one was that closer to the time that he gave the talk, there was a Latter Day Saint bishop from, who taught at Arizona State.
Matt Harris [01:53:56] He was a professor, also a bishop. And just a couple years after he gave the talk, this bishop from Arizona wrote Elder Peterson and said, geez, tell me about this talk. I got a copy of it. And Elder Peterson denied giving the talk then to the bishop.
Matt Harris [01:54:10] And so clearly it was. It was just a talk that he just did not like, didn't want circulated and frankly felt embarrassed by for some of the harsh things that he said about African Americans. So he denies giving it. And Larry Nelson then turns to some other people within his circle, and he kind of jokingly about it. By this point, Larry Nelson's an older man, he's in his 80s, and he just doesn't care. There's no filter if he ever had one. And he writes to his friends Armin Moss and Lester Bush and a couple of others, and he just says, look, he's denying that he's ever given it. I mean, this isn't right. But that's what happened.
John Dehlin [01:54:47] Kind of the memory. Memory hole a little bit, right?
Matt Harris [01:54:51] Yeah. And yeah, the talk is, you know, it's. I should say a word about the. The longevity of the talk. As I mentioned, it was never published, but it. It was like the first presidency statement of 1949. It became an authoritative document that was only meant for private consumption.
Matt Harris [01:55:10] And in the 1960s, in particular, when BYU religion professors, at least the conservative types, when their students, had questions about race and about civil rights and about the ban, they frequently gave them the 49 first presidency statement, which is what they were authorized to do. And they also gave them Elder Peterson's 1954 address to the church educators. So it was those two things in tandem that they would often circulate to their students to sort of put their minds at ease about the church's race teachings.
Matt Harris [01:55:42] And after the 1960s, the civil rights movement. I found no evidence that this talk is being circulated. And now I should add that this talk is. It's on the Internet. Somebody went to the church archives years ago, and I. My copy comes from the church archives.
Matt Harris [01:55:57] And, and I know that the copy that I got at the church archives, somebody had gotten at the church archives and put it online, because I've seen the same copy.
John Dehlin [01:56:07] Yeah, yeah, Julie. And I just found it independently up on the Internet archive, I guess, Matt, to close this episode in my mind as I'm trying to imagine possible forks in history where things could have gone in other directions, because as your book suggests, Even David O. McKay was questioning the validity of the priesthood ban as early as the 50s. I could imagine an alternative universe where this talk doesn't get given more questions or ambiguity is allowed to kind of percolate. And in the. As early as the 50s, the church just decides that they're going to potentially go A different direction or not go as hard line or stay quiet or keep things more ambivalent or ambiguous such that they have more latitude to make changes earlier than 1978.
John Dehlin [01:57:06] But this talk in my mind almost throws down the gauntlet. It's a high level apostle, he's giving it to hundreds of educators and then it's just sort of blasted out. There's this dynamic I've heard about, like the most vocal, passionate apostle sometimes gets his pet theologies institutionalized purely by willing to come out first and most vocally such that other apostles who may disagree can't speak out to avoid public disputes by apostles. And so sometimes the most vocal first apostle and the loudest who speaks out kind of ends up shaping church doctrine and theology for potentially decades. Now that just all may be John de Lin's mind, but that's sort of a way I want to just sort of say, you know, did this 1954 talk mean that much or am I overstating it?
Matt Harris [01:58:12] No, it did, it did. And just to address your the points we just made a minute ago, I think a lot of what you just said is true, that apostles are trying to make their views known. I mean, Joseph Fielding Smith worked, he labored really, really hard to get his anti evolution books in church manuals, even though he knew they were controversial and not well accepted by some members of the church.
Matt Harris [01:58:37] And in Joseph Phillip Smith's case, he was told by his father in a special blessing years earlier that one of his roles as a member of the council of the 12, they called him council back in the early days, now they call him the Quorum of the twelve. But in the Council of the Twelve his role would be to maintain the purity of the church as he understood it. And that's what he was doing. Ezra Taft Benson, whom I've spoken of on this show years ago. But Ezra Taft Benson received a special blessing from David Omakaya that his job was as an apostle was to warn the saints against big government and communism and socialism.
Matt Harris [01:59:11] And so he ran with that. So they're doing oftentimes they're doing what they want to do and or what they feel that God wants them to do is a member of the quorum. And also that when they think they're right about a certain point, they're going to push it hard. And sometimes they won't get the pushback because about a point from a leader who may disagree with them because it's always about capital. You don't want to expend all your capital on something that might be insignificant.
Matt Harris [01:59:38] But anyway, with Joseph Fielding Smith, there's no question he thought that the race and the ban and the lineage questions, those were all central to the church's racial theology. And he felt that this is what Joseph Smith had argued for, and he. In every successive president since. And so he really thought that he was doing what God wanted him to do and what his leaders, his father, his late father, expected him to do. So I think there's that. Another question, John, to your point, would be you talked about a fork in the road. You know, things could have gone differently. And that's really what history is.
Contingent Moments and What Could Have Been
Matt Harris [02:00:08] It's made up of contingent moments where we look at the decisions of people and think about this for a moment. Here's one of those contingent moments where David O. McKay decided not to fight the hardliners and to lift the ban in 1954, even though he felt that it wasn't doctrinal. What if David O. McKay would have lifted the ban unilaterally? As the church president, he had the authority to do that.
Matt Harris [02:00:33] What would have happened to the church? What would have happened to the 12? And, you know, the only. The only answer I can give, it's a counterfactual question, of course, because it didn't happen that way. But the only question I can give is something similar may have happened, like with Wilford Woodruff when he proclaimed a revelation to end polygamy in 1890. I mean, there was a massive schism in the church, not just among the church body, moving to what we would later call fundamentalist, Mormon, sexual. But also the quorum itself were split down the middle. There were three or four apostles that were excommunicated because they refused to give up God's higher marriage law, which is polygamy.
Matt Harris [02:01:13] They believed. And I'm certain that David O. McKay felt that the church would have experienced a similar fate had he announced in 1954, on the cusp of a major civil rights movement, that he was going to ordain black men in the priesthood. They would have lost the church in the south, probably. And undoubtedly there would have been members of the quorum of the 12 who would have just pitched a fit.
John Dehlin [02:01:36] And David O. McKay was the first modern Mormon prophet who wasn't a polygamist. And I think he was kind of brought in for that reason, maybe at least in part. And so he would have witnessed those schisms in the early 20th century. He would have remembered them, you know, like with Moses, Thatcher and others. And he would have wanted desperately to avoid another Public schism. Is that right?
Matt Harris [02:02:04] Oh, absolutely. He came into the quorum in 1906, and the church is in the midst of. In 1906. They're in the midst of these fundamentalists.
John Dehlin [02:02:13] The smooth stuff and everything.
Matt Harris [02:02:14] Yeah, all of that stuff. And Also David O. McKay would have been in the Quorum of the Twelve when Heber J. Grant, in particular, as the church president and his counselor, Reuben Clark started to go after the polygamists. I mean, really made it a. A task to not only purge them, whoever remained in the LDS church, not only to purge them from the membership roles, but also to see that they got punished criminally, that they were. There's going to be a legal consequence for violating monogamy laws.
John Dehlin [02:02:44] Yeah. All right. Well, what a. I again, it's rare that I learn about something that hits me so hard. And literally, like almost every page of your book, I'm being hit with it. So I'm just going to tell everybody right now, go buy this book on Amazon. You can pre order it. If this is before early July or after, just go buy it. It's Second Class Saints, Black Mormons and the Struggle for racial equality by Dr. Matthew Harris.
Closing Thoughts and Looking Ahead
John Dehlin [02:03:16] Please support this great book. Also, if you're valuing this series that's now five episodes in with Matt and you want to see us finish it out to 10 or 20 episodes, whatever, whatever it takes. We need your support.
John Dehlin [02:03:31] Go to donorbox.org Matt Harris. And if we just get 100 or 200 of you to become monthly donors, at whatever amount you're able to, we'll be able to pay Matt what he deserves to be able to give us the series. And let's make this book a national bestseller and let's certainly make it one of the most read books within Mormonism. Matt, any final words before we go today?
Matt Harris [02:03:57] Yeah, so we're just getting started. We talked about the Brown decision today. But when the, when Dr. King, Martin Luther King comes on board nationally and starts to push for racial equality with respect to the Civil Rights act and the Voting Rights act, this is going to force the brethren yet again to come to grips with civil rights issues that are happening nationally.
John Dehlin [02:04:18] Yeah, you, you mentioned, I don't know, chapters for five and six as being some of the more gripping chapters. Is that right?
Matt Harris [02:04:28] Yeah, chapter. Yeah, chapter four, five and six is. Well, and then. Yeah. Is because now we're going to start to look into people like Hubie Brown who recognizes that the church's ban and their lack of support for civil rights is absolutely damaging the church. And so he'll take matters into his own hands to see that the ban gets lifted and that the church supports civil rights.
John Dehlin [02:04:52] Imagine a rogue apostle. We have a kind of a rogue apostle story.
Matt Harris [02:04:57] He's the Billy Graham of Mormonism.
John Dehlin [02:05:00] Billy Graham
Matt Harris [02:05:02] without the anti Semitism. Reverend Graham will support the Civil Rights act and integrate his crusades. And so. And he's also a crusader among his other Protestant clergymen. And Hugh Brown will follow a similar tact.
John Dehlin [02:05:15] And that's not to mention what's coming is the whole byu, the, the church's status with the federal government and byu and then all the things that lead to the actual lifting of the ban in 78. So, so much, so much more powerful stuff to come. I just love this book so much. I want to go slow, even in the early chapters, because it's to me, everything we've covered so far is just mind blowing. And I've been reading this stuff for a while. So anyway, thanks, Matt.
Matt Harris [02:05:42] Yeah, it's a pleasure, John, as always.
John Dehlin [02:05:44] Okay, so thanks for joining us today. Again, this podcast will be released as its own standalone podcast. We're planning to call it Inside Mormon Leadership the Struggle for Racial Equality. We'll make it available on Spotify and also on Apple Podcasts and on on our own Mormon Stories Podcast YouTube channel under its own playlist so that you can just binge watch these episodes in succession or binge listen.
John Dehlin [02:06:12] So please check that out. These episodes are best consumed sequentially. Again, Please go to donorbox.org Matt Harris to become a monthly donor. All the proceeds donated to to Matt Harris go to Matt Harris. We won't be skimming anything off of them and they'll just help us complete these this series.
John Dehlin [02:06:34] So stay tuned for more. Be good to each other. Be kind to each other. Thanks to Julia Maven, Brooklyn Gerardo and the board that helped make all this possible. And we'll see you all again soon on another episode of Mormon Stories podcast. Take care, everybody.
Transcript © 2026 John P. Dehlin. All rights reserved. Brief quotations are welcome with attribution and a link to mormonstories.org; all other use requires written permission.
We are thrilled to announce that we have reached our donation goal to compensate Dr. Matt Harris for his contributions to this series. We sincerely thank everyone who supported this effort. While the goal to pay Matt has been met, producing this series incurred significant costs for the Open Stories Foundation. If you find value in this content and want to help cover these expenses and support future productions, we encourage you to donate at mormonstories.org/donate. Your generosity makes a difference—thank you!
Mark E. Peterson’s Talk: Race Problems As They Affect The Church : Internet Archive
Purchase Matt Harris’ book, Second-Class Saints: Black Mormons and the Struggle for Racial Equality
Thumbnail Credits: Mainiamge of Joseph Field Smith by Merrett Smith; Main image of Mark E. Peterson by Pablo
One Response
Mormonism, as practiced by the LDS Church in the 1960s and 1970s, taught me valuable lessons about racism and feminism, even as a Never-Mormon. I loved my Mormon extended family, but I didn’t love or respect them any more or less than my Catholic, Lutheran, or born-again Christian relatives. However, my proximity to their practices and my curiosity about the origins of their faith significantly influenced my opinions about right and wrong during my teenage years. Growing up in Southern California, where my peers and educators valued civil equality and universal human rights, also shaped my perspective.
I admire the scholarship of Dr. Harris and appreciate the 15 years he spent uncovering the evidence he is now presenting.
I can think of no better argument for nontheism, or even anti-theism, than religion itself. The pattern repeats itself throughout recorded history: religion often resists challenges to its assumptions, silences and even kills its heretics, only to eventually accept the truth of their ideas and actions in later generations.
While I strive to accept others with different beliefs and perspectives, there are certain practices I cannot condone. One of these is sending missionaries to spread ideas that are clearly human constructs and can lead to self-loathing and a sense of unworthiness. How dare we approach people of color and teach them a theology that is inherently racist? And how dare we take little girls and teach them they are inferior?
Religions undoubtedly provide moments of joy and transcendence and promote acts of loving kindness. Still, these experiences and behaviors are inherently human and do not depend on the supernatural or a belief in gods and goddesses.
As I listen to Dr. Harris, I can’t help but think about all those precious people who, having been branded and abused by Mormon doctrine, lived with unnecessary trauma inflicted by a relatively tiny group of white men.