Mormonism and White Supremacy: American Religion and The Problem of Racial Innocence

by Joanna Brooks

Just as B. H. Roberts claimed that the ban was in fact an expression of the “Law of God,” Joseph Fielding Smith rewrote history to suggest that the doctrine originated through revelation of the “Law of God” to Mormonism’s founders. Thus, when the Church’s First Presidency was moved to settle lingering questions about race and the priesthood with an official statement on the issue in August 17, 1949, it could declare: “The attitude of the Church with reference to the Negroes remains as it has always stood. It is not a matter of the declaration of a policy but of direct commandment from the Lord, on which is founded the doctrine of the Church from the days of its organization.” The ban’s move from human to divine, from historical to timeless, from micropolitical to institutional, from uneven to correlated, from speculation to doctrine, was thus complete.