On April 18, 1908, the LDS Church publication Liahona: The Elders Journal, which was distributed to all LDS missions, published an article on “The Negro and the Priesthood” drawing out extensive rationale for the ban from the Pearl of Great Price and the Old Testament, and offering as well without scriptural basis the “more comprehensive explanation” that “negroes,” who came from the lineage of Cain and Ham and were thus forbidden from holding the priesthood, were “predestined” to this lineage as a just “deserts” for their conduct in the pre-existence.26 It also quoted remarks attributed to
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