3 March 1836
Elijah Abel ordained an elder; a Seventy that Decemberhinge
Baptized in September 1832, Abel was ordained an elder on 3 March 1836 and received a patriarchal blessing from Joseph Smith Sr. On 20 December 1836 he was ordained a Seventy, by Zebedee Coltrin. He participated in washing and anointing ordinances in the Kirtland Temple, and his Seventy's certificate was renewed in 1841 and again in Salt Lake City. Other free Black men — Joseph T. Ball in 1837, Q. Walker Lewis by 1844 — were also ordained.
Why this is a hingeIt establishes that the Church ordained Black men before the ban, which is why every later defense of the ban had to explain Abel away.
Disputed Zebedee Coltrin recalled in 1879 that Joseph Smith had said in 1834 that Black men could not hold the priesthood and that Abel was dropped; Joseph F. Smith refuted this at the time, noting Abel's certificates.
7 February 1844
Joseph Smith runs for president on compensated emancipation
Smith's platform, General Smith's Views of the Powers and Policy of the Government of the United States, proposed that Congress buy the freedom of enslaved people with revenue from the sale of public lands, ending slavery by 1850. He had earlier denounced abolitionists, and Nauvoo barred Black men from voting, office and militia service.
Disputed Whether the shift reflects moral development or the fact that the Saints had moved from slaveholding Missouri to free Illinois.
March 1847
Brigham Young calls Walker Lewis one of the best elders
Speaking at Winter Quarters to William McCary, a Black convert with a white wife who complained of mistreatment, Young said race was not the issue and cited Q. Walker Lewis: “We have one of the best Elders, an African.” Young told McCary it had nothing to do with blood, for of one blood God had made all flesh.
April 1847
Parley P. Pratt invokes the blood of Ham
With Young hundreds of miles west, Pratt responded to the McCary controversy by saying McCary had the blood of Ham in him and that those descended from Ham could not hold the priesthood. It is the earliest surviving statement of a restriction — and it names Ham, not Cain, the lineage Young would later insist on.
Disputed Faithful and academic readers alike note that this shows the two rationales were already inconsistent at the point of origin.
December 1847
The Enoch Lewis marriage is reported to Brigham Young
Returning to Winter Quarters, Young heard from William Appleby, president of the eastern branches, that William Smith had ordained a Black elder in Massachusetts and that Enoch Lewis, that elder's son, had married a white woman and had a child. Young's recorded response was severe. Historians place this alongside the McCary affair as the immediate trigger for the restriction.
Disputed How causal these episodes were is contested; FAIR treats them as context, Harris and Brooks as proximate cause.
23 January 1852
Young addresses the legislature on slavery
In a joint session, Young tied slavery to scripture and priesthood: “I will remark with regard to slavery, inasmuch as we believe in the Bible, inasmuch as we believe in the ordinances of God, in the Priesthood and order and decrees of God, we must believe in slavery.” He added that the colored race had brought severe curses upon themselves and that he was not authorized to remove them.
4 February 1852
Utah Territory legalizes Black servitude
The same legislative session passed an act regulating service that legalized the holding of Black servants in Utah Territory. Congress abolished slavery in the territories in 1862. Young told Horace Greeley in 1859 that the Church considered slavery of divine institution, not to be abolished until the curse pronounced on Ham was removed.
5 February 1852
Young announces the priesthood restrictionhinge
The day after the servitude bill passed, Young returned to the legislature. Wilford Woodruff recorded him saying: “the Lord told Cain that he should not receive the blessings of the preisthood nor his see[d], until the last of the posterity of Able had received the priesthood, until the redemtion of the earth. If there never was a prophet, or apostle of Jesus Christ spoke it before, I tell you, this people that are commonly called negroes are the children of Cain.” In another 1852 statement he said a man with African blood in him could not hold one jot nor tittle of priesthood.
Why this is a hingeThis is the announcement itself — a policy proclaimed to a legislature, not a revelation presented to the Church for a sustaining vote.
Disputed Whether Young was announcing a revelation he had received, restating what he believed Joseph Smith taught, or making policy is the central unresolved question of the topic.
31 May – 4 June 1879
John Taylor investigates, and Abel defends himself
Taylor convened a council after Abel again sought the endowment. Zebedee Coltrin and Abraham Smoot testified to recollections of Joseph Smith barring Black ordination. Abel produced his Seventy's certificates and stated that the Prophet Joseph had told him he was entitled to the priesthood. Joseph F. Smith supported Abel's account. Taylor let the ordination stand as made before the word of the Lord was fully understood, but refused the temple. Taylor called the seventy-three-year-old Abel on a final mission in 1883; he fell ill, returned to Utah, and died on 25 December 1884.
16 October 1894
Wilford Woodruff refuses Jane Manning James her endowment
Woodruff wrote in his journal that “Black Jane wanted to know if I would not let her have her Endowments in the Temple. This I Could not do as it was against the Law of God.” George Q. Cannon proposed instead a special ceremony attaching her to Joseph Smith's family as a servant. It was performed with Zina D. H. Young standing proxy for Jane, who was not present.
Disputed The official adoption record is restricted; surviving transcriptions differ, and one crucial detail — who stood proxy — differs among them.
1907
The Presidency and Twelve settle the temple bar
By 1907, after a decade of questions about marriage and temple access for Black members and for white members previously married to Black spouses, the First Presidency and Quorum of the Twelve had agreed that no member of Black African descent could receive the priesthood or be admitted to the temple. Baptism and the gift of the Holy Ghost remained open.
1908
Joseph F. Smith reverses himself on Elijah Abelhinge
Recounting Abel's case to the council for at least the fourth time, Smith now said that Abel had been ordained a Seventy by Joseph Young “but this ordination was declared null and void by the Prophet himself.” He had testified to the opposite for nearly thirty years, and the same year he wrote that priesthood once received could not be taken away except by transgression serious enough to forfeit membership.
Why this is a hingeThe one documented counter-example to the ban was retroactively erased, and the ban's origin was relocated to Joseph Smith.
Disputed Bush calls the reversal a mystery; Harris says it was made without evidence; FAIR notes the claim is suspect given Coltrin's demonstrable errors.
16 April 1908
Jane Manning James dies
She died at home in Salt Lake City in her nineties. Joseph F. Smith spoke at her funeral in the Eighth Ward meetinghouse, which was crowded with Black and white friends. Her autobiography, read at the service, ended in a fervent testimony. She had never received the endowment.
13 January 1912
The First Presidency denies the neutrality teaching
Joseph F. Smith, Anthon H. Lund and Charles W. Penrose stated: “So far as we know, there is no revelation, ancient or modern, neither is there any authoritative statement by any of the authorities of the Church of Jesus Christ of Latter-day Saints in support of that which many of our elders have advanced as doctrine, in effect that the negroes are those who were neutral in heaven at the time of the great conflict or war.”
Disputed The same explanation was nonetheless endorsed by the First Presidency in 1949 and 1951 and taught widely for another sixty years.
1931
The Way to Perfection fixes the folklore in print
Joseph Fielding Smith's book taught that Cain became the father of an inferior race, that the curse continued through Ham and Egyptus, and that restriction followed from conduct in the pre-mortal world. B. H. Roberts had supplied that pre-mortal rationale as early as 1885 in the Contributor, speculating that some spirits were so indifferent in supporting the Redeemer that they forfeited privileges. The Way to Perfection remained in print, and in Church use, until it was withdrawn around 1990.
17 August 1949
The First Presidency calls it a direct commandmenthinge
Under George Albert Smith the Presidency wrote: “The attitude of the Church with reference to 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, to the effect that Negroes may become members of the Church but that they are not entitled to the priesthood at the present time.” A 1947 statement had already called it the doctrine of the Church, never questioned by Church leaders. A 1951 statement grounded it in pre-mortal conduct.
Why this is a hingeIt is the clearest institutional claim that the restriction was revealed, and the hardest thing for the 2013 essay's account to accommodate.
Disputed FAIR notes the 1949 text was never read from pulpits or printed in Messages of the First Presidency and was likely a form letter; critics reply that the Presidency signed it and meant it.
27 August 1954
Mark E. Petersen defends segregation at BYU
In an address to seminary and institute teachers titled Race Problems — As They Affect the Church, Apostle Petersen argued for segregation on scriptural grounds. The talk circulated widely; Spencer W. Kimball annotated it, and N. Eldon Tanner called it the Church's position on the negro question. Other Latter-day Saints called it a gross misreading of scripture.
6 October 1963
Hugh B. Brown reads a civil rights statement to avert an NAACP marchhinge
The Salt Lake NAACP planned to picket Temple Square during general conference. Sterling McMurrin arranged a meeting; Brown promised a statement and, with McMurrin's help, drafted one that McKay approved. Brown read it: “There is in this Church no doctrine, belief, or practice that is intended to deny the enjoyment of full civil rights by any person, regardless of race, color, or creed.” The demonstration was cancelled.
Why this is a hingeThe Church's first strong public civil rights statement was produced under the threat of a picket line and drafted by a man it had nearly excommunicated.
Disputed Whether it was an official First Presidency statement was questioned at the time; the Deseret News reprinted it in 1965 as given officially.
13 April 1968
UTEP athletes refuse to compete against BYU
Two days after BYU learned it was under federal investigation for possible Civil Rights Act violations, Black track athletes from the University of Texas at El Paso boycotted a meet at Provo, saying there was a belief on campus that Black people were inferior. Over the next three years student-athletes at dozens of universities refused to compete against BYU.
17 October 1969
The Black 14 are dismissed at Wyoming
Fourteen Black football players on an undefeated University of Wyoming team asked their coach, Lloyd Eaton, to let them wear black armbands against BYU in protest of the Church's priesthood policy. He dismissed all fourteen. The story ran in Sports Illustrated, Jet and papers across the country. Wyoming beat BYU 40–7.
12 November 1969
Stanford severs athletic relations with BYU
President Kenneth Pitzer announced Stanford would schedule no further athletic or non-athletic competition with BYU, saying it was Stanford's policy not to schedule events with institutions which practise discrimination on the basis of race or national origin, or which are affiliated with institutions that do. Hinckley wrote to Stanford's vice provost trying to get it reversed; Pitzer refused.
15 December 1969
The First Presidency restates the position
A letter signed under the First Presidency's name and published in the Church section of the Deseret News opened by noting confusion and said that from the beginning of the dispensation, Joseph Smith and all succeeding presidents had taught that Negroes were not yet to receive the priesthood, for reasons believed known to God but not made fully known to man. It also affirmed civil rights and condemned discrimination in society.
Disputed Hugh B. Brown reportedly disagreed with it and made press remarks days later that McKay's diary records as causing quite a bit of controversy.
19 October 1971
The Genesis Group is organized
Ruffin Bridgeforth, Darius Gray and Eugene Orr had asked the Twelve for a branch for Black members. They were given an auxiliary group under Liberty Stake instead. Gordon B. Hinckley, Thomas S. Monson and Boyd K. Packer set apart Bridgeforth as president with Gray and Orr as counselors — none of whom could hold the priesthood. Packer counselled them to keep a low profile.
Disputed Members understood it as a step toward ordination; the apostles' minutes suggest a reactivation project with the priesthood question deliberately left open.
Spring 1973
Lester Bush publishes "Mormonism's Negro Doctrine"hinge
Dialogue ran Bush's fifty-seven-page article with 219 footnotes, drawn from a four-hundred-page compilation of First Presidency and council minutes he had gathered over a decade, with responses from Gordon Thomasson, Hugh Nibley and Eugene England. Bush had shown the material to general authorities beforehand. A BYU vice president warned editor Robert Rees of grave consequences; Rees published anyway. It won the Mormon History Association's best article prize.
Why this is a hingeIt replaced a century of assumption with a documentary record, and Darius Gray credits it with giving Spencer W. Kimball the roadmap for his own research.
March 1975
A temple is announced for São Paulo
Brazilian Saints of mixed ancestry had been subject to lineage tracing for ordination since the 1940s; a 1967 instruction had shifted the burden of proof away from the individual. The temple announcement created a body of faithful members who were donating to and building a house they would not be allowed to enter. Leonard Arrington recorded hearing that this was one of the immediately precipitating factors of the revelation.
Disputed Grover concludes the temple's role was compassion rather than administrative necessity; critics read it as institutional convenience.
April 1976 – October 1977
Wallace and Marchant are excommunicated
Douglas A. Wallace, a Latter-day Saint attorney, baptized Larry Lester, a Black man, in a Portland motel pool and ordained him, telling reporters he meant to force a revision of doctrine. The ordination was declared void and Wallace was excommunicated. In October 1977 Byron Marchant, who had cast the first recorded opposing vote against a Church president in conference, was excommunicated and fired as a chapel janitor.
1 June 1978
The upper roomhinge
The First Presidency and Quorum of the Twelve met in an upper room of the Salt Lake Temple. Kimball said he had spent many days alone there pleading for an answer, and that if the answer was to continue the present course he was prepared to defend it to the death. Each man spoke; then Kimball offered prayer as voice. McConkie wrote that all of them heard the same voice and received the same message. No text of the revelation was written down.
Why this is a hingeIt is the pivot, and the only account of it comes from participants' later recollections rather than a contemporaneous document.
Disputed Whether the absence of a written revelatory text matters is exactly what separates the camps.
8–9 June 1978
The First Presidency letter is announced, and canonized
The letter said: “He has heard our prayers, and by revelation has confirmed that the long-promised day has come when every faithful, worthy man in the Church may receive the holy priesthood, with power to exercise its divine authority, and enjoy with his loved ones every blessing that flows therefrom, including the blessings of the temple.” Sunstone called it probably the most photocopied document in the history of Church headquarters. On 30 September N. Eldon Tanner presented it to conference as a constituent assembly; the sustaining vote was unanimous, and it became Official Declaration 2. In November the São Paulo temple was dedicated and the Martins family was sealed, with their son Marcus — soon the first Black full-time missionary called after the revelation — serving as witness.
18 August 1978
McConkie tells teachers to forget what he said
Addressing seminary and institute teachers at BYU, Bruce R. McConkie said: “Forget everything that I have said, or what President Brigham Young or President George Q. Cannon or whomsoever has said in days past that is contrary to the present revelation. We spoke with a limited understanding and without the light and knowledge that now has come into the world.” He added: “It doesn't make a particle of difference what anybody ever said about the Negro matter before the first day of June of this year, 1978.”
Disputed FAIR treats it as answering every objectionable earlier statement; critics note it was never delivered in general conference or printed in Church magazines.
1981
"White and delightsome" becomes "pure and delightsome"
The 1981 edition of the Book of Mormon restored a change to 2 Nephi 30:6 that Joseph Smith had made in the 1840 edition but that had been dropped because later printings followed the 1837 European text. In October 1960 conference Kimball had preached from the older wording, saying of Indian Placement children that they were becoming white and delightsome and were often lighter than their siblings on the reservation.
Disputed FAIR calls the 1981 restoration a correction of a lost 1840 edit; critics call it a quiet removal of an embarrassment.
31 March 1990
Helvécio Martins becomes the first Black General Authority
Thomas S. Monson read Martins's name among new Seventies at April conference. Neither the Deseret News nor the Salt Lake Tribune mentioned his race. The same period saw The Way to Perfection taken out of print and the temple ceremony's depiction of Satan with dark skin changed. Martins later wrote that he formally rejected the idea that he represented any group.
Disputed Mauss hoped the call signalled a coming repudiation of the folklore; Sandra Tanner read it as neutralizing charges of racism.
29 February 2012
Randy Bott, the Washington Post, and the Church's reply
A BYU religion professor told reporter Jason Horowitz that Black people descended from Cain and Ham, had been less valiant premortally, and that being denied the priesthood until 1978 was the greatest blessing God could give them. It ran during Mitt Romney's campaign. The Church replied the same day that the positions attributed to Bott “absolutely do not represent the teachings and doctrines” of the Church, that it is “not known precisely why, how, or when this restriction began,” and that “We condemn racism, including any and all past racism by individuals both inside and outside the Church.” Bott retired that spring.
Disputed Harris argues Bott was scapegoated for following the record faithfully; the Church's position is that BYU faculty do not speak for it.
6 December 2013
The Gospel Topics essay "Race and the Priesthood"hinge
The Church published an unsigned essay stating that “There is no reliable evidence that any black men were denied the priesthood during Joseph Smith's lifetime,” that Brigham Young announced the restriction in 1852, and that “Over time, Church leaders and members advanced many theories to explain the priesthood and temple restrictions. None of these explanations is accepted today as the official doctrine of the Church.” It then disavowed the theories that black skin is a sign of divine disfavor or curse, or reflects unrighteous premortal action, that mixed-race marriage is a sin, or that any race is inferior. The revised Official Declaration 2 header says Church records “offer no clear insights into the origins of this practice.”
Why this is a hingeIt is the furthest the institution has gone: it disavows every explanation, declines to say the ban itself was wrong, and does not apologize.
Disputed Critics note that the 1949 statement calls the ban a direct commandment, which the header's claim of no clear insights does not address; FAIR replies that no revelation instituting it has ever been produced.
17 May – 1 June 2018
The NAACP statement and the Be One celebration
The First Presidency and NAACP leadership issued a joint statement calling for greater civility, racial and ethnic harmony and mutual respect. Two weeks later the Church staged Be One in the Conference Center for the fortieth anniversary of the revelation, with Gladys Knight and the Bonner family. Oaks acknowledged that the restriction caused pain and that some members continued attitudes of racism afterward; Nelson asked members to build bridges of cooperation instead of walls of segregation. A hoax apology attributed to Nelson had circulated days earlier and fooled many Black members.
Disputed Black members and scholars noted that the event centered leaders' feelings and still contained no apology; the hoax's reception measured how much one was wanted.
1 June – 27 October 2020
Nelson on prejudice, Oaks on Black lives
After George Floyd's killing, Russell M. Nelson posted that “The Creator of us all calls on each of us to abandon attitudes of prejudice against any group of God's children. Any of us who has prejudice toward another race needs to repent.” In October, speaking at BYU, Dallin H. Oaks said that “Black lives matter is an eternal truth all reasonable people should support,” while declining to endorse the organization. Earlier that year Gary E. Stevenson had publicly disavowed a paragraph on dark skin as a curse that had been printed in the 2020 Come, Follow Me manual.
