Author: Russell Stevenson

  To purchase Black Mormon: The Story of Elijah Ables or For the Cause of Righteousness: A Global History of Blacks and Mormonism, 1830-2013, click here or here. As the first documented priesthood holder of African descent, Elijah Ables already enjoys a singular place in the history of black Mormonism. But in most discussions of Ables’s place in Mormon history, he serves as a foil for understanding the origins and development of the Mormon priesthood restriction on the black community; seldom does he enjoy the full subjectivity and personhood that a person of his accomplishment and stature would demand. Indeed, no phase of Elijah’s life highlights the troubled relationship between the early LDS and black communities in the way that Elijah Ables’s time in the slums of East Cincinnati does. Likely a runaway slave from western Maryland (a probability borne out by the fact that 4/5 of the black residents in the area were slaves), Ables had been slowly winning Joseph Smith’s favor since coming joining the LDS community in Kirtland between 1832 and 1835. Joseph had a general distaste for black people, to be sure; in April 1836, he wrote that blacks made up a “a community of people who might. . .overrun our country and violate the most sacred principles of human society; chastity and virtue.” And Missouri had left the Saints rattled about any perceived relationship with the black community. Governor Daniel Dunklin warned W.W. Phelps that if the Saints did…

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To purchase For the Cause of Righteousness: A Global History of Blacks and Mormonism, 1830-2013, click here. This piece tells the story of a long-forgotten black Latter-day Saint, William P. Daniels, who enjoys a singular position in LDS history: the only known black branch president to function in his office without holding the priesthood. William P. Daniels loved to cook and looked dashing in a three-piece suit. A tailor by trade, Daniels had a charisma about him. Missionaries adored him, church leaders trusted him, and his name rang throughout the Church. No one enjoyed reading the Book of Mormon more than he did, and no one was more aggressive in handing out copies. But Daniels also had a problem. He was a black man in the white South Africa Mormon Church of Mowbray. Daniels knew well the kinds of doctrines that the Saints believed about his people. Daniels had visited Utah himself in 1915 and asked Joseph F. Smith to his face why the priesthood restriction was in place. By Daniels’s account, Smith gave him a blessing, assuring him that he would receive the priesthood in the next life. Before departing for South Africa, Daniels asked President Smith: “What do you want me to tell them?” Smith responded: “Tell them the truth, Brother Daniels.” Evan Wright, a former missionary to South Africa, remembered Daniels bearing his testimony of the Church “with tears running down his cheeks and dropping off his chin” that “someday,…

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