{"id":39018,"date":"2019-04-23T18:24:17","date_gmt":"2019-04-23T23:24:17","guid":{"rendered":"http:\/\/timesandseasons.org\/?p=39018"},"modified":"2019-04-23T18:24:17","modified_gmt":"2019-04-23T23:24:17","slug":"10-questions-with-quincy-newell","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/timesandseasons.org\/index.php\/2019\/04\/10-questions-with-quincy-newell\/","title":{"rendered":"10 Questions with Quincy Newell"},"content":{"rendered":"

\"\"We’re happy to have an other of our co-posts with Kurt Manwaring. This is 10 questions with Quincy Newell<\/a>. Newell is an associate professor of religious studies at Hamilton College. She’s also the author of Your Sister in the Gospel: The Life of Jane Manning James<\/i><\/i><\/a> from Oxford Press. James has been a focus of attention the past few years with quite a few things written about her and a well regarded film<\/a> focusing on her interactions with Emma Smith. One of the great things in the last decade of Mormon history has been a close attention to the lives of early black Saints along with a closer understanding of racism in the Church. Newell was one of the historians who helped initiate this era in church history.<\/p>\n


\nIntroducing herself and her book, she writes,<\/p>\n

Your Sister in the Gospel is the biography of Jane Elizabeth Manning James, an African American woman who grew up in Connecticut in the early 19th century and converted to Mormonism in the early 1840s. She and her family moved to Nauvoo, Illinois, where the church was then based, and Jane worked for the founder Joseph Smith as a servant. After he was killed in 1844, she went to work for Brigham Young, who became the next leader of the church. <\/p>\n

Jane married another black convert, Isaac James, and they moved to the Salt Lake Valley with the church. They were in one of the first companies to arrive in the Valley in 1847. <\/p>\n

Jane remained a faithful Latter-day Saint for the rest of her life, and died in 1908. In addition to telling the story of Jane\u2019s life, I also reproduce five key texts in an appendix to the book: her two patriarchal blessings and three versions of her life story.<\/p>\n

I tried really hard in the book to write in a way that spoke to a broad audience, not just other specialists in Mormon Studies. Some of the stuff I write is aimed at my colleagues in the academy; this, I wrote for my first-year students at the University of Wyoming, for my family members, for my friends, for the moms of my LDS colleagues. <\/p><\/blockquote>\n

Newell makes the choice of calling her topic by her first name Jane for interesting reasons.<\/p>\n

I thought about this decision a lot, because the politics of naming are so fraught\u2014especially when we\u2019re talking about African Americans and women, who have not always had much power to name themselves.<\/p>\n

Jane James used at least three surnames during the course of her life: her birth name, Manning; her first married name, James; her second married name, Perkins; and then she returned to using \u201cJames\u201d after her second marriage dissolved. <\/p>\n

From a strictly logistical point of view, that makes it really difficult to refer to her by last name with both clarity and accuracy, especially because many of the sources I used were produced when she was using one surname but concerned a time in her life when she used another surname. <\/p>\n

For African American people, surnames were often a symbol of \u201cself-ownership,\u201d but it\u2019s also important to recognize that all of the surnames Jane used\u2014or at least, all of the surnames we know she used\u2014came from the men in her life, and were in some ways a mark of their claim on her. <\/p>\n

The only name she used consistently throughout her life was Jane, so ultimately, that\u2019s the name I decided to use throughout the book as well.<\/p><\/blockquote>\n

Regarding Jane’s arrival in Nauvoo:<\/p>\n

Jane said in her autobiography that when she and her family got to Nauvoo, they \u201cwent through all kinds of hardship, trial, and rebuff,\u201d at least until they got to the Smiths\u2019 home. <\/p>\n

It\u2019s hard to know what she meant by this\u2014were the residents of Nauvoo unwelcoming, or worse? <\/p>\n

And why? <\/p>\n

It might have been because they were black, at least in part\u2014but it might also have been because they looked poor, and with hundreds of immigrants arriving in Nauvoo every day, already\u2014established residents might not have been thrilled about the idea of having to take in even more people who might not have the resources to provide for themselves.<\/p>\n

Once Jane and her family got to Joseph Smith\u2019s house, she said, things changed\u2014it\u2019s clear that she felt deeply and fully welcomed by Emma and Joseph Smith. I think that\u2019s why she spent so much time on Nauvoo in her autobiography. She was over eighty years old by the time she dictated it, but almost half of her account concerned her time in the Smiths\u2019 household, which lasted about eight months.<\/p>\n

In Salt Lake City, near the end of her life, Jane was an integral part of the community. I\u2019m not sure she was treated any more or less as an equal than she was in Nauvoo, but she was definitely well-known to other Latter-day Saints, including those in power. She made a living by doing laundry, but she also made time to attend worship services and women\u2019s meetings\u2014she shows up in the LDS periodical the Woman\u2019s Exponent in the minutes of both Relief Society and Retrenchment Society meetings. (Both organizations were religiously-based women\u2019s groups.)<\/p>\n

She was respected because she was one of the last remaining people who had known Joseph Smith personally, and she emphasized that aspect of her biography.<\/p>\n

In print\u2014meeting minutes, newspaper profiles, etc.\u2014she\u2019s frequently referred to as \u201cSister Jane James\u201d or sometimes \u201cAunt Jane James.\u201d These titles reflect her status in the community\u2014she\u2019s one of us, they seem to be saying\u2014but at the same time, I think referring to her as \u201cAunt\u201d (or \u201cAuntie,\u201d as one journalist did) echoes the use of this title for black \u201cmammies\u201d and has the effect of holding her at arm\u2019s length.<\/p>\n

According to Jane, Joseph Smith\u2019s last words to her were in the context of a conversation about whether she and her sister Angeline should go to Burlington, Iowa, to look for work. Burlington was just across the Mississippi River and a little bit north of Nauvoo.<\/p>\n

Jane recalled in her autobiography that Smith \u201csaid yes go and be good girls, and remember your profession of faith in the Everlasting Gospel, and the Lord will bless you.\u201d <\/p>\n

Smith was killed while Jane and Angeline were in Burlington, or at least that\u2019s how Jane remembered it.<\/p>\n

This memory seems to have been particularly poignant for Jane. I\u2019ve suggested that she might have interpreted Smith\u2019s words as a revelation especially for her. It was not uncommon for Smith\u2019s followers to ask him for personal guidance in the form of revelations or \u201ccommandments.\u201d Some of these revelations were later canonized in the Doctrine and Covenants, but not all of them were.<\/p><\/blockquote>\n

A particularly tragic aspect of Jane’s history is unfortunately her patriarchal blessing.<\/p>\n

Jane received a patriarchal blessing from Hyrum Smith in 1844. (She also received a patriarchal blessing from Patriarch John Smith in 1889. I\u2019m grateful to Jane\u2019s descendant Louis Duffy for sharing both blessings with me and giving his permission to publish them in the book\u2019s appendix.)<\/p>\n

In that 1844 blessing, Hyrum Smith identified Jane\u2019s lineage as that \u201cof Canaan, the Son of Ham.\u201d Most Latter-day Saints\u2019 patriarchal blessings identified them as descendants of the tribe of Ephraim, so placing Jane in the lineage of Canaan is unusual but not hugely surprising: plenty of white American and European folklore at the time identified black people as the descendants of Cain and Canaan and therefore inheriting the curses placed on those two biblical figures as well. <\/p>\n

A few sentences after identifying Jane as a descendant of Canaan, Hyrum Smith told her that \u201che that changeth times and seasons and placed a mark upon your forehead can take it off and stamp upon you his own Image.\u201d So, within a couple breaths, Smith invoked the key Bible stories white Christians used to justify white supremacy. Max Perry Mueller has pointed out that in its conclusion, this blessing also quoted God\u2019s warning to Cain in LDS scripture, warning Jane that \u201cif thou doest not well sin lieth at the door.\u201d <\/p>\n

So even in her patriarchal blessing, Jane was explicitly reminded that she inherited the curses of Cain and Canaan.<\/p><\/blockquote>\n

Her desire to receive her temple blessings is also sad and tragic.<\/p>\n

Jane performed baptisms for the dead on at least three occasions, in the Endowment House, the Logan Temple, and the Salt Lake City Temple. But toward the end of her life, Jane was deeply concerned with getting permission to receive her endowment and be sealed in the temple, rituals that Latter-day Saints believed were crucial to reaching the highest degrees of glory after death. (That belief has not changed in any substantial way.)<\/p>\n

Jane wanted to be sealed to Joseph Smith as a child; she asked also to be sealed to a husband in marriage. (That husband\u2019s identity varied a bit. Sometimes it was Isaac James; on at least one occasion, she requested a marital sealing to Q. Walker Lewis, one of the few African American men who we know held the LDS priesthood.) <\/p>\n

Jane sent letters to church leaders; she also asked powerful women like Zina Young to write letters on her behalf. She went to talk with church leaders about these requests in person, as well. <\/p>\n

I think she also cultivated her reputation as an upstanding Latter-day Saint who deserved temple ceremonies, regardless of her racial identity. She was a faithful Latter-day Saint, a mother, someone who fulfilled all the requirements of LDS women. She shaped her public image as someone who had known Joseph Smith, someone who Joseph Smith treated like his own child. <\/p>\n

In some ways, I think she used her autobiography to tell church leaders, \u201cJoseph Smith would have let me into the temple. Who are you to keep me out?\u201d<\/p>\n

During her lifetime, Jane didn\u2019t get what she was after. Instead, the result of her persistent efforts was that the Quorum of the Twelve Apostles decided to create a ceremony just for her, that sealed her to Joseph Smith as a servant. The ceremony was performed in the Salt Lake Temple, with Zina Young standing as proxy for Jane (even though Jane was alive and well, and living only a few blocks away).<\/p>\n

This ceremony is both horrifying and a remarkable instance of religious creativity. Church leaders couldn\u2019t (I think) wrap their heads around the idea of giving Joseph Smith a black daughter in eternity, although they were fine sealing scores of white Latter-day Saints to him as children. So instead, they drew on the resources they had\u2014in this case, my guess is that they looked at D&C 132, the line about \u201cministering servants,\u201d and used that to create a new way to seal people to one another.<\/p>\n

In any case, neither Jane nor the Quorum of the Twelve Apostles were satisfied with this compromise. The Q12 discussed this ceremony in the same terms they applied to other sealing ceremonies, but they used the verb attach rather than seal, as would have been standard in other kinds of sealing ceremonies. Jane applied again later for sealings, indicating that this ritual did not meet her needs; and the ceremony was never (so far as we know) performed again, indicating that the Q12 didn\u2019t find it a satisfying way of constructing eternal relationships.<\/p>\n

I think it\u2019s important to sit for a minute with this ritual innovation that was invented to protect a racist system.<\/p>\n

But, before your readers rush out to submit Jane\u2019s name for proxy sealing and endowment ceremonies, I\u2019ll also note that Linda King Newell performed these rituals for Jane shortly after the 1978 revelation extending the priesthood to men of African descent (and, by corollary, opening the endowment and sealing rituals to women and men of African descent).<\/p><\/blockquote>\n

The full interview is fantastic. I encourage everyone to head over to 10 Questions and read it in full<\/a>.<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"

We’re happy to have an other of our co-posts with Kurt Manwaring. This is 10 questions with Quincy Newell. Newell is an associate professor of religious studies at Hamilton College. She’s also the author of Your Sister in the Gospel: The Life of Jane Manning James from Oxford Press. James has been a focus of attention the past few years with quite a few things written about her and a well regarded film focusing on her interactions with Emma Smith. One of the great things in the last decade of Mormon history has been a close attention to the lives of early black Saints along with a closer understanding of racism in the Church. Newell was one of the historians who helped initiate this era in church history.<\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":43,"featured_media":39019,"comment_status":"open","ping_status":"closed","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"_jetpack_memberships_contains_paid_content":false,"footnotes":""},"categories":[55],"tags":[],"class_list":["post-39018","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","has-post-thumbnail","hentry","category-news-politics"],"jetpack_sharing_enabled":true,"jetpack_featured_media_url":"https:\/\/timesandseasons.org\/wp-content\/uploads\/2019\/04\/Newell.jpeg","_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/timesandseasons.org\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/39018","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/timesandseasons.org\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/timesandseasons.org\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/timesandseasons.org\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/43"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/timesandseasons.org\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=39018"}],"version-history":[{"count":1,"href":"https:\/\/timesandseasons.org\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/39018\/revisions"}],"predecessor-version":[{"id":39020,"href":"https:\/\/timesandseasons.org\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/39018\/revisions\/39020"}],"wp:featuredmedia":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/timesandseasons.org\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media\/39019"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/timesandseasons.org\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=39018"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/timesandseasons.org\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=39018"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/timesandseasons.org\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=39018"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}