Blacks and Mormonism

The Church of Jesus Christ of Latter-day Saints has held controversial positions about black people. Like many other Christian denominations in their time, early Mormons believed black people to be descendants of Cain, who were marked in all perpetuity with a sign of his sin. This belief was in no way uncommon in America at the time, and like all other mainstream Christian denominations, the church no longer supports this belief.

Joseph Smith had taught that black people could rise just as high in education and be just as useful to society as white people, and included in his platform for his unsuccessful bid for President of the United States the controversial idea of abolishing slavery entirely. While his position is no longer controversial, it did rise ire against the Mormons in the then slave state of Missouri. See History of the Church of Jesus Christ of Latter-day Saints.

The Bible references which were used by the other denominations in support of the descendant-of-Cain view were interpreted in the same manner by the LDS church at the time. In addition, the Book of Mormon contains a similar reference to the Lamanites, by which is meant Native Americans. It says, in 2 Nephi 5:21:

And he had caused the cursing to come upon them, yea, even a sore cursing, because of their iniquity. For behold, they had hardened their hearts against him, that they had become like unto a flint; wherefore, as they were white, and exceedingly fair and delightsome, that they might not be enticing unto my people the Lord God did cause a skin of blackness to come upon them.

And thus saith the Lord God: I will cause that they shall be loathsome unto thy people, save they shall repent of their iniquities.

And cursed shall be the seed of him that mixeth with their seed; for they shall be cursed even with the same cursing. And the Lord spake it, and it was done.

And because of their cursing which was upon them they did become an idle people, full of mischief and subtlety, and did seek in the wilderness for beasts of prey.

The second President, Brigham Young, taught that interracial relationships would be punished by God. In Journal of Discourses Vol. 7, pg 290-291, he says:

Shall I tell you the law of God in regard to the African Race? If the White man who belongs to the chosen seed mixes his blood with the seed of Cain, the penalty, under the law of God, is death on the spot. This will always be so.

Whether one interprets this as the promise of an immediate act by God or a call for the immediate death penalty, it's a harsh condemnation of interracial couples. It's important to note that the Journal of Discourses is not accepted as an official source of church doctrine, and that this statement has never been recognized as the stance of the church.

It's also significant that the church always allowed black membership in all its congregations, and taught that they were entitled to the same blessings in heaven as all people. Technically, the preisthood ban applied to men of African descent regardless of skin color. Dark-skinned South Pacific Islanders were ordained to the priesthood for example, while light-skinned Africans were not.

A relatively modern Prophet, Spencer W. Kimball, believed that after accepting the Gospel, dark-skinned people would be made white, a process that would take place over a number of generations. After visiting a mission site in South America, he said in his General Conference Report of October, 1960 (quite a number of years before he became the president of the church), which was published in Improvement Era, December 1960, pp 922-923:

I saw a striking contrast in the progress of the Indian people today.... The day of the Lamanites is nigh. For years they have been growing delightsome, and they are now becoming white and delightsome, as they were promised. In this picture of the twenty Lamanite missionaries, fifteen of the twenty were as light as Anglos, five were darker but equally delightsome The children in the home placement program in Utah are often lighter than their brothers and sisters in the hogans on the reservation.

At one meeting a father and mother and their sixteen-year-old daughter were present, the little member girl--sixteen--sitting between the dark father and mother, and it was evident she was several shades lighter than her parents--on the same reservation, in the same hogan, subject to the same sun and wind and weather....These young members of the Church are changing to whiteness and to delightsomeness. One white elder jokingly said that he and his companion were donating blood regularly to the hospital in the hope that the process might be accelerated.

In 1978 the church began ordaining black men to the priesthood, citing a revelation from God received by the same Spencer Kimball, who was by then President of the church.

(I know these paragraphs give a slanted picture, althrough I've tried not to. Please help round out the picture from either a Mormon perspective) or wider historical perspective