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This evening, we are pleased to have Elder Steven E. Snow, our newly called Church historian with us. We know how busy our Church leaders are. And we so appreciate him taking time from his busy schedule to join us. He will share some comments with us before I introduce Max. And then after Max's talk and the question and answer, then Elder Snow will give just a brief comment at the end. So Elder Snow.

Thank you, April. And as Church historian in training, it is wonderful to be with you this evening. And I welcome you to this lecture. We're grateful for Max Mueller and this opportunity to hear a unique chapter of our history. And I appreciate your interest in coming tonight, and appreciate those who worked so diligently to make this evening possible.

April will give a more detailed introduction of Max, but we are so grateful to him for coming. As you know, he's a doctoral candidate at Harvard. And April will go into that, but this topic tonight is particularly interesting considering the publicity of late. And we're grateful to hear Max's perspective and to study and consider our own history on this topic. It allows us to recognize that the history of our early Black brothers and sisters is just not something peripheral but is really-- it is not an afterthought of Church history, but in fact is our history, and we need to understand it. And we look forward to being taught this evening. Max has an innate sense of fairness and justice. And he is often sought out and consulted on issues of the day concerning the Church and its history. And we're grateful for his thoughtfulness and consideration and his responses. And I look forward especially to hearing from him tonight. And again, appreciate-- express my gratitude for the opportunity we have of being together and taking this time to learn more about, really, a unique chapter. Thank you very much. April?

Max Perry Mueller is an associate editor of "Religion and Politics," a forthcoming weekly online journal, a project of the John C. Danforth Center on religion and politics at Washington University in St. Louis. He writes frequently on Mormonism and politics in publications such as the "New Republic," "Religion Dispatches," "Slate" and the Huffington Post. He is currently the Echols Foundation Mormon Studies fellow at the Turner Humanities Center at the University of Utah. He is a doctoral candidate in the study of religion at Harvard University, writing a dissertation on Mormon race relations. Max was born in Wyoming but grew up in upstate New York close to the birthplace of the Church. Max likes to play in the mountains-- skiing, running, and cycling. His wife Ana is all alone in Boston where she works, while he is out here working on his fellowship at the U. We have given Max a hard time about his pronunciation of some of our Mormon names, but he's coming along pretty nicely. We are pleased this evening to have Max speak with us. We'll turn the time over to him. Max? [APPLAUSE]

I've been repeating to myself all day-- "Zaramela," "Zaramela." Is that right? Pretty good? All right. Thank you for a wonderful turnout tonight. I am honored and privileged to speak on this very, very important subject at this very important time in the Church's history. Before I begin, I'd like to offer some thanks. I've spent this last year since August under the care of some really important and loving people, especially at the staff of the Church History Library. And I offer my thanks for extending this generous invitation to speak here to William Slaughter, April Williamson, Michael Landon, and Brittany Chapman. I hope you don't regret that offer to let me speak after tonight. I don't think you will. Also, to the regulars like me at the Church History Library, [INAUDIBLE] and Connell O'Donovan for helping me and being constant conversation partners, to the University of Utah Tanner Humanities Center led by Bob Goldberg, where I've been able to be the Mormon studies fellow this year. And finally, most importantly, I'd like to offer my thanks to the Genesis Group, and particularly Jerri Harwell, President Don Harwell, and President Emeritus, the inimitable Darius Gray. I dedicate this to Darius and Jerri and, of course, to the memory of Jane Manning James. Before I get into Jane's story, I'd like to offer a preface of sort. And this is certainly my first and most likely my last attempt at doing an LDS Sunday School lesson, Book of Mormon lesson. Normally, I know it's very Mormon chic to get out your electronic device and open, so to speak, your Book of Mormon on your iPad or iPhone. But instead, I'll provide the Book of Mormon references as we go forward. First, we're going to start with-- we're going to head towards 3 Nephi 23. This is where we'll get to in a second, but I'd like to do a quick tour of 3 Nephi 11 through 22. And this will relate to Jane, I promise.

All right. Great. So here we are with Jesus. During his brief time in America, roughly around 34 in the Common Era, Jesus Christ is very busy. He teaches the Nephites and Lamanites his gospel of repentance of sin, of obedience to Heavenly Father's will, and faith in Christ's atoning sacrifice. Jesus teaches them sacred rites like baptism and the sacrament. He preaches the Sermon on the Mount. He speaks the Beatitudes. He commands the newly commissioned and baptized to become his first missionaries to declare this gospel unto the ends of the Earth. He foretells of the coming of the Book of Mormon, the gathering of Israel, the uniting of the remnant of Jacob, which of course is the Native American tribes who will fall into fratricide during his absence but whom the Gentiles will-- who first receive the Book of Mormon in the early 19th century who will redeem and assist in establishing the new Jerusalem.

And now we're at 3 Nephi 23:7. And I quote, "and it came to pass that he said until Nephi, bring forth the record which ye have kept." In the eighth verse, we find Jesus Christ examining this record. "And when Nephi had brought forth the record and laid them before him, he cast his eyes upon them." Here, we can see Jesus's eyes growing big in surprise. Why is Jesus surprised? What is Jesus's reaction to this record? Verse nine-- "verily I say to you, I commanded my servant Samuel, the Lamanite that he should testify onto his people that at the day that the Father should glorify His name in me that there were many Saints who should arise from the dead and should appear unto many and should minister unto them. And he said unto them, was it not so? And his disciples answered him and said, yea, Lord. Samuel did prophesy according to thy words, and they were all fulfilled. And Jesus said unto them, how be it that you have not written this thing that many Saints did arise, appear unto many and did minister unto them? And it came to pass that Nephi remembered that this thing had not been written." So here we have Jesus examining the Nephite's sacred text and finding them wanting. A significant lacuna and a hole existed in what was destined to become the Book of Mormon. Jesus gave one look at the record and demanded, where were the prophecies of my servant Samuel the Lamanite? More than any Nephite sage, Jesus declared it was this dark-skinned Samuel who had spoke most correctly of the events around Jesus's birth, his death and Resurrection, and the meaning of that Resurrection. On behalf of Samuel, Jesus rebukes Nephi, who is, of course, a descendant of the Jerusalem-born Nephi who first settled in the New World, for not having written this thing-- Samuel's prophecies into the community's sacred text, even though Jesus's New World disciples recognized that in fact, all that Samuel had pre-saged were fulfilled. Verse 13: "And it came to pass that Jesus commanded that it should be written. Therefore, it was written as he commanded." Nephi follows Jesus's commandment to give proper place to Samuel's prophetic voice. Samuel the Lamanite's text, which is an oral record from a dark-skinned Lamanite is now transcribed by a light-skinned Nephite, then is placed in the proper chronological order, namely in the chapters 13 through 16 and the Book of Helaman around sixth century BC before Jesus's birth. This lacuna filled, this holy book made whole becomes the center of the Book of Mormon. Samuel, a member of the cursed family of descendants of Laman, becomes the most eloquent expositor of the history of America as home of the New Jerusalem. Samuel's story highlights a key limitation to the Book of Mormon as a complete record of ancient America, only corrected by Jesus's direct intervention, a limitation that will in some ways carry into the Mormon historical record keeping of dark-skinned Mormons. One reason why Samuel's prophecies did not make it initially into the Book of Mormon was that they are oral in nature.

Samuel did not send a letter to the Nephites of "Zaramela." Not bad, huh? He didn't send a letter to the Nephites of "Zaramela" admonishing them-- Zarahemla. Zarahemla, thank you. See, give it away. I put on a white shirt. I shaved. [LAUGHTER] Admonishing them for their perfidy. "He spake upon the walls of the city. And many heard the words of Samuel." And those are my italics in Helaman 16:1. This division between oral and written archive is a fundamental aspect between light and dark-skinned history keeping. Because Whites-- be them Nephites, Puritans, or Mormon pioneers-- control the means of production of history, the written word, the printing press, Whites control what gets stored in the archive, and thus remembered as history. Literacy here is power. Those who control the written word get to narrate the winners and losers of war, to portray who is a savage and a heathen, and who was civilized and Christian. And literacy in the form of--the very Mormon form--of journal keeping leads to the inclusion of certain White Mormon pioneers in histories and exclusion of other non-Mormon pioneers', histories in the archive. So I would invite us to keep Samuel the Lamanite's story in mind as we learn about Jane Manning James. My argument here is simple. Just like Jesus taught the Nephites that Samuel the Lamanite's story must be included to make the Book of Mormon complete, I argue here that Jane's story is not to be forgotten even if she struggles to make it into the written archive. Her story, like other stories of non-White Mormons, is not to be marginalized. Instead, Jane's story, a story of faith and perseverance in the face of persecution should be at the center of the Mormon pioneer memory and identity because of her triple persecution-- being a Mormon, being Black, and also being a woman.

On a muggy 4th of July evening, members of the Genesis Group file into a Church of Jesus Christ of Latter-day Saints meetinghouse on the outskirts of Salt Lake City. Under the supervision of an all-White LDS hierarchy but led by a cadre of Black Mormon men, the Genesis Group gathers monthly for social and educational events that are intended to help Black Mormons integrate into their local wards and teach them about their rights and duties in the Church's worship life. At this particular meeting, members of this increasingly multiracial community-- and anyone who's visited a Genesis Group meeting knows that it's made up of not only the 100 or so African-American Mormons living in the Salt Lake area, but also a growing number of African converts who have immigrated to Utah and several dozen LDS White families who have adopted Black children. And this multi-racial community that night has come to hear a history lesson, a story that has as much to do with shaping their present as it does with defining their past. On this night, Jane Manning James has come to give her testimony to speak about how she came to join the LDS Church and about her unique status as Auntie Jane, the best-known Black Mormon in the late 19th century Salt Lake Valley. Yet to the members of this 21st century Mormon community, Jane is much more than an auntie. She is their matriarch. Since 1978, when the LDS Church lifted the ban on Blacks attaining full Church membership, the improbable journey of an unwed teenage mother and daughter of a freed slave has been celebrated on stage, in books, in documentaries, and memorialized in monuments. While she has become a popular topic in articles printed in LDS-sponsored publications, I would argue that most White Mormons yet have heard of Jane Manning James. Yet among her spiritual descendants at Genesis, however, the mere mention of her name evokes thoughts of essential Mormon pioneer spirit, strength of spirit and body and long-suffering faith in the face of persecution. For contemporary Black Mormons, Jane Manning James serves as the symbolic link that connects them to the mythology of the persecuted Mormon pioneers, the self-described Latter-day host of Israel forced to flee the United States and to seek refuge from religious bigotry in the Intermountain West. And this mythology is that it continues to define and many ways set the boundaries of Mormon identity. And of course, when I say mythology here, I don't mean something that's not true, but just simply stories we tell about ourselves to understand ourselves. Now, Jane has been dead for 113 years. So the act of presenting Jane's spiritual testimony falls to Jerri Harwell, a college professor, author, and wife of Genesis Group President Don Harwell. For the past decade, Jerri has reenacted Jane Manning James for Church and civic events throughout the Salt Lake City Valley. Drawing mostly from Jane's short autobiography, Jerri recounts Jane's experience as a servant to the first two Mormon prophets, a member of the first wave of Mormon pioneers to settle in Utah in 1847, a mother to a large Utah family, and a faithful tithe-paying Saint until her death in 1908 at the age of 87, or around the age of 87. Jerri dedicates most of her re-enactment to describing Jane's time spent in the Smith's mansion house, the seat of political and ecclesiastical power in Joseph Smith's Nauvoo Illinois. In early 1884, new converts-- Jane and eight members of the Manning family who joined the LDS Church after Jane's own baptism-- trekked by foot from their home in Connecticut to gather with the other Saints in the booming city-state on the banks of the Missouri River. Citing almost verbatim from Jane's 1893 life sketch, Jane recalls fondly that it was Joseph Smith and his wife Emma who initially housed the Manning family when they arrived in Nauvoo. And because Jane grew particularly close to the prophet's family, when the rest of the Manning family found work and housing elsewhere, the Smiths offered Jane a home as well as a job as a washerwoman.

So this is Jerri reenacting Jane at Genesis. Channeling Jane, Jerri recounts-- "the next morning, Emma brought the clothes down to the basement to wash. And among the clothes I found Brother Joseph's robes. I looked at them and wondered, as I had never seen any before. And I pondered over them and thought about them so earnestly, so sincerely, that the Lord made manifest to me that they pertain to the new name that is given to the Saints that the world not knows of." Now, Jane's quasi-mystical experience with the prophet's dirty laundry was not the only event suggesting Jane's close relationship with the Smiths, an intimacy that grew in the few precious months Jane spent with the family before Joseph Smith was assassinated by a anti-Mormon mob in June 1844. "Sister Emma asked me one day if I would like to be adopted to them as their child. I did not answer her. She said, 'I can wait a while so you can consider it.' She waited two weeks until she asked again. And when she did, I said, 'no ma'am,' because I didn't understand what it meant." While Jane, a new convert to early 19th century Mormonism might not know fully what it meant, Jerri and the Genesis Group audience certainly understands the significance of this offer of a spiritual adoption. In Mormon soteriology or study of the afterlife, such an adoption would mean that a lowly Black washer girl would spend eternity with the Smiths, attaining the same spiritual blessings and level of heaven as the Prophet himself. Jerri concludes this particular scene with an extended pause, allowing her audience to share in silence the recognition of what a missed opportunity this represented. During the re-enactment, Jerri not only conjurs Jane's words but also Jane's own colloquial African-American affectations, or as Jerri imagines they would have been. She draws out her words, dropping G's and consonants along the way. These theatrical stylings serve to remind the Saints present that despite the multiracial makeup of today's Genesis Group, this is intended to be a gathering of Mormonism's Black community. Even the meeting house's warmer than usual temperature is said to add to this ambience. As people found their seats before the service began, a Genesis Group member laughingly offered up, "they must have turned down the air conditioning to make it more Black Church." While efforts have gone into making this Genesis Group meeting feel and sound Black, it is also very Mormon. For example, the group opens the meeting with the singing of the classic LDS hymn, "Where Can I Turn for Peace?" followed by the Negro spiritual, "Do Lord Remember Me." The contrasting styles in which these two songs are performed-- the former song in a stayed, on-the-beat manner, the latter shouted, clapped, and even danced by the community-- might seem to represent a cultural chasm between LDS and Black Church culture. Yet the shared message in both of these songs of deliverance from sorrow and persecution through faith in Heavenly Father hints at common ground. These intertwining of Black and Mormon identities is essentially the message of Jerri's reenactment. Despite the long held racial theology which kept early Black Mormons on the margins of the Mormon community and excluded them from official Mormon pioneer history, the fact that Jane's life story places her at the center of 19th century Mormon history means that "Black" and "Mormon" are not mutually exclusive identities. Moreover, embedded in the act of remembering and reenacting, Jane's life story is a more implicit critique of the LDS hierarchy. And I say this with caution. The LDS Church's history and theology makers who work in Temple Square have historically failed to recognize Black Mormon's contribution to Mormon history, and likewise, have historically failed to recognize the important role Black Mormons play in the modern Church. Now, my presentation today here, and the statements recently produced by the Church, directly refutes that particular point. Two summers ago I went to Salt Lake City to look for Jane Manning James in the archives of the LDS Church History Library. I hoped that Jane would speak to me from scratching microfiche and dusty letter books. I hoped she would tell me how she dealt with a precarious place in which she lived out her life as a Black Mormon pioneer in Zion. I planned to ask her, "how do you understand your status as a beloved member of the community, celebrated as a friend of the first prophet's family, as a pioneer of 1847, and as a steadfast member of the LDS Church?" At the same time, I planned to ask her, "how did you come to terms with the LDS Church policy or practice that, due to your race, you were defined as innately cursed, and thus unworthy to receive the same blessings as your fellow White Saints?" Although this was my plan during my time in Salt Lake City, I found that the Archives are not the only or even the best place to find Jane. First, there is no single word, not one scrap of paper on which we find Jane's writing. Actually, this is quite a debatable point but one you'll have to wait to read my book to actually find out that I do think we can find some of Jane's writing, actually, in the Archive. But we do know for a fact that her autobiography, the most important written archive of her life-- she did not write herself. Her life story was transcribed by her friend Elizabeth JD Roundy. Whether it was because she was illiterate, as is commonly believed-- but actually I do not believe-- because she was going blind, as she actually states in the narrative, or because the story required a White Mormon to validate the claims she makes, the reason why Jane employed a scribe continues to be a matter of some debate. This act of validating a Black person's writing by a White person does remind us of the validation by leading Whites was common practice with slave narratives in the 19th century. Think of William Lloyd Garrison providing a preface to Frederick Douglass's autobiography. Think of Harriet Jacobs's Incidents in the Life of a Slave Girl, which was validated twice, once by the abolitionist Amy Post, and Lydia Maria Child. And also think again here of Samuel the Lamanite. He does not write into the Book of Mormon his own story. It is Jesus himself who validates Samuel's story and Nephi, his one time missionary companion who has either forgotten or left out Samuel's prophetic teachings, who writes Samuel's story into the Book of Mormon. Certainly, the written archive sheds light onto the question of how Jane, in writing, subtly challenges the Church's marginalization of Blacks within Mormon history and within the Mormon community. But it was my interviews with Jerri and in my observations of her reenactments that I discovered that the canon, the Archive is not closed on Jane's story. The legacy of Jane Manning James's Black Mormon experience unfolds today in the lives of modern Black Mormons like Jerri and also, I would say, in the lives of all Mormons.

They must strike a precarious balance between their ongoing struggles with what the LDS Church has now officially called folklore about Black spiritual inferiority and the spiritual truth they find within their own Mormon testimonies of faith, their own personal revelations. My primary focus here is on placing Jerri's and Jane's experiences together, to illuminate how each woman came to terms with her unsettled place in her faith community. That said, since Jane serves as a role model for many contemporary Black Mormons and increasing number of Mormons of all types, and since the legacy of Jane's 19th century Mormon pioneer culture continues to define modern Mormon identity, it is important to explore Jane's world before attempting to understand Jerri's.

On Thursday, April 16 at noon, Jane Manning James died at her home on 529 South 200 East. So we can see it here, that 'A' roughly represents where her house would have stood. Ironically, that is at the corner of Cesar Chavez and Rosa Parks Boulevard. Underneath is Martin Luther King Boulevard.

Only after her passing, the Deseret Evening News published a front page obituary of James. Such star treatment was usually reserved for the deaths of high-ranking LDS officials or leading Utah politicians. So that means Jane dies at noon. And that same day, the Deseret Evening News, which came out in the afternoon about 5 or 6, had already placed an obituary in the front page of the newspaper. You can see it here at the bottom. I've blown it up a little bit. So that means they had an obituary on her on file. And as for those journalists and folks who work in the media know, that is reserved for the people who are very special, whose deaths are imminent but they want to have something on file to announce that. So she has a very important place. Yet Jane occupied neither an ecclesiastical nor political post. As the Deseret Evening News reported, Aunt Jane was in fact a colored woman whose exceptional status derived from her extraordinary life. Five days later, the Deseret Evening News reported that hundreds of Jane's friends, both Black and White, crowded into a Mormon meeting house in Salt Lake City's eighth ward. There, they listened to LDS Church President Joseph F. Smith deliver a remembrance of the faithful Mormon woman he had first met 65 years before in Nauvoo, Illinois, when he was the five-year-old son of Hyrum Smith, Joseph Smith's older brother. Now, the great fanfare with which the Mormon leadership marked Jane's death belies the fact that for at least the previous 50 years, the Mormon hierarchy had worked to marginalize Black Mormons. Joseph Smith's vision for the restored Christian Church was initially racially egalitarian. In the 1830s and '40s, early Mormon leaders had ordained Black men to the priesthood. Only after Joseph Smith's death in 1844 did Mormons begin to move away from their original policy of relative racial universalism, instead espousing a theology similar to many Protestant churches in antebellum America. This was not just a Mormon thing. This was very widespread. And that's really important to keep in mind. Namely, these theological ideas were that dark skin marked them as permanently suffering under a set of divine curses. Mormons and others reasoned that Blacks were set apart from and inferior to Whites, ineligible for any religious leadership position. In 1852, Brigham Young declared in the too often repeated phrase, "any man having one drop of seed of Cain in him cannot hold the priesthood." And this position, more or less, would become formal Church policy over the next half century. In 1908, the same year he eulogized Jane Manning James as a faithful Saint, Church President Joseph F. Smith declared that his Uncle, Joseph Smith Jr., had stripped the priesthood away from Elijah Abel, the most famous Black priesthood holder and close friend of the Prophet, when the Prophet became aware of Abel's true race. And this statement directly contradicted many Church records and, in fact, a position that Joseph Smith had taken in the previous decades on Abel's case. And this rendering of Abel-- as you can see, he's a light-skinned person. In most of the documentations, he's referred to as a mulatto. This racialized theology also meant that Black Mormons like Jane Manning James could not access the temple where Mormons receive sacred ordinances for themselves and for their dead family members. In her storytelling, mediated by her scribe Elizabeth Roundy, Jane steadfastly proclaims her submission to the LDS Church hierarchy, as was the norm among most Utah Mormons. In her life sketch, Jane insist on her devotion to the Church presidents as God's prophetic authorities. Still, Jane also offers an indirect but powerful challenge to Joseph F. Smith's rationale against Blacks holding the priesthood, pointing out that this was not the practice of the original Mormon prophet, his uncle, Joseph Smith Jr. The bulk of Jane's narrative recounts her relationship with Joseph Smith Jr., whom she just depicts as welcoming to all his faithful-- White, Black, or Red. Jane writes that when the road weary Mannings arrived at the Nauvoo mansion, quote, "Brother Smith said to some White sisters that was present, 'sisters, I want you to occupy this room this evening with some brothers and sisters that have just arrived.'" Unquote. Jane remembers that Joseph was willing to open the doors of his home to Black Mormon converts and to integrate the mansion's living quarters seemingly without a thought to the racial implications of such an act. This is in 1844 in antebellum Illinois, where Black Codes were very, very strict, some of the strictest in the country. And he looks past those and welcomes this family into his home without a second thought. This description of the Prophet acting with compassion towards a poor Black family who showed up on his doorstep suggests at the very least Smith did not see race as a fixed social barrier. Jane did not mention that she witnessed Smith ordaining any Black men. But based on the portrayal of the man she called 'Brother Joseph' that Jane creates, it is hard to imagine, as his nephew Joseph F. Smith would assert 60 years later, that Joseph Smith Jr. would strip a trusted friend like Elijah Abel of his priesthood simply because he discovered that there was some Black blood in Abel's genealogy.

We don't know how widely Jane Manning James's life sketch circulated during her lifetime. We do know that Jane instructed Elizabeth JD Roundy to read the narrative at her funeral. This means that in April of 1908, Joseph F. Smith, after giving the eulogy of Jane Manning James, had to sit and listen as Jane, from the grave, offered an alternative historical take on the racial disposition of Mormonism's original prophet, a narrative that would become, because of Jane's intervention into the Archive, part of the LDS archive itself. Jane's challenge to the racialized theology of late 19th century Mormonism went beyond subtle critiques of the historical record of Joseph Smith Jr. In 1870, after her husband left her and she divorced him, Jane grew concerned about her own spiritual exaltation and that of her children. Her husband, Isaac, never had the priesthood. And her spiritual exaltation required that she be sealed in a Mormon temple or an endowment house to a priesthood-holding man. For the last 25 years of her life, Jane petitioned each successive Mormon President to grant her access to the Temple. In 1884, Jane sent a letter to President John Taylor in which she balanced respect for Church authority with a subtle challenge to the conclusions that the Mormon leadership had made about the proper place of Blacks in the Mormon community. And again, we don't know if Jane herself actually penned these letters to the Church presidents. In this particular letter to President Taylor, Jane states that she accepts the authority of scripture as presented in the LDS book of Abraham, by then canonized in 1880, and the text most often used to justify the ban on Blacks holding the priesthood. Quote, "I realized that my race and color mean I can't accept my endowments as those who are White." Unquote. Yet citing another verse from the Book of Mormon, Jane insists that because she is a child of Abraham to whom God promised salvation, she, along with all the families of the Earth, should be eligible for exaltation. So Jane is doing some careful scriptural analysis and finding an inconsistency, what scholars of sacred scriptures would call exegeting this particular sacred scripture. Based on this rationale, emphasizing this part of the book of Abraham, Jane concludes her letter by pleading, "is there no blessing for me?" Jane's request to President Taylor was denied. Through the 1880s and '90s, she tried different approaches to persuade Church authorities to grant her Temple privileges. For example, based on that invitation the Smiths had made to her decades earlier, Jane requested that she be sealed to the original prophet's family. In 1894, this request was granted with the exception that she be quote, "adopted to the Prophet, not as his child but as his eternal servant in exaltation." Jane would do the prophet's laundry for eternity. And the Salt Lake Temple adoption records indicate that Jane herself was not permitted to enter the Temple to participate in her own circumscribed adoption. Instead, a proxy stood in for Jane during the ceremony, which is an unusual if, in fact, unprecedented occurrence, since proxies were almost exclusively employed for dead participants. We can imagine Jane either sitting on the footsteps of the recently completed Temple or in one of the internal rooms waiting while this ceremony took place.

When Jerri reenacts Jane's life story before the Genesis Group, she brings two different Black Mormon experiences together to the meetinghouse pulpit. Jerri brings to life Jane, the Black Mormon woman of 1893. The year she dictated her autobiography, she was divorced and often in penary, beloved by many but forbidden from entering the Temple and having any ordinances. But the Genesis Group audience also knows Jerri's own story, either because they've read her book, Leaning on Prayer, or because she has shared her testimony with them. They know about Jerri's middle class background and her marriage to the President of Genesis Group, to whom she was sealed for time and eternity in that same Salt Lake City Temple in 1987. The purpose of Jerri's double re-enactment-- two testimonies of faith embedded in one narrative-- itself takes a double form. The re-enactment seeks to answer the conventional evangelical question, how does a soul find its way to redemption and truth in the gospel?

But it is the assumed incongruity between Black and Mormon identities that reveals a second more compelling question. Why would a Black woman of either the 19th century or the 21st century look to find a gospel home among the Mormons? To seek membership in a quote unquote "White Church" governed by a male patriarchy, a Church which, until recently, has shown at best ambivalence toward her membership. Now, Jerri's response to this assumed incongruity is to reject its basic premise. In doing so she reveals that there is much more continuity as there is change in both her own and Jane's testimonies of faith. The message that together Jerri and Jane proclaim is that the LDS Church is not racially particularistic, condemning Black Saints to the margins because they are supposedly inherently inferior to their White brethren. The LDS Church, or more precisely its gospel, is universal, belonging to, as the book of Abraham says, all the families of the Earth. However, both women make this proclamation, not because of their own experiences with fellow Saints or with Church hierarchy, but because of their intimate prayer lives with Heavenly Father. This is where they find their faith. The continuity between Jerri's and Jane's experiences as well as the importance of prayer for both women is evident in Jerri's own spiritual autobiography, Leaning on Prayer. The book, which details Jerri's conversion to Mormonism and her experience as a Black Mormon woman living in Utah in the post-1970 era, is a meditation on prayer as both a source of self-understanding and a source for Mormonism's true message. For example, Jerri writes about how she used prayer to deal with her own frustrating experiences navigating the racial geopolitics of the LDS Church. In 1977, she was a 19-year-old college student and a new convert to Mormonism living in suburban Detroit. During her conversion process, the local Church leaders informed Jerri that Black Mormons were not permitted to occupy the same callings as their White brethren. Jerri was initially unconcerned with the ban on Black men holding the priesthood. She said, being a woman, I couldn't hold the priesthood anyway. So I didn't think that much of it. Yet Jerri became irate quote, "with brother Anderson as he dismissed her expressed interest in serving as a missionary." Jerri recalls brother Anderson asking, "whom would you teach?" insinuating that a potential White convert would not take the missionary lessons from a Black Mormon woman. Jerri writes that, for several days, she did not pray because, she wrote, "I could not bring myself to pray to a God who established a Church that excludes Blacks from the priesthood and from serving missions." She was angry at God, not only for excluding Blacks from his restored Church, but also from making her Black. "I seem to hurt all over. Why isn't it time for Blacks to hear the gospel? Why was I born with this negroid blood? Why me, God? Why me?" When Jerri decided to make her heartache a matter of earnest and sincere prayer, her faith was rewarded. "Sobbing and pouring my heart out to God, I ended my prayer asking Heavenly Father why Blacks could not receive the priesthood. I felt a burning and heard the Lord say, 'I have never given a reason.' 'What?' I thought. I had searched and read so much on the priesthood restriction that surely the truth, the reason was in there somewhere. Again, the Lord repeated his answer and said, 'I have never given a reason.' I took him at his word. All that I had been reading over the past several months where the opinions of men." And that's my underlining and italics of 'opinions of men.' Jerri was eventually able to serve a mission, but only after the LDS Church lifted the ban on Blacks holding the priesthood, mere months after her own conversion in June 1978. When she heard the announcement during a television news break that day-- as many of you recall who were of that age, this was national news. News programs around the country, not just in Utah, broke in to announce this very, very important announcement. So instead of confirming the news with a phone call to a fellow Mormon-- she's pretty isolated as a Black person in Detroit-- Black Mormon in Detroit. So she would have had to make a phone call. Instead of doing so, she knelt in prayer. Before she could even finish asking the Lord if the news was true, Jerri recalls, "my whole bosom began to burn. My whole body seemed to burn from within. It was true. 'Does this mean I can go on a mission?' I inquired to the Lord. 'Yes,' came the reply." Jerri believes that this experience allowed her to learn early in her spiritual growth not to lean or depend on her own understanding. "As I searched the scriptures diligently," she says, "prayed always, and believed that I would receive an answer to my prayers, I often did," she says. It is fair to say that Jerri learned early also not to lean on the opinions of folks like Brother Anderson, but instead to define her own sense of worth within the community and her rightful place within it. In my conversations with Jerri about her experiences as a Black Mormon woman in the LDS Church and her experiences reenacting Jane, Jerri has suggested that she believes that Jane, too, turned to prayer when she needed reassurance. Referring to Jane's three-decade-long struggle to get Church authorities to grant her temple endowments, Jerri said: "certainly something must have kept her going. We know that Jane was a prayerful woman," Jerri tells me. Jerri points to her favorite passage from Jane's narrative to support this claim. After being denied passage across Lake Erie with her fellow White Mormon converts, Jane describes the arduous trek across the frozen Midwestern countryside that she and her family endured. She was denied passage even though the Mormon missionary who had converted her probably promised her so. She was denied passage on the ferry that took the rest across Lake Erie. So she walked from Buffalo to Nauvoo, some 800 miles with her family. And I quote from her autobiography: "We walked until our shoes were worn out and our feet became sore and cracked open and bled, until you could see the whole footprint of our feet with blood on the ground. We stopped and united in prayer to the Lord. We ask God the Eternal Father to heal our feet. Our prayers were answered, and our feet were healed forthwith." I think you can see the bloody footprints in the snow as she walks along, the eight members of her family and herself. To heal the pain caused by her fellow Mormons' refusal to recognize her as an equal member of their community-- and this pain literally is manifested in real physical suffering-- Jane also turns to her prayerful relationship with God. She turned to her faith, not in men but in Heavenly Father. In her life sketch, Jane writes that her own conversion to Mormonism led to the conversion of most of her immediate relatives-- her mother, some of her brothers and sisters. While Jane highlights the fact that she was able to convince her family to leave their homes in Connecticut and join the Mormons in Nauvoo, she does not mention that the only other family member who eventually settled in Utah and remained Mormon was her brother, Isaac. By the time of her death in 1908, her eldest son had been excommunicated, her other children had left Utah, and none of her grandchildren were active members of the LDS Church. Like Jane, Jerri's conversion to Mormonism led to the conversion of some of her closest relatives. Impressed with the changes they saw in her life after a mission in Texas, Jerri's brother and sister grew interested in and eventually converted to Mormonism. Yet just as it was for Jane, the Church for Jerri and her family has been as much a source of loss and regret as it has been a source of hope. Since the 1978 revelation, the LDS Church has publicly embraced its newly rediscovered universalism by touting its missionary work in predominantly Black neighborhoods in America and cities in African countries, areas where missionaries had almost never proselytized before. I've said to many people here that I believe, since 1978, there has been no Church, actually no nonprofit body in the world that has worked to reach out the hand of fellowship and the hand of humanity to people of African descent than the LDS Church itself since 1978. Yet despite these very important and laudable efforts-- I was in Katrina-- I was in Louisiana teaching high school during Katrina and witnessed firsthand the incredible care and love everyday Mormons showed to people from that devastated city-- Despite these important efforts, a racist folklore, which has become the term for the past beliefs, still pervades all levels of Mormon culture, the legacy of more than a century and a half of racialized doctrine and policies. During the last two decades, Jerri and Don have raised six children in the LDS Church. Jerri reports that on several occasions, the Harwell family, especially the children, have encountered overt racism within the Church. Years ago when Jerri complained to her ward primary school president after her son was called the n-word during Sunday school, Jerri was rebuffed and told, quote, "you need to get over what happened 300 years ago." Jerri responded, quote, "I don't know what you're talking about. My son was called the n-word seven days ago." Unquote. Despite Jerri's prominent role in the Mormon community and her willingness to defend her children, none of her six children are members of the LDS Church. Reflecting on her children's inactivity, Jerri told me, quote "I hope to think it was because they don't believe, that they don't have a testimony of faith. But yes, racism also must have played a part." Jerri's painful acknowledgment of her inability to keep her children active helps us to understand Jane's similar experience. Jane, too, must have been profoundly frustrated that none of her offspring chose to embrace the Church she so clearly loved. And Jerri's experience suggests that it was likely that racism was also a factor in Jane's childrens' decision to reject the LDS Church. Perhaps Jane's persistent quest to get into the Temple to baptize her dead relatives and to preserve their eternal souls was born out of this frustration. In the Temple baptismal font, Jane could be baptized for those loved ones who could not or would not be baptized for themselves. Taken together, Jane and Jerri's experiences show how two women separated by more than 100 years came to terms with their precarious places within the Mormon community. While acknowledging the authority of the LDS Church hierarchy to write history and theology, Jane and Jerri understand that eternal truths, not the least of which is their truth of their own worthiness as Black Mormon women, come not from the lessons of the institution. They come directly and unmediated from their own personal testimonies of faith which are received and reaffirmed in prayer.

As for Jerri, much has changed for Black Mormons in the century that separates Jane and Jerri's life in the Salt Lake Valley. At least officially, Black Mormons no longer find themselves on the margins of Mormonism. They are no longer barred from entering the Temple or fulfilling leadership positions in local Church institutions, though, as Jerri herself would point out, a glass ceiling seems to remain in place for Blacks serving in the highest levels of the Church hierarchy. Ironically, Black Mormon's greater presence in the center of the Mormon experience might mean in some cases that they have less power to affect how the institution handles issues of race because Church leadership, for the most part, sees racial inclusion as complete. Despite multiple requests from leading Black Mormons since 1978 revelation, the hierarchy has not moved to officially repudiate its former stance against Blacks achieving full membership status. Of course, this is a moving target as we speak since last week and the official announcement from the Church. Jerri and her own children have experienced firsthand the hierarchy's position of allowing the history of its own racialized past to, for the most part, until recently, go unchallenged. Black Mormons continue to endure maltreatment borne out of racist folklore about their supposed inherent unworthiness while they also struggle to have their White Mormon brothers and sisters acknowledge the reality that this racist folklore is still pervasive in some parts of Mormon culture. Jerri's hope is that, through events like her re-enactment, Jane's popularity will continue to grow in both Black and White Mormon circles. She believes that learning of Jane's unique status as both a beloved pioneer and a persecuted minority will reveal to Mormon audiences two interrelated realities, two testimonies of faith. First, the historical relevancy of Black Mormon experience, as a group whose experiences of both religious and racial persecution make them particularly Mormon. And second, an understanding that the LDS Church needs to embrace this historical Black Mormon experience, in part as a means to come to terms with the continued legacy of its racist folklore. In this sense, what happens in a nondescript meeting house on the outskirts of Salt Lake City might have an effect on what happens 10 miles to its north in the wood-paneled offices of the LDS Church President overlooking Temple Square. Thank you. [APPLAUSE]

Question-- Could you elaborate just a little bit more on the experiences that led Jane to leave Connecticut and go to Nauvoo? She must have had some sort of spiritual experience, I would think, early on to have her lead into the Church. Yes, clearly.

She and her family members-- this is a common occurrence in many religious conversions, that one family member converts and then often leads to the conversion of other family members. I can speculate on that. One of the reasons I believe was Jane had had a relationship, one that could not be considered consensual, with a clergy member of the family for which she was a servant. Lewis Duffy, her great-great-great grandson with whom I'm friends, calls this a rape. And she had a child because of this rape. It was a Presbyterian. Joseph Smith Jr. Also had not such a fondness for Presbyterians, partly because of Alvin's funeral. The Presbyterian minister at Alvin's funeral said Alvin, because he wasn't baptized, is going to hell. And that really stuck with Joseph. So I think her precarious position having a half-White child in a small town, when she heard this message potentially of universalism-- we know for a fact that the missionaries to the "Lamanites--" the first missionaries to the Lamanites spoke in universalistic terms that this was a Church for all people of the Earth. And so perhaps that was the message that Charles Wandell used in talking with Jane. So in some ways, it was a ticket out of a really, really bad situation, and also sincere. I bet he preached from the Book of Mormon, which in a lot of ways talks about-- and Joseph Smith prophecies, which talk about a universal Church.

Do you know whether Jane has received her Temple endowment by proxy since 1978? Yes. Absolutely. Within days, I believe, of Susan Easton Black-- within days of-- and I think a member of the Genesis Group presidency also participated. Within days of the '78 revelation, that work was done. I have a feeling-- just a guess-- work had been already done. But probably God didn't need that to happen, in my mind. I think she was where she needed to be.

In the film "The Prophet of the Restorations" shown at the Joseph Smith's film, is the African-American woman prominent in the middle part of the film based on Jane Manning? Yes. Not based. It is. OK. And we won't go into some film theory and deciphering that film, but it's a different take on Jane's healing.

Wonderful presentation, Max. Thank you. If I may, I'd like to ask a couple of questions. First, I thought it was very interesting how you brought up the universalism of Joseph Smith and then how Brigham Young just immediately on his heels seems to change that. But yet the two of them had such similar backgrounds and came from the same geographic area. Very different personalities, of course. So why that vast difference? If you have any insights on that. And then second question is, with the Church's statement recently saying that these racist ideas are folklore, do you think that's going to change things in the Church so that Black membership begins to feel more welcome? And what else needs to happen, as well, besides that? Sure. Stewart Udall, who was a member-- at least a cultural member of the Church-- said, "don't lecture the brethren." So I don't think I'm going to do that part. But I will answer the-- try to do the Joseph Smith, Brigham Young question. I think it had a lot to do with personality. I think it's also a matter of politics and remembering historians, including, I guess, myself, in some ways have worked to isolate Joseph in some ways from guilt or sin even of creating this restriction. But I think the early Black membership was an exception, not the rule in Joseph's Church. Parley P. Pratt said, there aren't more than 12 Negroes that have ever been a member of our Church. He said that in 1839, I believe. And then, of course, there were other members who joined in Nauvoo. But we have to remember that the Church was always at a point of existential crisis from its inception until today. I don't know. And so politics of the Church played a huge role initially, I would say, in creating the ban. They were passing through very pro-slavery states, a slave state of Missouri and then a very, very pro-slave state of Illinois. So that is not an excuse, but I think that is one of the reasons why the Saints weren't seeking out African-American membership. To your second question, I'll make an attempt.

The statement was incredibly powerful. It was the most complete statement that the Church has made since the official Declaration 2. And I happen to know and I'm fond of and I love many members of the public affairs office. The public affairs office is not a prophet and is not the President. And my understanding as an outsider how this Church works is that prophets of God speak on matters of this and carry a huge amount of authority. And I hope a prophet of God for the sake of both White Mormons and Black Mormons would put His name upon a similar statement. Until that happens, there is a vacuum since 1978 to insist that the Declaration 2 stands on its own forces well-meaning Latter-day Saints to search their minds and search past statements from other prophets for answers. And there are answers from before 1978. And they're the answers that have been recently spoken of in the public press by educators. So until that happens, well-meaning Latter-day Saints are going to struggle with this question. And they will do what is natural, which is fill a vacuum with what they have at their hands. And that's my opinion. And I just did lecture the brethren. But with love. Sincere.

Yeah. There's another microphone for this. Hey. Hey. OK. The Presbyterian minister said that Alvin Smith was going to hell.

What did you say before or after that? About the Presbyterian minister? No. I'm sorry. Yeah. OK. So Alvin dies suddenly. Alvin is the beloved, the scion of the Smith family, the brother that all the Smiths look up to. He dies. Lucy Mack Smith, Mother Smith, is a member of the Presbyterian Church. I think a few other brothers are also. So the Presbyterian minister is called in to preside over this funeral. Now, Alvin was a member of-- this Smith family were a bunch of seekers. They weren't satisfied with the denominational offerings at hand. And so Alvin hadn't been baptized. And so because of the lack of that presence of that act, his fate was doomed, and arises from that revelation or an inspiration from Joseph Smith of this thing that has been in the news as of late of proxy baptisms for the dead. He did not believe that death ended the opportunity for salvation. What did you say before that? About Jane? Yeah, well, It was some--

Do you have it? OK. Thanks. Sure. I believe I said something about Jane and an unequal relationship with a Presbyterian minister. And in some ways I see-- it might be coincidence. It is probably true, but that is another way that disliking a Presbyterian minister and Joseph disliking a Presbyterian minister is another way-- Jane's whole project is to connect herself with Joseph. And so there's a lot of-- I notice it now. When there's a bad mainline Protestant, it usually is a Presbyterian in the literature. Now, whether it is actually a Presbyterian, Methodist, or whatever, that's the kind of catchall for the sectarian, as they say.

Yes, ma'am. Do you have a microphone? OK. OK. All right. Thank you for your presentation. It's been interesting to see in the news. Also, Deseret News put an article just about some Saints I believe in Chicago about the African-American sisters there. And I just recently-- this is more of a statement, and I hope you don't mind. But I've had some interesting experiences just recently with a friend that just came this last week from Georgia who was baptized. He's a convert of two years. And he's the ward mission leader down there now-- and his insights into some of the Black community and how it's growing, of course. I have a friend-- my next door neighbor-- she's 92 years old. And she grew up in Murray. And she had a Black family that worked with her at the Murray Theater and went to school with her. And I guess they played on the basketball team. And there was a comment by the Bishop's wife that she didn't-- once again, there was the N-word there anyway. She didn't want them on there. But anyway, so I guess my point and my question is just that-- well, and the mother had wanted these visiting teachers in her home. And so I think this-- it was a great woman of these many children, a Black family in Utah in Murray.

What's the best way to go about finding histories of these people?

Yeah. I don't know if that's really a question, but just my statement that it's sad to see that. I think we limit ourselves. I served a mission in New Jersey. And that's all that-- I worked with wonderful, wonderful people from many countries. And I think that it's neat to see that the growth that's happening and as we broaden our horizons and don't limit ourselves. So thank you. Sure. Well, just very briefly-- encourage your friends of all nationalities and races to write their histories. We need to have more journals to be stored in the Archive. That is really, really important. So encourage those folks to write their histories.

Don't you agree it takes a long time for these traditions of prejudice? My son served a mission-- one of my sons served a mission in the South in Florida. And he was in awe of the prejudice in that area. And we talked about it here, that the one African-American or Black person that was in my junior high was one of our class presidents, and how we were only exposed to maybe one or two. But the ones that we were part of our community and were respected. But those people that are raised with this prejudice and hatred and are taught this-- it takes a long time for that to come out. And I'm sure it carries on in our Mormon culture because the Mormon people are human people that came from backgrounds that maybe had tremendous prejudice. One of my uncles said one time, well, we should send them all back to Africa. And my sister, who was very outspoken, says, well, then maybe they should send us back to Ireland. And they're a part of our country. But we still have-- and that wasn't very long ago-- these kind of statements being made. But we're evolving as a human race in the United States of America and the world. And it really takes a long time for people to teach loving people no matter what where they come from or what background, whether they're handicapped or whether they're Black, White, or any race, but my son still said he was just in awe. He says, I wouldn't have thought that maybe there couldn't have been a lynching in some of the communities there. So it still is there, but it's a groundwork. And I was protected from it. And I'm very thankful that I didn't have that training in my youth. Well, if they say, send them all back to Africa, that includes every single one of us, eventually. So we're all Africans.

Max, thanks so very, very much for a very thoughtful presentation. And we appreciate your time, your efforts in preparing this evening. And we're grateful for the opportunity to come together. Let's give Max a hand one more time. [APPLAUSE]

Thank you so much. And thank you for coming this evening. We wish you the very best. Thanks. [MUSIC PLAYING]