“God Is Just, Even If Social Conditions Are Not”
Black Latter-day Saints Ruffin Bridgeforth, Darius Gray, and Eugene Orr joined the Church during the era in Church history when the Church did not ordain men of Black African descent to the priesthood or permit Black men and women to receive essential temple ordinances. In 1971, the three met to discuss strategies for supporting Black American Latter-day Saints amid racism they regularly encountered in their home wards.
Eugene approached Church President Joseph Fielding Smith, who appointed junior Apostles Gordon B. Hinckley, Thomas S. Monson, and Boyd K. Packer to meet with Ruffin, Darius, and Eugene. After meeting regularly for four months, Elder Hinckley asked Ruffin to serve as president of a new organization, with Darius and Eugene as his counselors. On October 19, 1971, the Genesis Group was officially organized. Mary Lucille Perkins Bankhead, a great-granddaughter of Black American Latter-day Saint pioneer Green Flake, accepted a call as Relief Society president.
Alice Faulkner Burch, president of the Genesis Relief Society from August 2014 to December 2019, commented on that exciting time: “Can you imagine a Black American man leading an LDS Church organization? A Black American Relief Society president during a time when that was not only unheard-of but projected as never being possible?”
The goals of the Genesis Group were to do missionary work and facilitate reactivation among Black American members in the Salt Lake area. Group members performed plays, put on soul food dinners, and hosted summer picnics for the entire Black community in Utah. Worship services incorporated Black spirituals, clapping, and call-and-response sermons that were more typical of the Black church.
Under the direction of its first leaders, Lyn Dudley, James Sheppard, and Ellie Mae Johnson, the Genesis Choir became renowned for its different style of Latter-day Saint music. If the congregation started out singing too quietly, Ellie would stop the congregation and say, “OK we can do better than that! We’ve been given permission to raise the roof!” According to Ellie, “it was a common saying, passed down from Darius Gray, President Harwell, and James Sheppard” that the First Presidency had granted them special permission. The song was then “belted loud and joyously within the building to lift the roof off and to lift every person present, no matter how bad our week had been.”
The Genesis community built on the powerful spiritual legacy of Black American Latter-day Saint pioneers, including Elijah Able and Jane Manning James, who continued to be faithful even in the face of enslavement and racism within the Church.
“Jane’s faith kept her anchored to a belief that God is just, even if social conditions are not. It is this same belief and deep-seated faith,” said Alice, “that enabled us to join the Church before the priesthood restriction was removed, to join in the face of overt racist ostracism in our own wards, to join regardless of the lack of support, and to remain.”
After the June 1, 1978, revelation making priesthood and temple blessings available to all, the meetings of the Genesis Group were discontinued. However, racism and discrimination against Black American members persisted. In 1996, Ruffin met with Gordon B. Hinckley, now Church President, who supported him in restarting the Genesis Group. President Hinckley reminded Ruffin that the mantle of president over the Genesis Group had never been removed from him just because they stopped gathering. Ruffin resumed his calling as Genesis president, and regular monthly meetings resumed.
Today, the purpose of Genesis is to “host firesides and activities to support and edify all who feel marginalized or are treated [as] unwelcom[e] in local wards,” Alice said.
In October 2021, members of the group celebrated Genesis’s 50th anniversary. “Genesis is by design not like any other unit of the Church,” said Darius, “but there is beauty in that special calling.”