Joseph Smith's views on Black people
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Joseph Smith's views on Black people varied during his lifetime. As founder of the Latter Day Saint movement, he included Black people in many ordinances and priesthood ordinations, but held multi-faceted views on racial segregation, the curses of Cain and Ham, and shifted his views on slavery several times, eventually coming to take an anti-slavery stance later in his life.[1]
Smith taught that Black people were under the curse of Ham,[2] and the curse of Cain.[3]: 27 [4]: 256 He referred to the curses as a justification for slavery,[4]: 126 [2] and also taught that dark skin marked people of African ancestry as cursed by God.[3]: 27 In Smith's revisions of the King James Bible, and production of the Book of Abraham (part of the Pearl of Great Price) he traced their cursed state back to the curses placed on Cain and Ham, and linked the two curses by positioning Ham's Canaanite posterity as matrilinear descendants of Cain.[3]: 22, 29, 31, 54–57 In another book of the Pearl of Great Price the descendants of Cain are described as dark-skinned.[5]: 11–12, 128 The biblical account of the Hamitic curse origins states that Ham discovered his father Noah drunk and naked in his tent. Because of this, Noah cursed Ham's son, Canaan to be "servants of servants".[6][4]: 125 Although the scriptures do not mention Ham's skin color, some doctrines associated the curse with Black people and used it to justify slavery.[4]: 125
Temple and priesthood ordinances
Smith was present at the priesthood ordination of Elijah Abel, a man of partial African descent, to the offices of both elder and seventy, and allowed for the ordination of a couple of other Black men into the priesthood of the early church.[7][8] Smith's successor, Brigham Young, would later adopt the policy of prohibiting Black people from receiving the priesthood after Smith's death.[8] In 1841, Joseph Smith stated that if the opportunity to Black people were equal to the opportunity provided to White people, Black people could perform as well or even outperform White people.[citation needed] Joseph Smith stated, about Black individuals, "They have souls, and are subjects of salvation. Go into Cincinnati or any city, and find an educated negro, who rides in his carriage, and you will see a man who has risen by the powers of his own mind to his exalted state of respectability."[9][10]
Historian Fawn Brodie stated in her biography of Smith that he crystallized his hitherto vacillating views on Black people with his authorship of The Book of Abraham, one of the LDS church's foundational texts, which justifies a priesthood ban on ancient Egyptians, who inherited the curse of the Black skin based on their descent from Noah's son Ham.[11] Brodie also wrote that Smith developed the theory that Black skin was a sign of neutral behavior during a pre-existent war in heaven.[12] The official pronouncements of the church's First Presidency in 1949 and 1969 also attributed the origin of the priesthood ban to Joseph Smith, stating that the reason "antedates man's mortal existence."[13] Several other scholars, such as Armand Mauss and Lester E. Bush, have since contested this theory, though, citing that a priesthood ban was never, in fact, implemented in Joseph Smith's time and that Smith allowed for the ordination of several Black men to the priesthood and even positions of authority within the church.[14]: 221 [15][12] Critics of Brodie's theory that the priesthood ban began with Joseph Smith generally agree that the prohibition originated as a series of racially motivated administrative policies under Brigham Young, rather than revealed doctrine, which were inaccurately represented as revelation by later general authorities of the church.[12][14][15] The denial of the priesthood to Black church members can easily be traced to Brigham Young, but there is no contemporary evidence that would suggest it originated with Joseph Smith.[15] Mauss and Bush found that all references to Joseph Smith supporting the doctrine were made long after his death and seem to be the result of an attempted reconciliation of the contrasting beliefs and policies of Brigham Young and Joseph Smith.[14][15] Young himself also never associated the priesthood ban with Joseph Smith's teachings, nor did most of the earliest general authorities.[14] Mauss and Bush detailed various problems with the theory that the Book of Abraham justified a priesthood restriction on Black people, pointing out that the effort to link Pharaoh and the Egyptian people with "black skin" and the antediluvian people of Canaan was "especially strained" and the lack of specificity in the account made such beliefs somewhat ungrounded.[14] Outside of the Church of Jesus Christ of Latter-day Saints, most other Latter-day Saint churches remained open to the ordination of Black men and young men into the priesthood.
Segregation and Black–White marriages
Smith argued that Black and White people would be better off if they were "separate but legally equal", at times advocating for segregation and stating, "Had I anything to do with the negro, I would confine them by strict law to their own species, and put them on a national equalization."[16]: 79 [17] Smith opposed Black–White interracial marriages,[18][19] even fining people in two instances in Nauvoo.[20][21]