A legacy of faith

It is one of the most famous stories in Utah history. When Brigham Young first saw the Salt Lake Valley from the foothills of Emigration Canyon in 1847. he declared, "This is the right place. Drive on."

It was the end of a journey across the plains for this group of settlers — members of The Church of Jesus Christ of Latter-day Saints driven from their homes in the Midwest. Yet most accounts of this story fail to mention who was doing the driving.

Historians believe it was a man by the name of Green Flake — a black slave who had joined the church along with his master. It is known that Flake was one of three black men to enter the valley with that first party. His name is listed among "three colored servants" noted on a monument in downtown Salt Lake City.

They were not just "servants." They were in bondage. They were slaves.

Robert Foster, who was the first black student body president of Brigham Young University, is among the filmmakers who worked on "Nobody Knows: The Untold Story of Black Mormons." Foster says Flake was given to the church as a tithing payment, in line with the Latter-day Saint belief of paying a tenth of their increase to the church. Flake worked for the church for a time to pay his master's tithing obligation.

According to a timeline on blacklds.org, slavery was officially legalized in Utah in 1852, though there were certain provisions. Sexual intercourse with a slave, neglect, abuse or taking a slave from the territory against his will could all lead to termination of the owner's contract. The 1860 Utah census listed 59 black people in the territory, 29 of whom were slaves.

Blogger, author and radio personality Zandra Vranes is one half of the duo Sistas in Zion, who are known for their humorous take on LDS culture. She says pioneers like Flake have been a rock for her as a black Latter-day Saint.

"I look at the things they had to endure and … I don't know that I could have gone through that with my testimony intact," she says, acknowledging that Flake remained a faithful Latter-day Saint after he was freed and through the rest of his life. "He was a firm believer in the faith."

Tamu Smith, the other "Sista," notes that when the tithing owed by Flake's master was "paid," Young, who was president of the church, was unwilling to return Flake to his master, so he freed the slave instead. However, she notes, the church did use him as a slave up to that point.

"That's part of our history also," Smith says.

She believes Latter-day Saints need to acknowledge the less savory aspects of their history rather than trying to paint everything "like roses." If the full, honest story is the focus, Latter-day Saints can be in control of telling that story.

That same idea may be behind the church's recent practice of addressing thorny issues from its past via essays on the church's website, lds.org. Among those issues was the practice of banning black men from the priesthood from the mid-1800s until 1978.

The essay "Race and the Priesthood" states that church founder Joseph Smith openly opposed slavery and that black men were ordained to the priesthood during his tenure as the first president of the church. There has also never been a policy of segregated congregations within the church.

However, in 1852, Young announced that men of black African descent could no longer be ordained to the priesthood. Subsequent church leaders continued this policy, which extended to banning black Latter-day Saints from certain temple ordinances as well.

Yet Young remains an intriguing figure in the history of black Latter-day Saints. Foster says there are many stories of Young calling slave-owning members of the church on missions to free states.

One prominent story is that of Robert Smith, an LDS slave-owner sent by Young to Bakersfield, California. According to blacklds.org, the slave-owner's fellow church members rounded up community support to have the slaves legally freed. One of those slaves, Biddie Mason, went on to become a wealthy philanthropist and a founder of the African Methodist Episcopal Church in Southern California.

"I've been trying to figure out what Brigham Young's intent was," Foster says. "I know he gets a lot of heat for his decisions about the church and the priesthood, but the decision to send slaves to free areas is pretty interesting."

Legacy of priesthood

During the years of the priesthood ban, the history of Elijah Abel became a sticking point.

Baptized in 1832, only two years after Joseph Smith organized the church, Abel was ordained to the office of elder in the priesthood in 1836. Abel was reportedly ordained by Smith himself. Later the same year, Abel was ordained a seventy, becoming a "duly licensed minister of the Gospel" for missionary work in Ohio.

Two other black men were later ordained to the priesthood, Walker Lewis in 1844 and William McCary in 1846.

Sometime between 1851 and 1852, Abel arrived in Utah. As a carpenter, he began to help with the construction of the Salt Lake Temple. He also managed the Farnham Hotel with his wife.

Although Young instituted the priesthood ban in 1852, by 1883 there was evidence that Abel still retained his office. He was listed among the Seventies in the quorum's minutes from Dec. 10 of that year. He died the next year, shortly after returning from his third mission for the church.

More than a decade after his death, President Joseph F. Smith — a nephew to the church founder and a counselor to then church President Wilford Woodruff — claimed that his uncle ordained Abel and thus intended for black men to receive the priesthood.

Yet a tradition of the priesthood remained in the Abel family despite the ban. In 1900 his son Enoch was ordained an elder in the priesthood, and in 1935 his grandson, also named Elijah Abel, was ordained an elder.

Despite these apparent exceptions to the rule, the priesthood ban remained in effect until June 8, 1978, when church President Spencer W. Kimball issued an official declaration that "all worthy male members of the Church may be ordained to the priesthood without regard for race or color."

Later that month Joseph Freeman was ordained an elder, and a new era began. With the lifting of the ban came also the extension of temple ordinances to all church members regardless of race.

Despite the ban, Tamu Smith says there were elements of the church's early history in regard to its black members that should be celebrated. When Abel was ordained to the priesthood in 1836 it was commonplace for many other churches to have segregated congregations.

"Our church did something other churches were not doing," she says. "Black people worshipped right alongside white people."

Not only did they worship together, but Abel was called on to report on his missionary work during church services, meaning he was preaching to predominantly white congregations.

In a letter from Eunice Kenny dated September 1891, we get a flavor for Abel's preaching style. Kenny recorded her account of a sermon preached by Abel during a church mission in 1838.

"Abel was a man without education," she writes. "It was difficult for him to read his text, but when he commenced to preach the Spirit rested upon him and he preached a most powerful sermon. It was such a gospel sermon as I had never heard before, and I felt in my heart that he was one of God's chosen ministers."

Legacy of faith

Another prominent name among the early black pioneers is Jane Elizabeth Manning James, who converted to the LDS Church after hearing missionaries speak in Connecticut.

James eventually joined the main body of the church in Nauvoo, Illinois, walking 800 miles to be with other members of her new church. It was not the last time she would travel a long distance for her faith. She later joined her fellow Latter-day Saints as they crossed the plains to settle in the West.

In Nauvoo, James had worked as a servant — not a slave — in the home of Joseph Smith. Upon her arrival in Utah, she and her family were listed as part of Young's household.

James was known for her generosity. A popular story comes from the journal of Eliza Partridge Lyman, who wrote: "Jane James, the colored woman, let me have two pounds of flour, it being half of what she had."

Later in life, James lived with her brother Isaac Manning, who had also worked in Smith's household in Nauvoo. As members of the Salt Lake City Third Ward, the siblings had a place to sit on the stand during each church meeting.

Anna Shipp writes: "Jane Manning James and her brother Isaac were given the seats of honor, and I have heard them tell of the time they lived with the Prophet. They were devoted Latter-day Saints and everyone in the Third Ward loved and respected them."

Her obituary in the Deseret News from 1908 says she was known to many as "Aunt Jane." President Joseph F. Smith, then president of the church, spoke at her funeral.

Her obituary reads: "Few persons were more noted for faith and faithfulness than was Jane Manning James, and though of the humble of the earth she numbered friends and acquaintances by the hundreds."

Her brother died three years later and his obituary reveals other historic ties to the early days of the LDS Church. Manning was among the men who accompanied the martyred bodies of Joseph Smith and his brother, Hyrum, from Carthage Jail, where they were killed, to their burial place in Nauvoo. He also helped to dig their graves.

A news article later reported on Manning's connection to Smith: "He said he knew Brother Joseph was a man of God, and he would have laid down his life for the prophet if he could have done so."

An enduring legacy

Foster says the stories of Flake, Abel, James and others are an example to modern black members of the LDS Church.

"If they can have that faith and hope, then why can't I?" he asks. "They're my idols. They really laid the foundation for us."

Yet Vranes clarifies that the stories of these pioneers are not just important to Black Latter-day Saints.

"They didn't make sacrifices for black Mormons," she says. "They are part of church history."

She says an important aspect of that history is showing how a people that was oppressed — the Latter-day Saints in Missouri and Illinois — fled that persecution and became oppressors of their own people by denying black members of their church certain blessings. An integral part of the LDS faith is a belief that all human beings are spiritual brothers and sisters, yet many early Latter-day Saints, including church leaders, oppressed their brothers and sisters, Vranes says.

That oppression didn't disappear completely when the priesthood ban lifted in 1978. Although the church's essay on "Race and the Priesthood" says, "Church leaders today unequivocally condemn all racism, past and present, in any form," it doesn't mean that every member of the church will heed that declaration.

Tamu Smith was among the members of the church featured in the film "Nobody Knows: The Untold Story of Black Mormons." In the film she talks about how a fellow Latter-day Saint used the N-word to describe her while she was taking part in an LDS temple ceremony in 1993.

"Nobody protected me in the temple that day," Smith says.

However, Vranes says that experiences like her friend's are not common. They don't walk into church and hear the N-word. They are never told to sit at the back. Yet there are issues that remain for black Latter-day Saints.

Although Abel was ordained to the priesthood in 1836 and many other black men have joined the priesthood since 1978, Vranes says faces of color are still something of a rarity in the church. Increasing the visibility of minority faces is part of why she and Smith wrote their book, "Diary of Two Mad Black Mormons."

The Sistas are also public speakers and will be appearing at 7 p.m. Feb. 26 at Southern Utah University's Sterling R. Church Auditorium in the Sharwan Smith Center in Cedar City for a Black History Month event.

"These stories are a big part of what we're doing today." Vranes says, adding that unsavory stories should not be swept under the rug. "Ain't no more room under the rug. Stop sweeping."

Not only should the stories be told in LDS homes, she emphasizes. They need to be told as part of American history.

"These are American pioneers. They were doing things other black Americans weren't doing at the time — forging rivers with groups of white people," Vranes says. "They did something that was very unique.

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