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Two fraternal-religious institutions and their racial lines: the LDS Church's priesthood-and-temple ban on Black members, the 'curse' and 'Lamanite' doctrines, and the 1978 revelation ending it...
Two fraternal-religious institutions and their racial lines: the LDS Church's priesthood-and-temple ban on Black members, the 'curse' and 'Lamanite' doctrines, and the 1978 revelation ending it; and Freemasonry's colour line, the birth of Prince Hall Masonry from exclusion and the mainstream lodges' long refusal to recognize it.
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Prince Hall, a free Black man, and fourteen other free Black men were initiated into Freemasonry through a British military lodge (Lodge No. 441, attached to Irish forces stationed in Boston). White Boston lodges had refused to admit them. After the British departed, the group continued to meet informally as African Lodge No. 1, the first Masonic lodge of Black men in America.
The Grand Lodge of England issued a warrant chartering African Lodge No. 1 as African Lodge No. 459, making it the first officially chartered lodge of Black Freemasons in America. Prince Hall had petitioned for the charter in March 1784 because white American Grand Lodges would not recognize the lodge; the document itself did not reach Boston until 1787.
Prince Hall was appointed Provincial Grand Master, and African Lodge began chartering additional Black lodges in Philadelphia and Providence. This expansion laid the organizational foundation for what would later be called Prince Hall Freemasonry, a separate Masonic tradition that grew because Black men were excluded from white American lodges.
Black Masonic lodges from Boston, Philadelphia, and Providence organized the African Grand Lodge, later renamed the Prince Hall Grand Lodge in honor of its founder, who had died in December 1807. It operated as a parallel Masonic body to the white American Grand Lodges, which continued to refuse it recognition as a legitimate Masonic authority.
The Book of Mormon was first published. Its text includes passages describing a group called the Lamanites receiving a "skin of blackness" as a divine curse for unrighteousness (2 Nephi 5:21) and states that a repentant, righteous remnant would become "a white and delightsome people" (2 Nephi 30:6, original 1830 wording). Later Latter-day Saint leaders and members drew on these and similar passages to develop racial teachings about Native Americans and, by extension, other groups.
Joseph Smith revised the Book of Mormon text for a new edition, changing "a white and a delightsome people" to "a pure and a delightsome people" in 2 Nephi 30:6. Because later editions were printed from an earlier text base, this change did not carry forward into most copies used by the Church for the next 140 years.
The Book of Abraham was published in the Church periodical Times and Seasons as a purported translation by Joseph Smith. It describes the Egyptian pharaoh as a righteous man descended through Ham and Egyptus who was denied the priesthood by lineage. This became the primary scriptural text later cited by Church leaders to justify barring men of Black African descent from priesthood ordination.
Following Brigham Young's 1852 statements, the exclusion of men of Black African descent from priesthood ordination hardened into unofficial but consistently enforced Church policy. Over subsequent decades it was extended to bar Black members from receiving temple ordinances, including marriage sealings, and remained in place for over a century.
In a speech before the Utah territorial legislature, Church President Brigham Young stated that Black men were descendants of Cain and for that reason could not hold the priesthood. This was the first explicit public statement of a racial priesthood restriction by a Latter-day Saint leader; no reliable evidence indicates the restriction was practiced during Joseph Smith's lifetime. The policy, tying the restriction to the biblical "curse of Cain" and "curse of Ham" traditions, became institutional practice barring men of Black African descent from priesthood ordination and, later, from temple ordinances.
A Navajo teenager, Helen John, requested and received permission to live with a local Latter-day Saint family in Richfield, Utah, so she could attend school. Her informal placement became the template for what grew into the Church's Indian Student Placement Program, which placed Native American children with Latter-day Saint foster families during the school year.
The Church formally organized the Indian Student Placement Program under its Social Services and Relief Society structure. The program was rooted in the Church's Lamanite doctrine, the teaching that Native Americans were descendants of Book of Mormon peoples who would be blessed and "become white and delightsome" through conversion and assimilation; participating children lived with Latter-day Saint families and attended predominantly white schools.
Facing pressure amid the civil rights movement, the First Presidency under David O. McKay issued a statement reaffirming the priesthood ban, describing it as a matter of religious doctrine rather than civil rights and citing pre-mortal existence as an explanation for the restriction. It was published in the Church magazine Improvement Era in February 1970. The Church's 2013 "Race and the Priesthood" essay later disavowed this pre-mortal explanation.
Annual enrollment in the Indian Student Placement Program peaked at about five thousand Native American children. Historians and participants have offered differing assessments of the program: Church leaders framed it as an educational and spiritual blessing, while later critics, including former participants, described it as an assimilationist project that separated children from their families and cultures.
Church President Spencer W. Kimball and the Quorum of the Twelve Apostles met and prayed together in the Salt Lake Temple. Church accounts state that in this meeting they received confirmation to rescind the policy barring men of Black African descent from priesthood ordination.
The First Presidency issued a letter, publicly released June 9, 1978, announcing that all worthy male members could be ordained to the priesthood regardless of race, and that Black members could receive all temple ordinances. This ended the 126-year-old priesthood and temple ban.
Three days after the First Presidency's announcement, Joseph Freeman Jr. was ordained an elder in the Melchizedek priesthood, becoming recognized as the first man of Black African descent ordained under the new policy. Other Black members were ordained to priesthood offices the same day across the Church.
At the Church's general conference, First Presidency counselor N. Eldon Tanner presented the June 1978 revelation extending priesthood and temple blessings to all worthy male members regardless of race. Members present sustained it, and it was canonized in the Doctrine and Covenants as Official Declaration 2, formally ending the priesthood and temple ban.
In a new edition of its scriptures, the Church restored Joseph Smith's 1840 wording of 2 Nephi 30:6, changing the text back from "white and delightsome" to "pure and delightsome," the phrasing that had not carried through most 19th- and 20th-century printings.
The Grand Lodge of Connecticut voted to formally recognize the Prince Hall Grand Lodge of Connecticut, becoming the first predominantly white "mainstream" US Grand Lodge to do so. The vote ended nearly two centuries in which mainstream American Grand Lodges had refused to recognize Prince Hall lodges as regular, and opened the door to a wider wave of recognitions.
Following Connecticut's 1989 vote, the Grand Lodges of Nebraska, Washington, and Wisconsin extended mutual recognition to their states' Prince Hall Grand Lodges within the same year, followed by Colorado in January 1991. These votes marked the start of a broader recognition movement among mainstream US Grand Lodges through the 1990s.
The Grand Lodge of California and the Most Worshipful Prince Hall Grand Lodge of California passed resolutions formally recognizing each other's Masonic legitimacy, allowing members of each body to visit the other's lodges. By the mid-1990s, most mainstream Grand Lodges outside the South had extended similar recognition to their state's Prince Hall Grand Lodge.
The Grand Lodge of Utah, F&AM, voted to formally recognize the Prince Hall Grand Lodge, extending mutual recognition in the same state where the LDS Church, headquartered in Salt Lake City, had ended its own priesthood and temple ban for men of Black African descent nineteen years earlier.
The Church's Indian Student Placement Program concluded, with its last participating student graduating from high school in 2000. Enrollment had declined sharply after 1970 and the program was largely inactive by the mid-1990s, as reservation schools improved and the Church's approach to Native American outreach shifted away from off-reservation placement.
The Church changed the introduction to the Book of Mormon, revising the statement that the Lamanites were "the principal ancestors of the American Indians" to say they were "among the ancestors of the American Indians." The Church described the change as accounting for details of Book of Mormon demography that are not known; the revision followed years of discussion prompted partly by DNA research on Native American ancestry.
The Church published the Gospel Topics essay "Race and the Priesthood" on its official website. The essay states that the Church "disavows the theories advanced in the past that black skin is a sign of divine disfavor or curse, or that it reflects unrighteous actions in a premortal life," and that Church leaders "unequivocally condemn all racism, past and present, in any form." It attributes the origin of the ban to Brigham Young and the racial attitudes of his era rather than to Joseph Smith or an unambiguous divine mandate.
The Grand Lodge of Florida, F&AM, voted at its annual communication to move toward mutual recognition of the Most Worshipful Union Grand Lodge, Prince Hall Affiliated, of Florida, with the process completed the following year. Florida's recognition came nearly three decades after Connecticut's, illustrating how much slower recognition proceeded in parts of the South.
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