African-Americans
James J.
Strang presided over general conference
resolutions to allow African Americans to hold the high priesthood by 1849.
That was consistent with Joseph Smith’s known ordination of a black man named Elijah
Abel to the high priesthood office of “seventy” in 1836. The Book of
Mormon says that “black and white” are all invited and “all are
alike to God.” There were two significant Black elders in the
church under James Strang while he was alive, namely Samuel Chambers and Samuel
Walker.
The picture below
from a secular newspaper in New York shows reporting about James Strang
while he was a lawmaker in Michigan.
We have in the
recent century also had two famous Indian chiefs as
members of our church, Jacob Greensky and Andrew J. Blackbird.
Other Mormons changed the church to ban blacks from the priesthood
for 132 years (until 1978), and killed Indians in Utah. Brigham Young said in his own Journal of Discourses,
7:291,
“You see some classes of the human family that are black, uncouth, uncomely, disagreeable and low in their habits, wild, and seemingly deprived of nearly all the blessings of the intelligence that is generally bestowed upon mankind. The first man that committed the odious crime of killing one of his brethren will be cursed the longest of any one of the children of Adam. Cain slew his brother. Cain might have been killed, and that would have put a termination to that line of human beings. This was not to be, and the Lord put a mark upon him, which is the flat nose and black skin. Trace mankind down to after the flood, and then another curse is pronounced upon the same
race–that they should be the ‘servant of servants;’ and they will be, until that curse is removed; and the Abolitionists cannot help it, nor in the least alter that decree. How long is that race to endure the dreadful curse that is upon them? That curse will remain upon them, and they never can hold the Priesthood or share in it until all the other descendants of Adam have received the promises and enjoyed the blessings of the Priesthood and the keys thereof. Until the last ones of the residue of
Adam’s children are brought up to that favorable position, the children of Cain cannot receive the first ordinances of the Priesthood.”–Brigham
Young.
We do not agree
with that statement from Brigham Young. Compared to Brigham Young,
you will find James J. Strang a very moderate choice, and someone you
would be thankful to call a Prophet.
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