A Timeline of LDS Racial Exclusion and What It Means That This Institution Is Now Coming to Define the African Family
BY JOURNALRAGE | INVESTIGATIVE DESK | MONROVIA
Before you attend the 8th Strengthening Families Conference at the EJS Exhibition Complex in Monrovia on June 19–20, 2026, there is a number you need to know.
126.
That is how many years the Church of Jesus Christ of Latter-day Saints — the institution organizing, funding, and hosting that conference — formally taught that Black people were spiritually inferior. One hundred and twenty-six years during which Black men were barred from its priesthood. One hundred and twenty-six years during which Black women were denied its temple ordinances. One hundred and twenty-six years during which the theology of an institution now coming to Monrovia to define the African family held that the ancestors of every person in that conference hall bore a divine curse.
This is not ancient history. The ban lasted until 1978. The theology used to justify it was not repudiated until 2013 — thirteen years ago.
We are asking Liberia to receive this institution’s definition of the African family. Before that happens, Liberia deserves the full record.
1830 — THE CHURCH IS FOUNDED. BLACK MEMBERS ARE WELCOME.
The Church of Jesus Christ of Latter-day Saints was founded in 1830. In its earliest years, the priesthood and temple ordinances were available to all members regardless of race. Elijah Abel, a Black man, was ordained to the Seventy — a senior priesthood position — in 1836 and received temple ordinances in the Kirtland Temple. He was, by all accounts, a faithful, contributing member.
This matters. The Church did not begin with racial exclusion. Racial exclusion was a policy choice made by men, justified by theology invented after the fact, and enforced for over a century.
1852 — BRIGHAM YOUNG DECLARES THE BAN
In 1852, Church President Brigham Young publicly announced that men of Black African descent could no longer be ordained to the priesthood. In his own words, Young declared: “The seed of Cane… cannot hold the priesthood.”
Following the death of Brigham Young, subsequent Church presidents extended the restriction to include Black members being barred from receiving the temple endowment or being married in the temple. What began as a priesthood restriction became a comprehensive exclusion from the most sacred rituals of the faith.
Although Brigham Young’s 1852 speeches mark the first recorded articulations of a priesthood restriction by a Mormon prophet-president, the policies and supporting doctrines that Church leaders developed over the 19th century increasingly solidified a rationale that each succeeding generation reinforced.
1852–1978 — THE THEOLOGY OF THE CURSE
For 126 years, the Church did not simply practice racial exclusion. It taught it. It theorized it. It preached it from pulpits, printed it in manuals, and handed it to children.
“Negroes in this life are denied the Priesthood; under no circumstances can they hold this delegation of authority from the Almighty… Negroes are not equal with other races where the receipt of certain spiritual blessings are concerned… but this inequality is not of man’s origin. It is the Lord’s doing, is based on his eternal laws of justice, and grows out of the lack of spiritual valiance of those concerned in their first estate.” — Apostle Bruce R. McConkie, Mormon Doctrine, 1966
Not man’s doing. God’s doing. The Lord’s eternal laws of justice. This was published in 1966. Martin Luther King Jr. was alive. The Civil Rights Act had passed two years earlier. And the official theological reference work of the Church of Jesus Christ of Latter-day Saints was teaching that Black people were spiritually inferior because of insufficient valiance in their premortal existence.
In 1969, under intense pressure from the public due to the church continuing the ban while the Civil Rights Movement was in full swing, the First Presidency released a statement — not lifting the ban, but affirming it.
1978 — THE BAN IS LIFTED. UNDER PRESSURE. NOT PRINCIPLE.
The Mormon Church enacted and enforced a formal policy that barred most Black people from the priesthood and temple ordinances from about 1852 until 1978, a change announced by President Spencer W. Kimball and published as Official Declaration 2.
Saints in Africa, Brazil, and throughout the world wept with gratitude. Faithful Black Latter-day Saints who had waited patiently could now receive every priesthood and temple blessing.
But it is worth asking: why 1978? What changed between 1966 — when God’s eternal laws of justice demanded racial exclusion — and 1978, when those same laws no longer did?
The answer is not theological. As the Church grew worldwide, its overarching mission to “go ye therefore, and teach all nations” seemed increasingly incompatible with the priesthood and temple restrictions. Missionary expansion into Africa and Brazil was impossible while simultaneously teaching that Black people were spiritually inferior. The economics of global growth demanded a policy change. The revelation followed the institutional need.
The 1978 revelation, canonized as Official Declaration 2 in Latter-day Saint scripture, failed to repudiate the theology justifying the ban. Some members consequently continued to assert that Black people were cursed, equating their dark skin with misdeeds they allegedly committed in a pre-earth life.
1978–2013 — THIRTY-FIVE YEARS OF UNFINISHED BUSINESS
The ban was lifted in 1978. But the theology was not disavowed. For thirty-five years after Black members were formally permitted full participation, the theological framework that had justified their exclusion remained in circulation — in books, in lessons, in the quiet beliefs of members who had been taught their entire lives that it was God’s will.
Black Latter-day Saints petitioned church officials to condemn racism and remove demeaning literature from circulation. This process occurred gradually, over a thirty-year period from 1978 to 2013, culminating in the unprecedented step of church leaders disavowing what were once considered essential Latter-day Saint teachings.
2013 — THE DISAVOWAL THAT CAME TOO LATE AND SAID TOO LITTLE
In December 2013, the LDS Church published an essay approved by the First Presidency which discussed the restriction. In it, the church disavowed most race-based explanations for the past priesthood restriction and denounced racism.
Most. Not all. The disavowal was partial, carefully worded, and has never been accompanied by a formal apology to Black members or communities affected by 126 years of institutionally sanctioned spiritual degradation.
A 2016 survey of self-identified LDS adherents revealed that over 60 percent of respondents either ‘know’ or ‘believe’ that the priesthood and temple ban was God’s will. A 2023 survey of over 1,000 former church members found race issues to be one of the top three reported reasons why they had disaffiliated.
2026 — THEY ARE COMING TO MONROVIA
This is the institution sending representatives to the EJS Exhibition Complex on June 19. This is the institution whose Africa West Area President, Elder Alfred Kyungu, announced Monrovia as the 8th conference host. This is the institution that Liberia’s Foreign Minister visited in Salt Lake City in June 2024 and described as “what church is intended to be.”
An institution that spent 126 years deciding that Black people were spiritually inferior, that reversed that position only under external pressure, and that has still not issued a formal apology — is now arriving in Monrovia to hold a conference defining what constitutes a valid African family, what role African women should play in that family, and what African legislators should do about families that don’t conform.
The same institutional logic that decided, for 126 years, that Black people did not belong in its temples is now deciding that certain Liberian families do not belong in its definition of family. The same certainty. The same authority. The same confidence that God is on their side.
Liberia has seen this before. It was called colonialism. It wore different clothes then.
journalRAGE is Liberia’s independent platform for human rights journalism. Founded in 2019, we report on the communities others choose to ignore. Secure tips: contact@journalrage.org
EDITOR’S NOTE: This is an opinion and advocacy piece consistent with journalRAGE’s editorial mission. All factual claims are sourced and documented. Right of reply was offered to all named parties before publication.