| The Priesthood Revelation: Where Were You? And What Has Changed? |
As we prepare to celebrate the thirtieth anniversary of the revelation that restored the priesthood to all worthy males, the questions were asked:
I was at work as a secretary in the Fire Prevention Bureau of the Clark County Fire Department in Las Vegas. The radio was on, and at the top of the hour there was a minute or two of news. It was really so unexpected that there was no reason for me to believe a local newscaster reporting something that wild, but I knew instantly that it was an accurate bulletin, and it made me so happy. There wasn’t anybody to share it with—I was the only Latter-day Saint in the building at the time, and probably the only one who noticed the announcement. An hour or two later, an LDS inspector came through the door. We looked at each other, grinned, and he picked me up completely off the floor and swung me around in a circle, all without saying anything. It was one of the high points of my life, one of the few “big moments” that I can remember with such clarity. I really can’t explain why that was so, since this had not been of any special concern to me to that point. Possibly it was because I realized that I was witnessing one of the great prophesied moments in the history of the world, not because I had struggled or prayed for the moment to come. —Ardis E. Parshall When I was in Italy on my mission in the spring of 1978, I was approached by an African woman from Ethiopia. Her name was also Mary (an assumed name; her real name was Ethiopian). It was the only time on my mission that someone approached me. She said: “I know you have the truth and I would like you to teach me”—just like that! We taught her and she quickly progressed toward baptism at her request. As her baptismal date approached, I was brought to a bit of a crisis because I refused to baptize her without fully disclosing the Church’s position on Africans and priesthood. She had a little boy named Simone who was eight years of age. I couldn’t bear the thought of her learning about the priesthood ban after her baptism. I prayed for hours and hours, imploring the Lord to show me how it could be that African Blacks would not be able to have the priesthood. I prayed for hearts to be softened and for the ban to be lifted and changed. As I was leaving my apartment to go to tell Mary about the priesthood ban, I received a call from the APs (they knew of my mini-crisis). They said that I shouldn’t tell Mary that Africans cannot have the priesthood because they had just received a communication from Salt Lake in the mission office stating that the ban on Africans having the priesthood had been revoked. I was very upset with them. I yelled at them over the phone: “How could you joke about a matter like this? You know how much I love this woman and how important this is to me. I cannot believe you’d joke about it.” They insisted that they weren’t joking. And then one of the APs said, “Wait just a second.” He put the mission president on the phone. There was one thing I knew about my mission president. This man would never tell a joke. When he told me that President Kimball had received a revelation lifting the priesthood ban, I fell to my knees with tears streaming down my face. I thanked my Heavenly Father right there. I still told Mary about the ban on the priesthood, but it just didn’t have the same import. It was so strange. I said, “until yesterday, Africans in our Church could not hold the priesthood. But that changed today and now they can.” When she asked me if they changed the policy just for her, I said, “You bet your life!” (She spoke English a little and Italian hardly at all). She smiled and felt more than a bit special. However, the truth is that I always felt that my Father heard my prayer . . . and the prayers of many others that converged at the perfect moment for me and for Mary—both of them. —Blake Ostler When I first heard the announcement I was in the foyer at my church with a Black male member of our congregation. He turned to me and asked me if I was aware of how important this was. I had to admit I was too young (eleven) to have even realized that until then he could not receive the priesthood. —Bruce C. I was driving, on my way from class to pick up my wife from work, when I heard the announcement on the car radio. I greeted her by asking, “Did you hear—?” but that was as far as I got. She nodded, already knowing the rest of the question. As far as changes I've seen in the Church since that time, last night I went to the temple and was greeted at the door by a temple president and matron who are African-American. It is wonderful to see a Black woman who went to segregated schools in the deep south authoritatively instruct white high priests with college degrees from BYU about temple ordinances. —Mark Brown Changes? One of our bishops in our stake is a African; he is actually from Africa. His two sons have now both served missions, one in Texas, the other in Georgia. We have several wards with African-American families and members, and the only time I hear anything about the supposed reasons for the ban are from the older guys in the high priests group, and even that is rare. My kids, now pretty much all adult, can hardly fathom what it was like in those days, although two of them have a hard time with the fact that the ban ever even existed—a much harder time than I have. Thirty years is a long time, even though it really only seems like yesterday to me. —Kevin F. On June 8th I was holed up in my room reading and listening to records. My siblings were watching TV. They came screaming into my room with the news. Knowing what big jokers they were, I pushed them out and locked the door. They kept pounding on the door and insisting, so I went down and listened to the news report. My mom came home a short time later. She had been grocery shopping at Harmons. They made an announcement over the loud speakers. She said that complete strangers were hugging. Bag boys and cashiers were dancing. My mother is not a dancer or a hugger, but she was happy, too. —J.A. Benson I had baptized an African-American man on my mission in the summer of 1975, about three years before the announcement. Explaining to him that we wanted him to be baptized, but he would not be able to hold the priesthood, was one of the most difficult things I have ever done. I was half expecting to be thrown out of his home. When I heard the announcement, I was elated; I thought immediately of him, and hoped that was still active. (He left the country shortly after his baptism, and I had lost touch with him.) —Gary I was in Zion Canyon with my Scout troop, tubing the Virgin River. The assistant Scoutmaster, who had been released as bishop a few months earlier, got our attention and delivered the news to a bunch of us as we were walking the tubes back up the road. Everyone treated this as a big deal. This was a few months before I was baptized and I didn’t know that this was an issue for the Church, so it was one more piece of education at a time of significant change in my life. With this change, the ward and branch I lived in during graduate school were twice as large as they would have been without the Black Saints I worshipped and served with; that was certainly a blessing. I think these are still early days for Black membership in the Church, though, akin to the Church as a whole a century ago when 19 out of 20 members lived in the mountain west. We’re just getting past the stage where “Black” and “Mormon” are universally perceived as mutually exclusive characteristics and any combining of the two requires a special explanation. —John Mansfield It was a Thursday, about noon—maybe 1 p.m. I walked into our apartment at 1369 E. Hyde Park Boulevard, Chicago, Illinois. I think I had just finished an exam that morning, but I cannot remember. My wife had the radio on, to WBBM, the CBS affiliate in Chicago. It was background noise, ignored as I greeted my wife and our almost-one-year-old son. Then something changed: the voice on the radio sounded familiar, like home. No longer the harsh nasal tones of Chicago, but the warm comfortable tones of a Utah newsman, from KSL in Salt Lake City. As we listened we were at first unbelieving. How could something so wonderful be happening today, not sometime in the “future” whenever that might come? How could we be so blessed—to see the long-awaited day come right now, announced on WBBM-AM, for all the world to hear! And our joy was all vicarious: As the ban’s effect on us was to make us question, and hope, and wish it were not so, so the end of the ban made us rejoice for the young Black woman who attended the Hyde Park Branch for whom closed doors had just opened. And for all of her brothers and sisters in the neighborhoods around Hyde Park for whom those doors opened. And what a blessing it turned into for us. One of the early converts in that branch was Betty Johnson, who later sang with the Tabernacle Choir and married Ruffin Bridgeforth after the death of his first wife. She became our branch pianist (I was the branch music chairman), and I had to teach her how to play “boring.” Another was Cathy Stokes, of whom enough good cannot be written. She was our son’s nursery leader—I think it was her first calling in the church—and she was fantastic! I cannot think about June 8, 1978, without thinking about them—blessed, honored pioneers. Since 1980 I’ve lived in Brooklyn, NY, so I’ve seen thousands of Blacks join the church. (I don’t use the term "African-Americans," because only some of them are Americans—there are Haitians and Barbadians and Ghanaians and Guyanans and Jamaicans and Dominican Republicans [and probably some Dominican Democrats as well]). Too many to name, and naming a few would do injustice to the many. But I want to name a few anyway: Reggie Allen: New York native, Marine, introduced to the Church and baptized in the mid 1970s while in the Marines (or perhaps it was the reserves or some veterans’s organization). Was a faithful member throughout his life, even when suffering from the ravages of diabetes. His wife never converted, but he attended and served faithfully to the end. Lorenzo Davis: Costa Rican. Was our executive secretary when I served in a stake presidency in the late 1980s. Big bear of a man, with a handshake that would crush your hand if you didn’t prepare. Loving, friendly. A man with a thousand friends. Died of cancer last year, faithful to the end, mourned and celebrated by thousands. David and Evelyn Springer. Barbadians. Quiet, simple, faithful, kind. David served in the bishopric, and then for years in the bishop’s storehouse. He’s gone now but his lovely wife is still active, bringing her sweet spirit into every place she goes. Elouise Jardine. American (and part Native American, I believe). Elouise served as the Relief Society president for several years in the late 1980s. Practical, straightforward, faithful. The bishop would tell me that Sister Jardine could speak to the Black women in the ward in a way that he, a paleface from out West, never could. Carrying no historical or cultural baggage, she’d encourage her sisters to stand tall and act like daughters of God. —Mark B. Alas, only three years old at the time, I have no memories—nor do I remember exactly when I first learned about the (then-historical) ban, but it has always seemed very alien to me. changes? My African husband can bless our children and one day baptize them. I cannot imagine having to outsource those duties to white members of my family. —E.S.O. My family was sealed by a wonderful man, who was Black. His words still remain with us four years after that great day. —John Scherer I was attending my first baptism on my mission to Korea. I was still suffering from jet lag, and wondering why all these people were speaking a different language than the one I had learned in the LTM. My mission president, who was a large man, was practically dancing a jig when he got the news from Salt Lake. Since there were no Black missionaries at the time, and Korea has even fewer Blacks than other Americans, I had a couple of years to sort things out before I lived anywhere that it had an impact. As to its impact now, the senior member of our stake high council is Black, and until he died a few months ago, one of our high priest group leadership was Black. I still remember that last interaction I had with him. I am the ward organist, and he was curious watching me play with both my hands and my feet. —Eric The biggest impact for me was the following:
—B. Bell This was the morning after our oldest son’s graduation. I was in the kitchen fixing a late breakfast for our son and some of his friends who had had an all-night party at our house. The radio was on. Everything stopped as it was announced that “all worthy males could now receive the priesthood.” I have tears in my eyes even now as I type it. The news spread like wildfire. Everyone was calling everyone on the phone, asking if they had heard. Many years later while doing an exhibit on Latter-day Saints in West Africa, I again felt great emotion as I realized the power and weight of glory with which this message was received in West Africa by short-wave radio over the BBC. Later, the museum acquired the very short-wave radio over which Joseph William Billy Johnson had heard the news. Brother Johnson was one of the most significant early Black LDS leaders in Black Africa. I was also personally involved in facilitating the museum acquiring his cement Angel Moroni that had been used in his quasi-LDS chapel before the gospel ever came formally to them. —Marjorie Conder I was seven months into my mission, then working in Amiens, France, and teaching a number of Black investigators, mostly immigrants from former French colonies in Africa. Our best prospects were a young married couple from Zaire, the Zouyembas. They had even attended a sacrament meeting that our branch of about twelve active members held in the second-story “salle” it rented above a store. Until that point in my life, I had accepted the priesthood ban as a given, without really attempting to understand it. But now I struggled with my companion to prepare a substitute discussion for this man and his wife. My companion and I had prayed about this for weeks. Around the end of May, I had written a personal letter to my mission president, explaining the reasons I could not reconcile the Church’s policy with my understanding of the gospel. During the first week of June, I received President Arrigona’s ten-page, handwritten reply. His letter reviewed the various doctrinal explanations that had been given, but concluded by saying that the policy didn’t make sense to him either. And he said he hoped and expected that some day in the not-too-distant future the Lord would correct the practice. A few days later, our zone leaders drove down from Arras for a scheduled work day with us. My companion and I were riding our bikes back to our apartment to rendezvous with them and the other two elders in our district. The zone leaders overtook and stopped us on the road and yelled out their car window to tell us about President Kimball’s revelation. I will never forget the overpowering elatation and gratitude I felt then and there, as I stood straddling my bike on the side of the road, trying to process it all. Thirty years later, I’m still amazed. —K. Golightly My Black son has a chance one day to hold the priesthood. He has changes to make, but now it’s up to him. That means the world to me. The most powerful visual experience I have had in my entire life was in the Atlanta Temple years ago. Without getting explicit, when you see the hand of God extended to you—and it is black . . . I will never forget that image, and I wish with all my heart every member of the Church could have that same experience. That’s good enough for me, and I pray that some day my Black son will “fit in” among our congregation in every way—including racially. If, one day, it is his hand reaching out to a fellow Saint, I will die knowing all our efforts were not in vain. —Ray To this day, I cannot read Official Declaration 2 without starting to choke up. Since 1978, I have not belonged to (and seldom attended) a ward outside Utah that did not have some African-American members. I belonged to a ward in Detroit that was majority African-American, including the bishop. When I served as elders quorum president, one of my counselors was a former member of the Harlem Globetrotters. It all seems so normal now, that it is difficult to remember how things were before. —Calvin Porter A member of our stake presidency is a Black brother named Thomas, who happens to be a friend of mine. We have about a dozen active Black members in our ward, by far the most racially diverse ward I’ve ever lived in. We’ve got a ways to go, of course, but the changes I’ve seen and experience on a weekly basis are simply wonderful. I love when Thomas visits our ward (which also happens to be his home ward). Those dozen Black members are sitting there in a sea of mostly white, with some brown. But the unquestioned presiding officer, shown all the deference Mormons give to authority, is a Black man, presiding on the stand. My own opinion is that this circumstance is very significant in our ward’s capacity to succesfully integrate new Black converts. As we begin to reach a critical mass, it becomes easier and easier to bring other new Black converts succesfully into the mix. This situation was simply unimaginable back in 1978. My freshman year at BYU was 1976–1977, a year before the revelation. A girl in our student branch (from Chicago) was dating a Black student on campus. Since she was from Chicago, she had a comfort level with Blacks. But this relationship, although it should have been none of their business, really rubbed some of the guys in the dorm the wrong way. On one occasion I overheard talk of “beating up” the Black student for his audacity in dating a white girl. It was just big talk and nothing ever came of it, but that gives you a glimpse of what things were like at that time. We have a long way to go, but we have also made huge strides. —Kevin Barney I was at work. I received a telephone call from my sister in Utah telling me the news. I was stunned and thrilled. Very soon I was able to meet up with my mother and father and in the privacy of our car we talked and shed many tears together over what we considered to be wonderful news and a special moment in the history of the earth. Soon after I received my mission call to Brazil. Arriving at the MTC I learned that my companion there was the first Black sister to receive a mission call after the Proclamation. I was blessed to stand with her (still at the MTC) and raise our hands in a sustaining vote for this revelation to be accepted by the Church. In Brazil I served with Blacks, taught and converted Blacks, and felt the Lord's love for them. I was in a branch where a sister bore testimony to the joyous delay of her wedding so her fiance could serve a mission, now that he was able to hold the priesthood. I currently live in a diverse ward where we have several Black families. I teach Primary and have three Black children in my class (out of a total of thirteen). I give thanks for Spencer W. Kimball, his great faith, and his desire to call down this revelation from heaven! —Jones We were on our way from Oregon to Salt Lake for a family reunion and had just taken the cut-off to go south from Burley, Idaho (I could find the spot on the road today) when we turned on the radio to KSL. As we heard the announcement, my husband and I both began to cry. We were just overwhelmed with joy. As we drove into my parents’ driveway a short time later, my mother came running out of the house saying, “Did you hear? Did you hear?” It was truly a day of rejoicing. —Catherine W.O. |