Early black Mormon pioneer Jane Manning James walked 800 miles to Nauvoo.
Quincy: Her trunk got lost, at least that’s what Charles Wandell says. In the Nauvoo Neighbor, the local paper, there is an ad that appears for several weeks running. The title is “Lost.” It describes the trunk and offers a small reward for its return. But Jane is essentially left without anything but the clothes on her back, which she finds to be a truly sorry state of affairs, in part, because I think she used her possessions as a way of asserting her respectability. She describes the clothing in the trunk as beautiful clothes, mostly new. She’s left without all of them. All she has are the shoes that have worn out, the stockings that have ripped and torn, the dress that she was wearing, and very little else. So she relies on the kindness of strangers. She needs to get a job. She needs to get some new clothing, all that kind of stuff.
GT: I know in the movie, Emma and Jane, there’s a really interesting scene where Jane comes to meet the Prophet Joseph and Emma. I know she’s pretty embarrassed. But she’s like, “I don’t have any clothes.” And Joseph says, “Let’s go get her some clothes, Emma.” Can you tell about that story?
Dr. Quincy Newell tells us more about that story, and tells us that Jane was a great friend of Joseph and Emma Smith. In fact, it appears Emma may have asked Emma to be sealed to her as a family member. In our next conversation, we will discuss this proposal, and Jane’s attempts to be sealed to the prophet Joseph Smith’s family.
Quincy: [Jane] starts telling anyone who will listen that Emma came to her and said that Joseph Smith had told her, Emma, to offer to Jane the opportunity to be adopted as a child. Jane, at the time said, “No thanks.” But starting in 1880, she starts petitioning church leaders to say, “You know, I’d really like to change my mind about that. Could I please be adopted to Joseph Smith, as a child as he offered to do back in Nauvoo? Would that be okay? When can that be accomplished?”
GT: This was not a legal adoption, but a religious adoption. Is that correct?
Quincy: That’s how Jane frames it. So at the time that Jane says the offer was being made, parent-child sealing, which is sort of how she frames it in the 1880s, was not really a thing. It was at least theoretically a thing. But it was not a thing that had been practiced. So nobody is really doing this. By the 1880s, lots of people are doing it. Lots and lots of white people are petitioning to be adopted as Joseph Smith’s children. They never laid eyes on Joseph Smith. He was dead long before they became converts to the church. Their requests are being granted right and left. I think probably thousands of people were adopted. He’s got a huge family. So Jane is basically asking for what lots of other people are getting as sort of a matter of course.
GT:Oh, really? It just a widespread thing by then.
Quincy: It’s a very widespread thing. So she’s just asking for something that everybody else is getting. But church leaders find this a really difficult request to grant in her case.
GT: I can imagine.
Quincy: I think it’s because they have a lot of trouble imagining giving Joseph Smith a black daughter in eternity. But she just keeps kind of poking them. So she writes letters to them. She has friends write letters to them. She goes to visit the church presidents in their homes. She talks about this at every opportunity. It’s in her autobiography. It’s in every account of her life. She sort of states this over and over again. She seems to make the argument that she should be allowed to have a sealing to Joseph Smith, as a child. She should be allowed to receive her endowments because she has been a virtuous Mormon woman, and because Joseph Smith would let her do this. So why won’t the church leaders at the time, let her do that?
Her repeated requests resulted in the most unusual sealing ceremony ever granted.
Dr. Quincy Newell discusses Jane Manning’s marriage to Isaac James. The two traveled to Utah in one of the earliest wagon companies to settle in Salt Lake City.
GT: Did they go with the first pioneer companies?
Quincy: I don’t think they’re in the first wave. They’re in the second wave, now I’m remembering. Patty Sessions delivers Jane’s child essentially, on the trail in Iowa, at a place called Keg Creek. So Jane is traveling pregnant, which can’t have been fun. At some point, they get hooked up with the George Parker Dykes company. They continue to stay with and work for Dykes and his family when they’re in Winter Quarters. Dykes goes off with the Mormon Battalion, and he writes letters home to his wives, who he refers to as Mrs. Dykes, to sort of cover up the fact that there are multiple Mrs. Dykes’s. He makes several remarks about, make sure you treat Isaac and Jane well, take care of them and so on.
GT: Polygamy is such a can of worms. So, she gets into the Salt Lake Valley.
Quincy: She’s in one of the first companies to enter the Salt Lake Valley. So they arrive in the summer of 1847. She has had another child, so she has given birth to a child on the way to Winter Quarters, and she’s pregnant with another child by the time they get to Salt Lake. They set up on some of the property that belongs to Brigham Young and continue working for him for some time, and then they get a piece of land down in the First Ward, I believe, and set up a farming operation. Jane starts doing laundry pretty soon as well.
We will discuss her other marriages, and her prominent role in Pioneer Utah.
Quincy: So in 1870, Jane and Isaac get divorced.
GT: 1870?
Quincy: 1870. That’s the necessary background. So in the 1880s, and 1890s, when Jane is starting to request endowments and sealings, she requests endowments. She requests sealing as a child to Joseph Smith. And she requests sealing in marriage. And occasionally, she will request sealing and marriage to Walker Lewis, which is a really interesting move on her part. And I think it’s maybe because Walker Lewis has the priesthood.
GT: That’s a fact I think most people don’t know.
Quincy: Right. So if you request sealing to a black man who doesn’t have the priesthood, well, then there’s a sort of procedural problem there, right?
GT: Yeah. Isaac, her husband didn’t have priesthood.
Quincy: Exactly. And so, she may be thinking, “Well, okay, I will request sealing to somebody who does have the priesthood, but who is also black, so they can’t object to it being an interracial marriage. And they can’t object that he doesn’t have the priesthood. So I should be good to go.”
Quincy: Yeah, they say no to that, too.
Quincy: But so that’s, as far as I know, that’s the only evidence that we have Jane and Walker Lewis knew each other. I am not totally persuaded that that’s evidence that they knew each other. She may only have known of him but known that he had the priesthood.
GT: So this was just kind of a strategic move on her part.
Quincy: It may have been, It’s hard to say. There’s a lot about Jane that’s hard to say.
As we conclude our discussion of black Mormon pioneer Jane Manning James, we will talk about this question: what role does race play in LDS Theology? Many black church members have been told they will be white in the resurrection. Is our theology an example of white supremacy? Dr. Quincy Newell will answer these questions.
Quincy: [Jane] was well respected in the community, in part because of her relationship to Joseph Smith. She was one of the last people alive, who had known him in person, and so she was sought out for her memories of the Prophet. And Joseph F. Smith spoke at her funeral. She was she was celebrated and lauded as an upstanding member of the community, well-respected and to be missed. But, at the same time, one account of the funeral said that Joseph F. Smith talked about how she would receive all of her wishes in heaven, and that she would have a white and glorified body. And that’s not an exact quote, but he did say she would be white.
And, there’s a really interesting aspect to imagining that scene. If you think about Joseph F. Smith standing in front of a congregation that includes a lot of black faces, and talking about how Jane, this respected black woman in the community is going to be white in heaven, that’s all kinds of problematic.
GT: And I know a lot of people are going to have a hard time with that. Because they’re like, “Well, that’s not racist.”
Quincy: No, but that’s racist.
GT: Oh, I know it is. I know I’m going to get comments on that. But anyway, even as late as 1978, I remember President Kimball, who we all laud for this wonderful [revelation], talked about Indians who would become a white and delightsome people. And I know he said that with the best of intentions. And it’s hard, I think, especially for really Orthodox people to say that’s a racist statement. But it’s a racist statement. And so it’s hard because I know a lot of black people, Indians, whatever nationality, have had to deal with this. I hate to call it white supremacy.
Quincy: It’s white supremacy.
GT: But that’s what it is.
Quincy: Yeah, it is.
GT: And so what can we say to people to get them to understand that that really is racist theology?
Quincy: Not being an LDS theologian, that is a challenging question for me to answer. So I think there are Mormon theologians who are far more able to address this question than I. But I guess I would start with the idea that the Bible says we are all made in God’s image. I was raised as a Protestant. And so, I think of God as beyond gender, beyond race, not having either one of those characteristics. I know for Mormons, that’s different. But I think that you have to start with the question of, why is the default image of God, an old white guy? Right?
What are your thoughts regarding the racism that Jane endured?
Wheat & Tares 
Like polygamy, I find racism to be a great stain on the church and its history. The following quote articulates how I feel about the subject much better than I could myself: “Even though the priesthood ban was repealed in 1978, the discourse that constructs what blackness means is still very much intact today. Under the direction of President Spencer W. Kimball, the First Presidency and the Twelve removed the policy that denied blacks the priesthood but did very little to disrupt the multiple discourses that had fostered the policy in the first place. Hence there are Church members today who continue to summon and teach at every level of Church education the racial discourse that blacks are descendants of Cain, that they merited lesser earthly privilege because they were ‘fence-sitters’ in the War in Heaven, and that, science and climatic factors aside, there is a link between skin color and righteousness.” (Darron Smith, “The Persistence of Racialized Discourse in Mormonism,” Sunstone Magazine, March 2003, 31.)
@Skdad, I remember at a stake youth fireside in 1989 or 1990 where we were taught that black people were the fence sitters in the pre-existence. It’s so hard to shift your paradigm later in life when you are taught these things in your youth and accept them as gospel.
Today’s society has embraced identity politics. Many people see everything through the lens of race, gender, and sexuality That’s the way they see the world. So it is very unfortunate that the Church has a troubled history with respect to all three. It would be one thing if the Church was neutral or had a non-descript history with respect to women, blacks, and homosexuals. But the fact that its history is seen as fairly negative with all three groups is just too much for many members.
Wouldn’t it be nice if instead of this history we had a history of courageous leadership? What if Mormons had elevated women before that was trendy? What if Mormons had reached out to the gay community before that was trendy? What if Mormons had accepted blacks before 1964? No such luck. Leading from behind as usual. Following society 30 years after the fact.
@Andy…I totally agree. I have had similar experiences. I also find it very difficult to believe the church is completely committed to reversing their approach toward religious racism when references to it still remain in their canonized scripture.
20 years ago at BYU I took a religion class from Susan Easton Black. I believe she taught that Jane Manning and her repeated requests were what caused Joseph F Smith to seek revelation that eventually became DC 138. I’ve never heard that anywhere else but I find it plausible.
It is kind of hard to look past what our scriptures have to say about black skin. Especially the Book of Mormon and the Book of Abraham. As good old Mike Tannehill would say “Do you just want me to rip those parts out of my scriptures?” Actually Mike might have a good idea there. Maybe we could ditch D&C 132 while we are at it.
Great interview Rick. I enjoyed listening to you and John Larsen in that recent Sunstone podcast as well.
I sure hope we all don’t turn white. Did anyone else notice in the new temple video one of the still shots showed God creating every different race? That had to be intentional right? I guess the reason we get the sense that all the church doctrine over the last 150 years has come from old white guys is that, well, it has come from old white guys. Times are changing fast.
To understand the want for Jane to be adopted to Joseph, we kind of need to understand that it was taught that everyone had to be adopted to someone at least tied to Joseph or you would have no link back to God. It would make no sense in 1880 to seal yourself to your father or your dead ancestors because you would be sealing yourself to a dead end and be cut off from God. It wasn’t until 1894 that people were encouraged to stop sealing themselves to the Brethren. To those who were concerned whether that would affect them if their dead relative rejected the gospel in the spirit world, thus breaking the link, President Woodruff assured them that nearly everyone would accept it and even if they did not they would still not be cut off. And boom just like that the whole doctrine of sealing changed and upon learning this, I became a universalist just like Joseph and Wilford were.
“What if Mormons had elevated women before that was trendy?” In some ways they did. Then trendy both caught up and past the church.
Certainly can’t say the same for the other two categories mentioned, though I think D. Michael Quinn has argued that same -gender relationships were at least quietly tolerated in Mormonism during part of the 19th century.
Does Mormonism have racist theology? In addition to statements from past church presidents like Brigham Young, John Taylor, and Wilford Woodruff, one cannot read the 1949 and 1969 First Presidency statements and conclude otherwise:
“The position of the Church regarding the Negro may be understood when another doctrine of the Church is kept in mind, namely, that the conduct of spirits in the premortal existence has some determining effect upon the conditions and circumstances under which these spirits take on mortality and that while the details of this principle have not been made known, the mortality is a privilege that is given to those who maintain their first estate; and that the worth of the privilege is so great that spirits are willing to come to earth and take on bodies no matter what the handicap may be as to the kind of bodies they are to secure; and that among the handicaps, failure of the right to enjoy in mortality the blessings of the priesthood is a handicap which spirits are willing to assume in order that they might come to earth. Under this principle there is no injustice whatsoever involved in this deprivation as to the holding of the priesthood by the Negroes.”
1st Presidency Statement, August 17, 1949
“From the beginning of this dispensation, Joseph Smith and all succeeding presidents of the Church have taught that Negroes, while spirit children of a common Father, and the progeny of our earthly parents Adam and Eve, were not yet to receive the priesthood*, for reasons which we believe are known to God, but which He has not made fully known to man.”
1st Presidency Statement, December 15, 1969
* the current church essay “Race and the Priesthood” states: “There is no reliable evidence that any black men were denied the priesthood during Joseph Smith’s lifetime.”
The fact that church leaders required a revelation to remove the priesthood ban indicates they felt the ban had previously been divinely ordained. It was part of Mormonism theology.
Now while Bruce R. McConkie has stated “Forget everything I have said, or what…Brigham Young…or whomsoever has said…that is contrary to the present revelation. We spoke with a limited understanding and without the light and knowledge that now has come into the world” I’m unaware of the church tossing overboard any of the scripture used to justify the ban. They still are part of the canon. The church just chooses to gloss over or interpret them differently. For instance in the same speech I quote from above, McConkie quotes part of 2 Nephi 26:33 and states “These words have now taken on a new meaning”.
Unlike the church’s essay on polygamy, though, in which the church still maintains polygamy was the will of the Lord, there are no such statements in the essay on Race and the Priesthood. They come right to the edge of outright stating the ban was instituted due to the racism of its leaders. But it stops short. To do so would be to admit a prophet can make a serious mistake – which Mormons are taught “is not in the programme.” And that is why the church still maintains racist theology in its scriptures – it can’t admit the error.
Fist a comment on Race and then LGBT+ issues. I have a black daughter and a gay son.
If you are like me (I’m sorry) you may think of racism as overt negative acts. That certainly happens to my daughter on a weekly basis here in Utah County. But the more pernicious problem, I have come to believe, is the white supremacy that pervades Morman doctrine, history, and the ethos of our community.
When, consciously or not, you believe in a white god, a white, heaven, and that every person of color will be made white in the next life – if they are righteous – it becomes very easy to dismiss the lived experience of people of color instead of actively pursuing loving acts and attitudes that make their world better. “It will all be fixed in the end.” That is almost a Mormon mantra for every problem with our doctrine or behavior.
I recently listened to a Hidden Brain podcast that explored the phenomenal increase in public acceptance of same-sex marriage and all things LGBT. The rate of change in public acceptance is stunning social scientists. It is entirely unprecedented.,
In fact, if acceptance were to proceed at the current rate, we would achieve LGBT acceptance-neutrality in nine years, Contrast that to ageism – 160 years. Racism – 130+ years.
That is something church leaders should be looking at. In a decade, their stance will move from “peculiar” to “pariah”.
The doctrine is flimsy and the theology is non-existant. Any scriptural “proof” is really just proof-texting. All we have to go on is what those 15 guys say, some of whom had probably never knowingly met an LGBT person in the first half of their lives.
Is god willing to beat them with the revelation stick – not sure it works that way.