Green Flake, the slave of James Madison Flake, a convert to the LDS Church, is baptized at the age of 15. Green remains a slave but is a faithful member of the church throughout his life. Samuel Chambers, a 13-year-old, is baptized in secret because he is a slave. Walker Lewis, a black man in Lowell, Mass., is ordained an to the office of an Elder in the Melchizedek Priesthood.

Walker Lewis, a black man, is ordained to the office of Elder.

1846
William McCary, a black man, is ordained to the office of Elder.

1847
Elijah Abel arrives in Utah. A carpenter by trade, he works on building the Salt Lake Temple. He and his wife Mary Ann manage the Farnham Hotel. Mary Ann Abel was Negro according to the 1850 Hamilton County, Ohio, census and the 1860 Utah census.

1851
Elijah Abel arrives in Utah, where he works on building the Salt Lake Temple. He and his wife Mary Ann manage the Farnham Hotel. The couple asks to be “sealed” in marriage in the temple, which Brigham Young refuses. Abel had already been through the Kirtland Temple for washings and anointings and he was already baptized for the dead in Nauvoo.

1853
Elijah asked to receive his endowment and was denied by Brigham Young.

1854
Brigham Young frees Green Flake.

1858
All black Melanesians (Fijians) are given the priesthood (blacks in the Philippines even earlier)

1860
Utah Census lists 59 blacks, 29 of them are listed as slaves.

1883
Elijah Able is still on Church records as a Seventy.

1884
Elijah Able in his 70s is sent on yet another mission for the Church of Jesus Christ of Latter Day Saints. He returns home early from his mission and dies in early December of 1884.

1900
Elijah Abel’s son, Enoch Abel, is ordained an elder.

1902
Jane Manning James, a faithful black Mormon since the days of Joseph Smith Jr., is given a special temple sealing as a “servant” to Joseph Smith Jr. She continues to pursue her endowment.

1934
Elijah Abel’s grandson is ordained a priest; a year later, he advances to elder.

1949
First Presidency statement on blacks and priesthood states the ban “is not a matter of the declaration of a policy but of direct commandment from the Lord, on which is founded the doctrine of the church from the days of its organization.”

1962
A missionary tract, the Joseph Smith Story, found its way into the hands of a black religious leader in Ghana, Dr. A.F. Mensah. He converts several others, sets up a church congregation and corresponds with the Church missionary department.

1964
After reading the Book of Mormon, J.W.B. Johnson forms the first “Latter-day Saint” congregations in Ghana, Africa.

1969
Fourteen University of Wyoming football players wanted to wear armbands for their games with Brigham Young University as a protest against the ban on blacks. Other athletes also protested.

1970
LDS President David O. McKay tells the Salt Lake Tribune that “There is no doctrine in this church and there never was a doctrine in this church to the effect that the Negroes are under any kind of a divine curse.”

1971

Genesis Group, a support group for black Mormons, is organized in Salt Lake City under the direction of then LDS President Joseph Fielding Smith with apostles Gordon B. Hinckley (pictured, with Genesis co-founder Darius Gray), Thomas S. Monson and Boyd K. Packer as advisers.

1978 June 8th
President Spencer W. Kimball announces a divine revelation opening the priesthood to all worthy males regardless of race or lineage. is announced. The events leading up to it and the revelation itself are judged to be a true miracle.

Now the time before the ban lets look at what life has been like after the ban was lifted.

1978
LDS Apostle Bruce R. McConkie, who wrote in Mormon Doctrine that blacks would never get the priesthood, states that “we should forget everything that has been said in the past on this topic.”

1990
Helvecio Martins set apart as first black General Authority as a member of the Quorum of the Seventy — the first black Seventy since Elijah Abel.

2002
Robert Foster elected BYU student body president.

2006
LDS President Gordon B. Hinckley condemns racism during the all-male priesthood session of the church’s Annual General Conference.

Where were you when you heard the Priesthood Ban was lifted.

I don’t know where I was on June 8th 1978 when the ban was lifted. But I can tell you where I was June 8th 2008. I was in Elders Quorum reading Official Declaration—2 to the Elders of Israel.

Jamie Trwth
Latte Day Saints