Today i had the pleasure of receiving an e-mail from Lee Baker, a former Mormon bishop who now works for the Lord!
immediately after reading his note I asked if I could post it on our sites and he said; “YES!” So here’s his e-mail – I have to say that I admire his ingenuity! Come alongside us at LAM and pray for him and his wife Kathy won’t you? Who knows – maybe the Church will take him up on his offer! 🙂 Also pray for his radio ministry in Liberia as he reaches out to the Mormons there to help show them the real truth about Mormonism!
As an FYI, I’m putting a warning on this article. The expressions used in Lee’s letter is going to be offensive to some readers so I ask that you look at it in context. Nothing in his letter denotes racism on his end, rather it is strongly pointing out the racist theology of the Church.
With Love in Christ;
Michelle
1 Cor. 1:18
PS: If you haven’t read his book I highly recommend doing so! It’s called “Mormonism – A Life Under False Pretenses”.
22, 2013
Dear Stake President Michael D. Jones,
Subject: Former Mormon Bishop Considers a Retrial of His Excommunication
I was somewhat puzzled by the comments of President Dieter F. Uchtdorf, Second Counselor in the First Presidency, this past General Conference[1].
As one of the many thousands of past Leadership within the Church of Jesus Christ of Latter-day Saints who “Struggle with unanswered questions about things that have been done or said in the past.”, I would now ask if my excommunication as an Ordained Bishop of the Mormon Church was based in-part on the numerous “unanswered questions”, which I have brought to you and the Church Leadership over my 32 years of service as a faithful Latter-day Saint?
As the Presiding Authority at my excommunication on the morning of December 7th, 2008, I sincerely ask, if you believe that my past questions about Church History and the activities of Joseph Smith Jr. are now somewhat reasonable, as President Uchtdorf states: “There may have been things said or done that were not in harmony with our values, principles or doctrine.”, and that such “things” have been clearly described by President Uchtdorf (recognized as a Prophet, Seer and Revelator) as: “mistakes” by the past Leaders of the Church.
As neither the Church nor President Uchtdorf have elaborated on what specific “mistakes” were made or by which specific “Leaders” of the Church may have made these “mistakes”, I would ask for your review of only a few of the actual questions I have struggled with, which lead to my excommunication several years ago:
- Why did the 1835 publication of the Doctrine and Covenants of the Church of Jesus Christ of Latter-day Saints (Mormon Scripture) teach in direct and clear opposition to the practice of Polygamy from 1835 to 1876 (41 years), during the very height of the actual practice of Polygamy and Polyandry?
See: Joseph Smith Papers Statement on Marriage
- Did Joseph Smith Jr. follow the three Laws of the Priesthood governing the plurality of wives (to include taking the wives of other men and teenagers) as recorded in the Doctrine and Covenants, either the 1835 (101:4) or the 1876 (132: 61) versions?
See: LDS Scriptures
- Did Joseph Smith Jr. lie when he stated in May of 1844: “What a thing it is for a man to be accused of committing adultery, and having seven wives, when I can only find one.”, when he was in reality married to at least 33 wives? In fact, did Joseph Smith Jr. ever claim or admit to being a polygamist as is now openly celebrated by the LDS Church?
See: Official History of the Church, Vol. 6, page 411., statement from Joseph Smith Jr.
- Were the actions of the Prophet Joseph Smith Jr., as they relate to his personal and private practice and teachings of Polygamy and Polyandry, under the solemn direction and commandment of the Lord Jesus Christ Himself?
See: Maxwell Institute, The Prophet Joseph Smith and his Plural Wives
- Why has the Senior Leadership of the Mormon Church presented so many “Nigger Jokes” year after year in the Official General Conferences and Authorized Publications of the Church, yet claimed to be tolerant and accepting of all peoples? Additionally, is it true that the Blacks were restricted from the Mormon Priesthood and thus Salvation itself for nearly 150 years, without the Church Leadership knowing specifically when, how or why such a worldwide racist Doctrine was implemented?
See:
4 Witness – Lee Baker’s Testimony
Deseret Books Media Release Collector’s Library
(Sermons – word search for Nigger, Darky and Sambo)
Thank you in advance for your deliberation of these few questions in consideration of the recent comments and new direction from your superiors within the Church of Jesus Christ of Latter-day Saints. Given this new information, I should be afforded a retrial to consider if the specific questions I have asked in the past are central to the “mistakes” of the Leadership of the Church and as such, very much open to reasonable questions by the general Church Membership.
In view of the stunning Official position that Mormon Church Leadership may have made serious mistakes and that the Church Leadership may have said or done things that were not in harmony with the established Church values, principles or doctrine, I formally request a retrial of my excommunication.
Sincerely,
Lee B. Baker
Former Mormon Bishop and High Priest
LDS Membership Number 000-3443-8033
I clicked on each of the links you provided in your article. None of them lead to any “nigger” or “Sambo” jokes from General Conference. I don’t believe you have any such documentation.
Dear Lynda,
Additionally, if you send me a request to formermormonbishop@gmail.com, I will send you a 40-page reference of each such statement with specific dates, locations and LDS Officers who made such statements and in what Publications you can find them.
Sincerely, Lee
Dear Lynda,
I have referenced the LDS Collectors Library, which is the “best” research tool that the LDS Church offers and I have provided here the results of the Word Search I spoke of for Nigger and Sambo. I have also included the into to this research tool for your review as it is available through Deseret Books, owned by the LDS Church. NOT a single reference has been invented or misquoted in anyway. Please review the details below:
Selected notes from the Book: Mormonism – A Life Under False Pretenses, by Lee B. Baker, Former Mormon Bishop, followed by direct word search results from the LDS Collectors Library, purchased from the Church of Jesus Christ of Latter-day Saints.
Author’s Statement: I will not humiliate the reader by listing the nearly one hundred such jokes, stories, or comments found within the LDS Collectors Library 2005, which documents the formal references noted below. My only observation would be a clear recognition that at no time in the history of the United States have these derogatory terms been used for anything other than slander. I fully recognize that at times the use of these terms has in fact been both widespread and socially acceptable within America. My primary reason for raising the existence of these well-documented examples of bigotry and prejudice by the leadership of the Mormon Church is to question the divine spiritual guidance of the church itself. At a time when other churches were taking great risks in the many abolitionist movements, the Mormons who owned slaves were moving their “property” west with them. If the uninspired leadership of the nation considered both slavery and polygamy evil, how is it that both were accepted as righteous by the Mormons and their God? Furthermore, if God Himself spoke to the Mormon Prophet of His disapproval of the use of racially disparaging remarks in April of 2006, what did God really think of such remarks in 1856 or 1906?
References: Elder Heber J. Grant, Quorum of the Twelve Apostles, Conference Report, October 1900, Second Day—Morning Session, 35-36; Apostle Matthias F. Cowley, Quorum of the Twelve Apostles, Conference Report, April 1902, Second Day—Morning Session, 36-37; Elder Reed Smoot, Quorum of the Twelve Apostles, Conference Report, October 1907, Afternoon Session, 55-56; and President Rudger Clawson, Conference Report, October 1920, First Day—Morning Session, 22. Official Mormon Church publications have repeatedly used these derogatory terms have been both the Contributor and the Improvement Era, well into the 1950s.
I have often wondered how the African American members of the Church of Jesus Christ of Latter-day Saints dismiss these teachings, since the church itself has not. In an apparent bid for some self-recognition of the true history of blacks within the Mormon Church, a unique Web site has chronicled some of the historical issues I have captured within question 3 in the questions I raise in chapter 5.
The point of this discussion is not to suggest that the Mormon Church is now infected with a disproportional number of racists and bigots. However, I do believe that within the early years of the Mormon Church, especially under the leadership of Brigham Young, John Taylor, and many of the General Authorities of the church well into the twentieth century, racial discrimination and bigotry were generally accepted. I further believe that as with polygamy, polyandry, and disobeying the laws of the land, the social, spiritual, and emotional damage done by widespread bigotry within the Mormon Church has never been sufficiently acknowledged.
Teachings of the Past Prophets and the Value of a Living Prophet
Within the Church of Jesus Christ of Latter-day Saints, the current and living Prophet of the church is both the president of the corporation of the church and the only man on the earth who holds all the keys of the priesthood and is authorized to receive revelation for the entire church. Below is a typical affirmation of that belief, as stated during one of the many semiannual general conferences of the Church of Jesus Christ of Latter-day Saints:
I move that, recognizing Wilford Woodruff as the President of the Church of Jesus Christ of Latter-day Saints, and the only man on the earth at the present time who holds the keys of the sealing ordinances, we consider him fully authorized by virtue of his position to issue the Manifesto which has been read in our hearing and which is dated September 24th, 1890, and that as a Church in General Conference assembled, we accept his declaration concerning plural marriages as authoritative and binding.
Formalities notwithstanding, as polygamy continued long after the first manifesto denouncing the practice in 1890, this church-wide recognition of the power and authority of the President of the church is sufficient for the discussion at hand. I have been told several times by Stake President Michael D. Jones, of the Arvada, Colorado Stake, that I should “follow the keys, follow the keys,” meaning the keys of the priesthood. This reprimand was in reference to my inability to understand the Mormon philosophy that whatever the Prophet says or does is of the Lord. My rebuttal to President Jones, a large and powerful man, was that my issue was with the teachings of the past Prophets that had not been corrected by the succeeding Prophets. An example of how that can happen follows.
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.
Shall I tell you the law of God in regard to the African race? If the white man who belongs to the chosen seed mixes his blood with the seed of Cain, the penalty, under the law of God, is death on the spot. This will always be so.
I remind you that no man who makes disparaging remarks concerning those of another race can consider himself a true disciple of Christ.
In this case, President Hinckley in 2006 clearly and concisely corrected the earlier teachings of Brigham Young in both 1859 and 1863. It was straightforward and the right thing to do. And yet the church did not collapse the next day. I believe that it is possible for any organization, especially a religious organization that claims to be the “only true church on the earth today,” to correct irregularities or mistakes in doctrine. In the case of Mormonism, it is the foundation itself, specifically the early years of the church, that is suspect, and with each passing year, the modern Church of Jesus Christ of Latter-day Saints endeavors to assimilate more to the mainstream of Christianity. It has been my observation that no other reportedly Christian church has undergone more changes in such a shorter period of time than Mormonism. In the early years of the church, being different was a hallmark to be proud of. Today, however, the unique and peculiar doctrines of the church have been pushed backstage or de-emphasized whenever possible.
The Latter-day Saints possess the truth, and have many principles of truth in addition to what is possessed by the people of the world. Of course, we are peculiar for a number of reasons. It is our peculiarities that make us different from other Christian people.
In contemplating the remarks of Elder McKay yesterday, with regard to the Latter-day Saints being a peculiar people, I am reminded that we are peculiar in this particular, that, unlike all other “orthodox” Christians, we believe that men must be called of God to preach the gospel and officiate in the ordinances thereof.
It is said that this is a most peculiar doctrine that we preach, a most peculiar religion that we have embraced. The fact is this is the religion of Jesus Christ, the Church that He established. That is the reason it is regarded as a peculiar religion.
Word Search for “Nigger” from the 2005 LDS Collectors Library
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Elder Matthias F. Cowley, Conference Report, April 1902, Second Day—Morning Session, p.36 – 37
I have felt impressed with one idea while listening to my brethren, and that is that the whole history of this work has gone to show that we do not need the help of the world to sustain it. I do not mean by this to depreciate any kind assistance, sentiment or support that may be accorded unto us by honest and upright men who, from time to time, defend the rights of the Latter-day Saints, and who have sufficient of the light of truth to see the purity and power of the doctrines that are taught by this people; but I mean to say that it all goes to show that God has established this great work, and that He has sustained it in every sense of the word. When I heard Brother Smoot this morning talking and reading a little about the ideas of men concerning the effect of “Mormonism,” as it is termed, more especially in the eastern states, some of them entertaining the idea that it was a great menace to the people, I thought to myself that the world had got the nightmare. I heard Sol Smith Russell once read an essay on the horse. He said that the horse was a noble animal. It would live on oats and sawdust, he said. Then he went on to describe the various kinds of horses there were in existence. He said there was the sawhorse, and there was the horse-radish, and then there was the Colt’s revolver, and then there was the nightmare. He said, “the nightmare is a horse that is born in the night, and my Aunt Jane has lots of them.” I think sectarianism has the nightmare over this work, and possibly it is all right that they should have. It makes me feel that there are not only prophets among the people of God, but there are some prophets in the world. I heard one of our local politicians a few years ago stand up before a public audience, when the question of dividing on national Political lines was agitated among this people, and some doubted the propriety of it. They wanted to hold the old anti-Mormon party together, and more thoroughly crowd us to the wall, and use their power with the great parties of the nation to distress and oppress this people by inimical legislation. One of the speakers that stood up to address that audience made this statement: “The Mormons will come out on top, no matter what you do.” He said he did not believe in dividing on political lines; he believed in keeping the hand over the Mormons just as long as possible, because, said he, they will come out on top. To illustrate his prophecy he told an anecdote about Genesis Mahone of Virginia, and one of his negro slaves, and he compared us to the general and themselves to the slave. He said this poor slave had a dream. He dreamed that he died and went to the gates of heaven, and there he met the Apostle Peter. Peter asked him who he was. “Why,” said he, “I am the slave of Genesis Mahone of Virginia.” “Well,” said Peter, “are you mounted, or are you on foot?… I’m on foot,” he replied. “Well,” said Peter, “you can’t come in here.” So the poor nigger started down the steps, and he met his master at the bottom, and he said to him, “General, whar d’ye think you’re gwine?… I’m going to heaven,” said the General. “No, you’re not,” he said; “you can’t get in dar, unless you’re mounted.” At this a happy thought struck the nigger, and he said to the General: “I’ll tell you, General, I’ll git down on all fours, and you git on my back, and when Peter ask you if you’re mounted, say, yes, and we both ride right in.” So the General got on his back, and when they got up to the gates of heaven, Peter asked who he was. He replied that he was General Mahone, of Virginia. “Are you mounted or are you on foot?… I’m mounted,” said the General. “Well,” said Peter, “tie your horse on the outside, and come in.” This great politician that was opposed to the Latter-day Saints being identified with the national political parties said, “They will walk right in whether they are mounted or on foot.” And I thought to myself, he has got the key to the whole thing; he understands it just about right. And why is it, my brethren and sisters? It is because God has established this work. I want to read just a little. The brethren have been reading the Scriptures, and I believe it is all right to have a little Scripture reading on these occasions. The Lord says, as recorded in section 1 of the Book of Doctrine and Covenants, that this is “the only true and living Church upon the face of the whole earth, with which I, the Lord, am well pleased, speaking unto the Church collectively and not individually.” While God has established this work, and He is pleased with it because it is His work, we ought not to lose sight of the fact that He is not pleased with every individual in it, only to the extent that that individual conforms his life to the principles and spirit of this Gospel. The only safe thing for a Latter-day Saint is to be found in the discharge of every duty, to be found absolutely free from sin and complying with every principle, as far as possible, that the Lord our God has revealed. A great deal has been said at this conference and at our meeting last night respecting evils that creep in among the Latter-day Saints. While we speak of them from this stand and warn the people, while President Smith gives unto us the word of God, it is the bounden duty of the local Priesthood in every stake of Zion and in every ward to see that iniquity is rooted out from among the people of God, that the day may come when the Lord shall say that He is not only pleased with the Church collectively, but individually also, it having been purified and sanctified from every sin.
Elder Heber J. Grant, Conference Report, October 1900, Second Day—Morning Session, p.35 – 36
I believe it is better to have the nineteen dollars circulating around here. I heard Bishop Farrell some years ago. in the Assembly Hall tell a very good story on home manufacture. He said he believed in home manufacture because it benefitted him as well as other people. He said that when he was coming down to conference he met at the depot a brother to whom he owed five dollars for making some shoes for his children. He gave this brother the five dollars. and he turned around and handed the money to another brother whom he owed, and he handed it to another, and he handed it to another, and the fourth brother came up and handed it back to Brother Farrell, saying “I owe you six dollars, here is five of it,” and Brother Farrell put the money back into his pocket. That money paid five hundred per cent in debt there in just about the same length of time that it takes me to tell the story. But if the Bishop had bought the imported goods it would not have paid the five hundred per cent, because it would have gone out of the country. I went to a negro minstrel show once, and there were about ten or fifteen on the stage. One of them rushed in with his hat off and said. “which of these here niggers am lost two dollars?” holding up a two dollar bill. There hadn’t any of them lost two dollars. “Well,” he said, “if none of you have lost it, I found these two dollars right by the door here and it is my money.” They said all right, and he put it in his pocket. No sooner had he got it in his pocket than up jumped a nigger and said: “Look here, George Washington Jones, you owe me two dollars; pay your honest debts!” He handed the two dollars to him. Another nigger jumps up and says: “Look here, Julius C. Brown, you owes me two dollars; pay your debt.” He got it, and in this way it went clear round. When the last man got it, up jumps George Washington Jones, and says: “Here, give me back the two dollars; you owes me two dollar.” No sooner had he got it in his pocket than a fellow rushes in and said “which of you niggers has found two dollars?” George Washington Jones took it out of his pocket and said: “Here, take your money and go home; we’ve all paid our debts.”
Jeffrey R. Holland and Patricia T. Holland, On Earth As It Is in Heaven, p.148
“The man was gone for approximately half an hour, only to return and report that he could not budge the wounded officer-he was too heavy. . . . The men started grumbling about getting out of there before somebody else got hit. [Then] someone was heard to say, ‘Let’s forget about the lieutenant; after all, he’s just a nigger!’ At this point Sergeant Stewart turned to his men, and pulling himself up to his full 65-inch stature, he spoke in very matter-of-fact tones: ‘I don’t care if he’s black or green or any other color. We’re not leaving without him. He wouldn’t leave any of us in similar circumstances. Besides, he’s our commanding officer and I love him like my own brother.’ ”
Journal of Discourses, 26 vols., 2:, p.169
We started for Ottoway, and arrived at Pawpaw Grove, thirty-two miles, where we stopped for the night. Squire Walker sent Mr. Campbell, Sheriff of Lee County, to my assistance, and he came, and slept by me. In the morning, certain men wished to see me, but I was not allowed to see them. The news of my arrival had hastily circulated about the neighborhood; and very early in the morning the largest room in the hotel was filled with citizens, who were anxious to hear me preach, and requested me to address them. Sheriff Reynolds entered the room, and said, pointing to me, “I wish you to understand this man is my prisoner, and I want you should disperse; you must not gather round here in this way.” Upon which an aged gentleman who was lame, and carried a large hickory walking-stick, advanced towards Reynolds, bringing his hickory upon the floor, said, “You damned infernal puke; we’ll learn you to come here and interrupt gentlemen: sit down there, [pointing to a very low chair,] and sit still, don’t open your head till General Smith gets through talking; if you never learned manners in Missouri, we’ll teach you that gentlemen are not to be imposed upon by a nigger driver: you can not kidnap men here, if you do in Missouri; and if you attempt it here, there’s a committee in this Grove that will sit on your case; and, sir, it is the highest tribunal in the United States, as from its decision there is no appeal.” Reynolds, no doubt aware that the person addressing him was at the head of a committee, who had prevented the settlers on the public domain from being imposed upon by land speculators, sat down in silence, while I addressed the assembly for an hour and a half on the subject of marriage; my visitors having requested me to give them my views of the law of God respecting marriage.
Journal of Discourses, 26 vols., 4:, p.39
Brother Robbins also spoke of what they term the “nigger drivers and nigger worshippers,” and observed how keen their feelings are upon their favourite topic slavery. The State of New York used to be a slave State, but there slavery has for some time been abolished. Under their law for abolishing slavery the then male slaves had to serve until they were 28 years old, and if my memory serves me correctly, the females until they were 25, before they could be free. This was to avoid the loss of, what they called, property in the hands of individuals. After that law was passed the people began to dispose of their blacks, and to let them buy themselves off. They then passed a law that black children should be free, the same as white children, and so it remains to this day.
Journal of Discourses, 26 vols., 5:, p.127
Brother Taylor says that language cannot express the conduct, the feelings, and the spirit that are upon the people in the States. Well, suppose you take up a labour and swear about them, what are the worst words that can be spoken? ‘Nigger stealing,’ Mobs or Vigilance Committees, and Rotten-hearted Administrators of a Government are three of the meanest and wickedest words that can be spoken. I expect that somebody will write that back to the States, as being treasonable, because spoken by a Latter-day Saint.
Sir Geoffrey Furlonge, January 21, 1963, BYU Speeches of the Year, 1963, p.5
I turn now to Ethiopia. I would like to begin by explaining why I call the country “Ethiopia” instead of “Abyssinia”; I have even been asked what relationship there is between these two countries. The answer is, of course, that they are one and the same; but the reason why we nowadays speak of “Ethiopia” and not of “Abyssinia” is that the rulers of the country in question prefer it that way: they believe that “Abyssinia” means “nigger-country,” being derived from a Semitic root “Habash,” a nigger; and as they are in fact far from negroid they regard this as derogatory and insist on being described as “Ethiopians,” which comes from two Greek words meaning “burnt faces,” and therefore has the merit of accuracy; and in any case it costs nothing to meet their wishes over this.
Joseph Fielding Smith, Church History and Modern Revelation, 4 vols., 1:, p.119
Since singing is pleasing to the Lord and a prayer unto him when it is “sacred” and a song of the heart, Latter-day Saints should endeavor always to sing in harmony with the Spirit and with understanding. Frequently the spirit of a meeting is hampered by improper music and singing. Jazz, under no condition can be called sacred. Light frivolous songs are always out of place in the sacred services of the Church. Recently in a Sabbath meeting a quartet sang: “Some Folks Say That a Nigger Won’t Steal,” a pleasing melody, but entirely out of place in a meeting of worship. Our songs should be always in keeping with the Gospel truth. False doctrine is discovered frequently in sectarian hymns. Beautiful melody cannot compensate for false sentiment, yet we have this to contend with constantly in the services of the Church. For instance, The Rosary, is NOT in harmony with gospel truth. “Just As I Am, Without One Plea,” is false in sentiment, and “Beautiful Isle of Somewhere,” is a contradiction of the revealed word of God. Choir leaders should endeavor to be prepared with songs which will harmonize perfectly with the theme of the meeting. Musical numbers should be made to harmonize with the spirit of such meetings.
Joseph Fielding Smith, Church History and Modern Revelation, 4 vols., 4:, p.152 – 153
“You-infernal puke, we’ll learn you to come here and interrupt gentlemen. Sit down there (pointing to a very low chair), and sit still. Don’t open your head till General Smith gets through talking. If you never learned manners in Missouri, we’ll teach you that gentlemen are not to be imposed upon by nigger-drivers. You cannot kidnap men here, if you do in Missouri; and if you attempt it here, there’s a committee in this grove that will sit on your case; and, sir, it is the highest tribunal in the United States, as from its decision there is no appeal!”
Hugh Nibley, Brother Brigham Challenges the Saints, edited by Don E. Norton and Shirley S. Ricks, p.257 – 258
We can never feel quite right about the commercializing of sacred things, including Christmas and the Flag, yet that is the sort of thing that really pays off. “Yes,” says Haley the slaveholder in Uncle Tom’s Cabin, “I consider religion a valeyable thing in a nigger, when it’s the genuine article, and no mistake,” for Haley “knew the price of everything,” and was quite sincere about it. Since the days of Nimrod, ambitious men have known that patriotism of others can be a gold-mine. Was there ever a more fervent American than Daddy Warbucks, or more stirring appeals to national sentiment than the advertising of those industries which loudly proclaim their self-sacrificing heroism in converting to wartime economy (with unlimited profits to themselves), or who describe their systematic looting of the most valuable and available of our national resources as a valiant conquest of the wilderness in the manner of the brave pioneers? Today the knack of getting rich by enlisting the willingness of others to make patriotic sacrifices, once a well-kept secret, is becoming common knowledge as we make increasingly heavy drafts upon a rapidly dwindling capital of national virtue. Breaking the rules can be profitable only if others are willing to keep them, for which reason those who exploit patriotism are the sincerest of its advocates-they would be nowhere without it. The idealistic youngster who volunteers for a dangerous mission in war goes out into the dark with the chorus of “So long, sucker!” ringing in his ears. He is the indispensable fall guy without whose heroism the rest would never get home to show their decorations.
Hugh Nibley, Tinkling Cymbals and Sounding Brass: The Art of Telling Tales About Joseph Smith and Brigham Young, edited by David Whittaker, p.705
After this culmination of terror, the rest of the little book is an anticlimax, albeit a lucid commentary on the personality of the author. The very next day he has a run-in with Sidney Rigdon, who maintains that any single man in the camp should be willing to do his own washing “or get a nigger to do it,” since “the fair daughters of Zion should not touch a dirty rag!” He was referring to Swartzell’s shirt, but our hero replied with spirit, “For my part, I will go with a dirty shirt before I will be my own washerman”-not a very helpful addition to a camp of religious refugees. The next day he discovers that Hiram Smith is a dirty swindler (no particulars), and on July 28 attends a “Daranite meeting,” where there was “a vast expenditure of breath in expounding to the dupes,” but nothing worse. Of a speaker who suggested on August 5, 1838, “it may be that we will have to flee beyond the Rocky Mountains,” Swartzell comments, “He seemed to talk unreasonably, but many of the innocent dupes did not see the destruction that was coming, and I dared not give them any warning.” We have underlined the “was” to show that this entry was put down not on the day indicated but in retrospect, after the Missouri disaster.
Leon R. Hartshorn, comp., Powerful Stories from the Lives of Latter-day Saint Men, p.240
The man was gone for approximately half an hour, only to return and report that he could not budge the wounded officer-he was too heavy. It was like trying to lift a dead horse. The men started grumbling about getting out of there before someone else got hit. Someone was heard to say, “Let’s forget about the lieutenant; after all, he’s just a nigger!” At this point Sergeant Stewart turned to his men, and pulling himself up to his 65-inch stature, he spoke in very matter-of-fact tones: “I don’t care if he’s black or green or any other color. We’re not leaving without him. He wouldn’t leave any of us in similar circumstances. Besides, he’s our commanding officer and I love him like my own brother.”
Kidnapping., Times and Seasons, vol. 4 (November 1842-November 1843), Vol. 4 No. 24 November 1, 1843, p.376
To cap the climax, and put on the top-stone, we are really informed that this pack of renegadoes were taking these men for some alleged crime, committed some three or four years ago, and being such great sticklers for law and justice, came without process, decoyed and stole-not negroes, but free American citizens, for fear they could not get justice O, tempera! O, mores!! What shall we have next-a Colonel in the Illinois militia, a stickler for patriotism, a lover of equal rights; a commander of military forces, leading forth his gallant band in the honorable employment of assisting nigger drivers to steal white men. And a schoolmaster who has come here for the purpose of ‘teaching the young idea how to shoot,’ is setting his pupils a lesson that will not soon be forgotten.
The Contributor, Volume 1
Of such, we have a few, even among us. “By their fruits ye shall know them.” When they pray, and they do sometimes pray, their prayer is something after this fashion: “Oh Lord bless me and my wife, my son and his wife, us four and no more. Amen.” Thus, even in worship their narrow souls reach never beyond the feelings of selfishness, by which they are governed. Should such unfortunately bear a little brief authority among the people, the latter will be sure to mourn; for in the acts of others they always see “a nigger in the fence,” and are not slow in informing the community that they have preserved it from imminent danger and great harm, by their wonderful discovery of the said “nigger.”
The Contributor, Volume 2
Our faith, in the innocent nature of their calling, and in the purity of their designs upon our children, is further wrecked, when we hear that they tell other stories of their purposes and objects to their patrons abroad. They say that a famous bishop of one of the leading sectarian churches here, told his fellow bishops in Boston, that he could do nothing towards converting the adult Mormons to the popular creeds, for they were rooted and grounded in their delusion, but “in ten years you will see we will make great inroads upon their children.” His remarks were applauded. Remarks like this, and their bitter denunciation of our Church leaders and some of the principles of our faith, which they compare to diabolism, animalism, etc., necessarily cause thinking Latter-day Saints to suspect that “there’s a nigger in the fence” somewhere.
The Contributor, Volume 8
“You damned infernal puke, 1 we’ll learn you to come here and interrupt gentlemen! Sit down there, pointing to a very low chair, and sit still. Don’t open your head till General Smith gets through talking. If you never learned manners in Missouri, we’ll teach you that gentlemen are not to be imposed upon by a nigger-driver. You cannot kidnap men here. There’s committee in this Grove that will sit on your case; and sir, it is the highest tribunal in the United States, as from its decision there is no appeal.”
Improvement Era 1899
“The passengers shrieked with laughter; but I got out of that car pretty quick, I can tell you. That fellow was a thorougbred, and I believe he would have done it, even if his nigger had refused, which was not likely.”
Improvement Era 1900
The man who faced the court was black, with a blackness not often seen even among the negroes of the south; in age, he was perhaps sixty-five; his form was bent, not alone with age, but bent and drawn with rheumatism. His attire, such as there was of it, showed that he not only belonged to the poorer class, but that he was one of the poorest among them. As he looked around the court room, no kindly face appeared, and he knew that among those men, who had either been slave-holders themselves, or their fathers had, there was no friends for him,-the “nigger” who was charged with theft. As he spoke, his voice trembled, not alone with age, but with a tinge of fear, for he knew to whom he spoke, and how their hearts beat for a “worthless nigger.”
Improvement Era 1906
“Maybe you don’t,” replied the conductor, “but the nigger might object.”-Harper’s Weekly
Improvement Era 1910
“What did your show tickets cost ye?” continued Dick, instead of replying to the question. “I’ll bet they come mighty high. She wouldn’t go to nigger heaven.”
Improvement Era 1910
“If he was a real nigger he’d come crawling up here to ask my forgiveness in about an hour, but that fellow’s got enough white blood in him and enough education that if there’s any asking forgiveness done it’ll be old Dan Crawford that’s got to do it.”
Improvement Era 1912
“I think I could tell a ‘Mormon’ if I should see one. They’re between a Nigger and an Indian in color, old Palmer told me. Palmer, he was a trapper in the West years ago, and he saw three ‘Mormons’ once. Still I can’t exactly imagine what they look like, though I’ve seen plenty of Niggers and Indians. But I think I could tell one, though.”
Improvement Era 1914
Jones Township, Union Co. Iowa. The “Mormon’s” sojourn from 1846 to 1852-called the Big Field. It comprised sections 7, 8, 16, 17, containing 1400 acres of land. On the 23rd. of May, 1850, Wm. M. Lock, “Uncle Billy,” as he was known, and Henry Peters, settled on land owned by L. G. Williams, J. K. White, and Stephen White. The “Mormons” built a small horse-power mill for cracking corn, on Grand River. The burrs were made from common boulders known as nigger-heads. These stones can now be seen at the house of Mrs. Stephen White, on section “8”, Jones Township. They are two by one and one-half feet in diameter, and two feet thick. The “Mormon” cemetery is on the north quarter of section “8.” A head-stone remains in it, can be seen from the door yard of A. C. White. It is made of lime-stone and has cut upon it the Masonic Square and Compass, with the letters O. E. on it.
Improvement Era 1915
It was dark when the train wound down the Hudson and approached the great city. Mary, who had been sitting stiffly with her hat on for an hour had her first misgiving when she peered out through the rain-bespattered window and saw the lights of the elevated. The Fergusons, who lived in Harlem, met her at the 125th street station, so she was spared the rush and roar of the great central depot. They rushed her in a taxi to their flat. As it was already overcrowded, they explained to her that they had engaged a room for her at a “family” hotel next door, for the present, until she could look around a little more and get located. When they mentioned the price Mary felt the chills run up and down her back. Mary hunched herself on the Ferguson sofa that night and the next day she procured her trunk and took up her abode in a dark back room of the family hotel. Her one window opened onto a court which emitted many smells. At night the mice ran through her room and at two o’clock in the morning she could hear the guests stumbling up the back stairs. The hotel parlor was decorated with gilt mirrors and lacquer vases but the curtains at the windows were dirty and even the great glittering dining room at the fashionable dinner hour had an unwholesome atmosphere. The electric bulbs shone on the tinsel dresses of the women, but above the bare shoulders were sallow complexions and drug-dulled eyes. The food was mostly mixed up messes with French names. Mary had yet to learn that clean, plain food in New York cost more than “a las.” If there were any fresh eggs they never drifted down to the “Woodward;” beefsteak was the most expensive thing in the city; and even the milk, Mary imagined the nigger wench in the kitchen had stuck her finger into. When Mary thought of what she paid for these things here, and then remembered how her father toiled to wring every dollar from the soil with his potatoes and wheat, it turned her sick.
Improvement Era 1916
To be a gentleman does not mean to part your hair in the middle, and sport a gold-headed cane. It doesn’t mean to wear broadcloth. A man can be a gentleman in buckskin. A woman can be a lady in homespun. Of course, there are little courtesies and amenities, such as lifting your hat to a lady, or to someone above you in authority. These things are beautiful, and pertain to gentility. General Washington was walking one day with a friend, and they met an aged negro, who doffed his hat as they approached. Off came Washington’s hat in return. The friend was shocked: “Why, General, do you take off your hat to a nigger?” Washington replied: “Would you have me outdone in politeness by one?” A splendid answer. The Father of our Country was a true gentleman.
Improvement Era 1921
‘In Harper’s Ferry section, they’ve had an insurrection,
John Brown thought the nigger would sustain him,
But old Governor Wise put his specs upon his eyes;
And sent him to the happy land of Caanan.
Improvement Era 1921
“No! What? That nigger, wasn’t he funny, you don’t want me to get you any niggers with the house, do you?”
Improvement Era 1925
“You damned infernal Puke, (a pet nick-name for Missourians) we’ll learn you to come here and interrupt gentlemen. Sit down there and sit still. If you never learned manners in Missouri we’ll teach you that gentlemen are not to be imposed upon by a nigger-driver. You cannot kidnap men here. There is a committee in this grove that will sit on your case; and, sir, it is the highest tribunal in the United States, and from its decision there is no appeal.”
Improvement Era 1926
“No, Chrissy, he didn’t, but he has been both father and mother to me. You know it’s an awfully fine thing to be able to think of your father as the greatest man you ever knew. He made nigger-shooters for me, and showed me how to shoot ’em; there was not a boy in the neighborhood who could beat him at marbles; he taught me how to skate, to sail that tiny cat-boat of ours; he played tennis with me-and golf. In all my life, Chrissy, I have kept no secrets from him; he has been broad-minded, forgiving, understanding.”
Improvement Era 1929
Economics has had something to do with the shrinking of the family; desire for freedom and pleasure have also done their share; but sentiment has been the “nigger in the wood pile,” the unseen force which has done its best to destroy the home by shattering the glory of motherhood, and it began by undermining man first and woman afterwards.
Improvement Era 1930
Hammond (to Rowley): So this is what you brought me out in this storm for. I thought there must be a nigger in the wood pile-a Mormon apostle in trouble. Hay for a Mormon’s horses. Ha! Ha! Ha! Well, I guess not. Not at any price, Sir. Why, I’d see you in hell first. (Exits angrily.)
Improvement Era 1930
“Why did you take such offense at that red-headed nigger?” the captain queried mirthfully. “Of course he did not have much on but at that he had no less than the Samoan men usually wear and you’re no longer shocked at them.”
Improvement Era 1930
THE unhappy girl was sufficiently well-bred to take the raillery good naturedly, but the word “nigger” had aroused tumult in her breast greater than anything which had occurred since leaving home. To hear one of her own race called by that odious name was the exorbitant price she was paying for a few days of pleasure.
Improvement Era 1933
SAID the farmer to the nigger in the mellon patch: “Say young man, you cantelope with that mellon without paying for it.”-Aubrey J. Parker.
Improvement Era 1940
“Ho! Ho! for the Gingerbread Boy!” she laughed and went about getting him all happy on the inside and spick and span on the outside. “Now, let’s hurry,” she cautioned playfully. “Last one’s the nigger baby.” They started out on a run.
Improvement Era 1940
“Here, old man, this may help the nigger baby situation,” and Jimmie was forthwith hoisted to broad shoulders. It made something swell up inside of Nan. Now what other of these young know-it-alls would have done that? Those broad shoulders seemed to register the assurance that they would meet any condition or circumstance in the same way.
Improvement Era 1941
The sun had not topped Indian Mountain when they drove over a small hill and came in sight of Simpson. The oxen were all yoked to the wagons. They saw the big black climb on the lead wagon and start to untie the binding rope. Just then the loping mules came to a sudden stop, unnoticed by any except the other boy, who had stood there insisting on the trains going on. The Scotchman jumped out, a bull whip in one hand, a loaded revolver in the other. He cracked the whip uncomfortably close to the big boss “nigger,” who thought someone had taken a shot at him. Then snapped out the Scotchman: “I’ll gee ye yer pick a three things: Go on peaceably-go on by force-stay here fer coyote bait.”
Improvement Era 1941
“There’s a nigger in the woodpile, when kids don’t want to eat!” declared Mamie, sourly, brushing past with a platter of smoking ham. Rusty and Buddy edged quietly in behind her and slipped into the seats allotted them.
Improvement Era 1943
BETWEEN the covers of my Bible is an old and venerable letter. It lay there undiscovered for many years until the expression of admiration by great American critic called it to my attention. After listing for the Golden Book nine of “The Ten Books I Reread Most,” Mr. J. C. Grey, literary editor of the New York Sun added, “There they stand, my nine books like the nine little nigger boys after the fatal dinner. There is a tenth book, the best of all our English speech. The letter of Paul about Onesimus is my favorite letter.”
Improvement Era 1952
In the morning her father was tugging weakly to pull a broken spoke together and bind it with rawhide. The train was moving. Asa saw him and thought, “Now’s my chance.” His strong arms had sooned joined the splintered ends and bound them securely, receiving the gratitude of the parents and the admiration of the boys. “Us Saints have gotta help each other,” Asa offered quite solemnly. “Uh-got a little job on mah wagon wheel afore I push on. If you’d like, the gal could stay at the Fort here while I do it and then ride in the wagon, and ah’ll walk, to catch up. A one-eyed nigger could see she’s needin’ a rest from pullin’.”
Improvement Era 1952
That night when Viggo helped her make the family bed, he asked, “Tina, what does the new English word mean, ‘one-eyed nigger’?” he repeated slowly.
Improvement Era 1952
Most of the Saints were sleeping when she went to the well for water. The captain was listening to an officer, who talked loud enough that she heard. “He stabbed a darkey and ran off with the owner’s cotton money. Plantation overseer, ‘nigger driver,’ they call ’em down south. They think he joined some train for the west. Lew Pinkerton is his name,” the officer was saying.
Improvement Era 1954
“One step up and two steps back
One step up and two steps back!
Last one down is a nigger baby!”
Dickens and the Mormons by Richard J. Dunn Fn, BYU Studies, vol. 8 (1967-1968), Number 3 – Spring 1968, p.329
As an editor who exercised strict control over the articles in his journals, Dickens certainly would not have permitted the appearance of any anti-Mormon propaganda with which he did not personally agree. Thus, although there is no mention of the Mormons in Dickens’ own writing between American Notes and The Uncommercial Traveller, the articles in Household Words and in the early volumes of All the Year Round may be accepted as reflecting his views. For the first of the articles, “In the Name of the Prophet–Smith!” appearing in Household Words in 1851, we know from Dickens’ letters that he suggested the title and directed changes in content. The author, James Hannay, attacked Mormon “fanaticism–singing hymns to nigger tunes,” and this attitude certainly must have pleased Dickens, who, as shown by his numerous attacks on Dissenters, distrusted fanaticism in any form. Also, Dickens approved as Hannay charged the Mormons with “the absurdity of seeing visions in the age of railways.” Praising their “work; hard, useful, wealth-creating labour,” Hannay separated praise for practical achievement from condemnation of religious belief; he defined Mormonism as a combination of two of Joseph Smith’s personal qualities–“immense practical industry, and pitiable superstitious delusion.” It is here, and in Hannay’s remark, “What the Mormons do, seems to be excellent; what they say is mostly nonsense,” that Dickens had his most direct editorial influence. In the letter concerning this article he admonished his sub-editor to have Hannay delete “anything about such a man [as Smith] believing in himself–which he has no right to do and which would by inference justify about anything.” Obviously Dickens was wary of permitting the slightest suggestion that there was any spiritual truth in the Mormon religion, a faith about which neither he nor the majority of his readers were well informed. What is remarkable about this 1851 article is its endorsement of Mormon practicality. It was this aspect of the Latter-day Saints which Dickens himself praised when twelve years later he overcame his prejudice.
The Gentle Blasphemer: Mark Twain, Holy Scripture, and the Book of Mormon by Richard H. Cracroft Fn, BYU Studies, vol. 11 (1970-1971), Number 1 – Autumn 1970, p.122
And when Jim got so he could believe it was the land of Egypt he was looking at, he wouldn’t enter it standing up, but got down on his knees and took off his hat, because he said it wasn’t fittin’ for a humble poor nigger to come any other way where such men had been as Moses and Joseph and Pharaoh and the other prophets. He was a Presbyterian and had a most deep respect for Moses who was a Presbyterian, too, he said.
Sail and Rail Pioneers Before 1869, BYU Studies, vol. 35 (1995), Number 1–1995
Jean Rio Griffiths Baker Pearce, Diary, March 21, 1851, 7. At about the same time that this sister recorded her views of slavery, a brother from Scotland had a similar experience in Saint Louis:
I witnessed the sale of Negro slaves at public auction in the slave market several times, and my sympathies went out to them in their forlorn and inhuman condition. Sometimes Husbands and Wives were separated, parents from their children brothers and sisters torn away from each other, sometimes pleading to be sold together to one person, but their remonstrances and wailings fell generally on the ears of hard hearted beings destitute of any kindly or humanly feelings. Sellers, buyers, spectators alike only scoffed and laughed at their entreaties. (Richard Bee, Autobiography, 1850)
The sources reveal a few other relatively unimportant comments about blacks of that time and place. I am pleased to report that only once did the epithet nigger surface: it was expectedly in an 1864 account by a native of Saint Louis, who was “waited on by niggers” (Moroni Dunford, Journal; apparently written by a Mormon). In 1867 one English convert used the much less pejorative term “darkies,” as in “The crew was all darkies and not very sociable.” Charles K. Hansen, Record Books. Thomas Fisher, who sailed from Liverpool in 1854, recorded:
The passangers underwent medical inspection, the results terminating in the rejection of Sister Jane Hunter, from the London Conference, on the grounds of her being a coloured woman or [of] the Negro race. It appears that [in] New Orleans, the capital of the Slave State, Louisiana…colored persons emigrating there are liable of being kidnapped on the plea of being runaway slaves. (Thomas Fisher, Journal)
One might wonder how many “colored people” in Europe became Mormons and were not permitted to emigrate.
Milton V. Backman, Jr., Eyewitness Accounts of the Restoration, p.69
After my father’s family moved to New York State, in about five years they cleared sixty acres of land, and fenced it. The timber on this land was very heavy. Some of the elms were so large that we had to nigger them off. They were too large to be cut with a cross-cut saw. We built a frame dwelling house and out buildings. My brothers Joseph and Hyrum had to work. Joseph did not have time to make gold plates.
Nelle Hatch, Colonia Juarez: An Intimate Account of a Mormon Village, p.64
Catch a nigger by the toe,
E. Cecil McGavin, Nauvoo the Beautiful , p.66
Six yoke of oxen with yoke and chains: three bedsteads with beds: three nigger wenches: four nigger bucks: three nigger boys: four nigger girls: two prairie plows: one barrel of pickled cabbage: one lot of nigger hoses: one hogshead of tobacco: one spinning wheel: one loom: 23 fox hounds, all well trained: a lot of coon, mink and skunk hides: a lot of other articles.
B. H. Roberts, The Rise and Fall of Nauvoo, p.222 – 223
You damned infernal Puke, we’ll learn you to come here and interrupt gentlemen! Sit down there, pointing to a very low chair, and sit still. Don’t open your head till General Smith gets through talking. If you never learned manners in Missouri, we’ll teach you that gentlemen are not to be imposed upon by a nigger-driver. You cannot kidnap men here. There’s a committee in this grove that will sit on your case; and, sir, it is the highest tribunal in the United States, as from its decision there is no appeal.
Joseph Smith, History of The Church of Jesus Christ of Latter-day Saints, 7 vols., introduction and notes by B. H. Roberts, 5:, p.445
“You damned infernal puke, we’ll learn you to come here and interrupt gentlemen. Sit down there, (pointing to a very low chair,) and sit still. Don’t open your head till General Smith gets through talking. If you never learned manners in Missouri, we’ll teach you that gentlemen are not to be imposed upon by a nigger-driver. You cannot kidnap men here, if you do in Missouri; and if you attempt it here, there’s a committee in this grove that will sit on your case; and, sir, it is the highest tribunal in the United States, as from its decision there is no appeal.”
Joseph Smith, History of The Church of Jesus Christ of Latter-day Saints, 7 vols., introduction and notes by B. H. Roberts, 5:, p.472
Sheriff Reynolds entered the room and said, pointing to me, “I wish you to understand (his man is my prisoner, and I want you should disperse. You must not gather round here in this way.” Upon which, an aged gentleman, who was lame and carried a large hickory walking-stick, advanced towards Reynolds, bringing his hickory upon the floor and said, “You damned infernal puke! we’ll learn you to come here and interrupt gentlemen. Sit down there [pointing to a very low chair] and sit still. Don’t open your head till General Smith gets through talking. If you never learned manners in Missouri, we’ll teach you that gentlemen are not to be imposed upon by a nigger-driver. You cannot kidnap men here, if you do in Missouri; and if you attempt it here, there is a committee in this grove that will sit on your case. And, sir, it is the highest tribunal in the United States, as from its decision there is no appeal.”
Joseph Fielding Smith, Essentials in Church History, p.286
“You–Infernal puke, we’ll learn you to come here and interrupt gentlemen. Sit down there (pointing to a very low chair), and sit still. Don’t open your head till General Smith gets through talking. If you never learned manners in Missouri, we’ll teach you that gentlemen are not to be imposed upon by a nigger-driver. You cannot kidnap men here, if you do in Missouri; and if you attempt it here, there’s a committee in this grove that will sit on your case; and sir, it is the highest tribunal in the United States, as from its decision there is no appeal!”
George Q. Cannon, The Life of Joseph Smith, the Prophet, p.447
You damned infernal puke, we’ll learn you to come here and interrupt gentlemen. Sit down there, [pointing to a very low chair] and sit still. Don’t you open your head till General Smith gets through talking. If you never learned manners in Missouri, we’ll teach you that gentlemen are not to be imposed upon by a nigger-driver. You cannot kidnap men here. There’s a committee in this grove that will sit on your case; and, sir, it is the highest tribunal in the United States, as from its decision there is no appeal.
John Henry Evans, Joseph Smith, an American Prophet, p.169
Here he remained the entire time-nearly a year, sleeping on straw without any bedding, eating corn pone “so hard you could knock a nigger down with it,” and being served at other times with food so putrid he could not eat it. On being incarcerated all his possessions, except the clothes he stood up in, were taken away from him-a bowie knife, a brace of pistols, and a watch. Here, too, he was “ironed.” Once he escaped, but was immediately caught, and came within an ace of being lynched. In the daylight he spent his time fishing for “pukes” with a bent pin out of an upper window. “Puke” was a name given a Missourian.
John Henry Evans, Joseph Smith, an American Prophet, p.174
Many friends, on that long journey of two hundred and sixty miles, came to the Prophet’s aid. At Dixon, as we have seen, they made it possible for him to consult a lawyer. In another place they thwarted a plot on the part of Reynolds and Wilson to escape with him into Missouri, where men were waiting to do their pleasure. And at still another point an old gentleman with a heavy cane, when the sheriffs objected to the Prophet making an address to the crowds, bluntly told them that “nigger-driving pukes” could not “kidnap men here,” and if they were not careful “a committee in this grove” would handle their case, “from whose decision there was no appeal.”
Clarissa Young Spencer, Brigham Young at Home, p.138
Don Carlos, the only son now living, thought that he preferred to be with the teamsters, so Father immediately took him out of school and put him to work driving a pair of blind mules up to the sawmill in City Creek Canyon to get flooring for the Tabernacle. Carlos didn’t like driving the mules either so he went back and finished college and then went to Troy, New York, to the Rensselaer Polytechnic School of Engineering. He entered with five conditions but was graduated and came back to Utah, where he first taught in the Brigham Young University and eventually became Church architect. Altogether, five of the boys went to Eastern universities. Willard W. went to West Point and was an outstanding student there. The New York papers carried stories of the Mormon and the nigger at West Point, and there were actually people who came from the city to see the two curiosities. Willard became a Colonel in the United States Army, was an instructor at West Point for some years, fought in the Spanish-American War, and was head engineer for the locks on the Columbia River.
Llewelyn R. McKay, Home Memories of President David O. McKay, p.157
“Over fifty years have passed since I sailed from Philadelphia for my first mission. . . . Among the passengers were the Fiske Jubilee Singers, going abroad on a concert tour. They were a famous colored chorus. As we were standing aside getting our assignments to dining room tables, word passed among the missionaries that we were going to be seated at the same table with the Negroes. One unwise member . . . spoke out in loud tones so that the Negroes could hear: ‘I’ll not sit at the table with any nigger!’ It was a very disrespectful remark, and . . . it wounded the feelings of our colored friends. I noticed before we were very far out at sea, that the leader of the Jubilee Singers was an honored guest at the captain’s table, and that the night before landing at the usual concert given by the passengers, the soloist of that group indicated, I thought, a good rebuke to the elder who made the unwise remark. The soprano, a beautiful mulatto, had been sick nearly all the way across, but she came to the concert that night and sang a lovely song, the chorus of which is this:
William Clayton, William Clayton’s Journal: A Daily Record of the Journey of the Original Company of Mormon Pioneers from Nauvoo, Illinois, to the Valley of the Great Salt Lake [Salt Lake City: Clayt, p.189
“I remarked last Sunday that I had not felt much like preaching to the brethren on this mission. This morning I feel like preaching a little, and shall take for my text, ‘That as to pursuing our journey with this company with the spirit they possess, I am about to revolt against it.’ This is the text I feel like preaching on this morning, consequently I am in no hurry. In the first place, before we left Winter Quarters, it was told to the brethren and many knew it by experience, that we had to leave our homes, our houses, our land and our all because we believed in the Gospel as revealed to the Saints in these last days. The rise of the persecutions against the Church was in consequence of the doctrines of eternal truth taught by Joseph. Many knew this by experience. Some lost their husbands, some lost their wives, and some their children through persecution, and yet we have not been disposed to forsake the truth and turn and mingle with the gentiles, except a few who have turned aside and gone away from us, and we have learned in a measure, the difference between a professor of religion and a possessor of religion. Before we left Winter Quarters it was told to the brethren that we were going to look out a home for the Saints where they would be free from persecution by the gentiles, where we could dwell in peace and serve God according to the Holy Priesthood, where we could build up the kingdom so that the nations would begin to flock to our standard. I have said many things to the brethren about the strictness of their walk and conduct when we left the gentiles, and told them that we would have to walk upright or the law would be put in force, etc. Many have left and turned aside through fear, but no good upright, honest man will fear. The Gospel does not bind a good man down and deprive him of his rights and privileges. It does not prevent him from enjoying the fruits of his labors. It does not rob him of blessings. It does not stop his increase. It does not diminish his kingdom, but it is calculated to enlarge his kingdom as well as to enlarge his heart. It is calculated to give him privileges and power, and honor, and exaltation and everything which his heart can desire in righteousness all the days of his life, and then, when he gets exalted into the eternal world he can still turn around and say it hath not entered into the heart of man to conceive the glory and honor and blessings which God hath in store for those that love and serve Him. I want the brethren to understand and comprehend the principles of eternal life, and to watch the spirit, be wide awake and not be overcome by the adversary. You can see the fruits of the spirit, but you cannot see the spirit itself with the natural eye, you behold it not. You can see the result of yielding to the evil spirit and what it will lead you to, but you do not see the spirit itself nor its operations, only by the spirit that’s in you. Nobody has told me what has been going on in the camp, but I have known it all the while. I have been watching its movements, its influence, its effects, and I know the result if it is not put a stop to. I want you to understand that inasmuch as we are beyond the power of the gentiles where the devil has tabernacles in the priests and the people, we are beyond their reach, we are beyond their power, we are beyond their grasp, and what has the devil now to work upon ? Upon the spirits of men in this camp, and if you do not open your hearts so that the Spirit of God can enter your hearts and teach you the right way, I know that you are a ruined people and will be destroyed and that without remedy, and unless there is a change and a different course of conduct, a different spirit to what is now in this camp, I go no farther. I am in no hurry. Give me the man of prayers, give me the man of faith, give me the man of meditation, a sober-minded man, and I would far rather go amongst the savages with six or eight such men than to trust myself with the whole of this camp with the spirit they now possess. Here is an opportunity for every man to prove himself, to know whether he will pray and remember his God without being asked to do it every day; to know whether he will have confidence enough to ask of God that he may receive without my telling him to do it. If this camp was composed of men who had newly received the Gospel, men who had not received the priesthood, men who had not been through the ordinances in the temple and who had not had years of experience, enough to have learned the influence of the spirits and the difference between a good and an evil spirit, I should feel like preaching to them and watching over them and telling them all the time, day by day. But here are the Elders of Israel, men who have had years of experience, men who have had the priesthood for years,-and have they got faith enough to rise up and stop a mean, low, groveling, covetous, quarrelsome spirit ? No, they have not, nor would they try to stop it, unless I rise up in the power of God and put it down. I do not mean to bow down to the spirit that is in this camp, and which is rankling in the bosoms of the brethren, and which will lead to knock downs and perhaps to the use of the knife to cut each other’s throats if it is not put a stop to. I do not mean to bow down to the spirit which causes the brethren to quarrel. When I wake up in the morning, the first thing I hear is some of the brethren jawing each other and quarreling because a horse has got loose in the night. I have let the brethren dance and fiddle and act the nigge
Notes and References to Substantial the Claim and Position that The Leadership and Officers of The Church of Jesus Christ of Latter-day Saints, have used the terms “Nigger”, “Darky” and “Sambo” in Official Publications and Meetings
Organized and Collected by Former Mormon Bishop, Lee B. Baker from the LDS Collectors Library 2005, Purchased from the LDS Church
Updated and Validated in October of 2013
With Additional References added Specific to the LDS Scriptures and Sermons on Black Skin
__________________________________________________
Selected notes from the Book: Mormonism – A Life Under False Pretenses, by Lee B. Baker, Former Mormon Bishop, followed by direct word search results from the LDS Collectors Library, purchased from the Church of Jesus Christ of Latter-day Saints.
Author’s Statement: I will not humiliate the reader by listing the nearly one hundred such jokes, stories, or comments found within the LDS Collectors Library 2005, which documents the formal references noted below. My only observation would be a clear recognition that at no time in the history of the United States have these derogatory terms been used for anything other than slander. I fully recognize that at times the use of these terms has in fact been both widespread and socially acceptable within America. My primary reason for raising the existence of these well-documented examples of bigotry and prejudice by the leadership of the Mormon Church is to question the divine spiritual guidance of the church itself. At a time when other churches were taking great risks in the many abolitionist movements, the Mormons who owned slaves were moving their “property” west with them. If the uninspired leadership of the nation considered both slavery and polygamy evil, how is it that both were accepted as righteous by the Mormons and their God? Furthermore, if God Himself spoke to the Mormon Prophet of His disapproval of the use of racially disparaging remarks in April of 2006, what did God really think of such remarks in 1856 or 1906?
References: Elder Heber J. Grant, Quorum of the Twelve Apostles, Conference Report, October 1900, Second Day—Morning Session, 35-36; Apostle Matthias F. Cowley, Quorum of the Twelve Apostles, Conference Report, April 1902, Second Day—Morning Session, 36-37; Elder Reed Smoot, Quorum of the Twelve Apostles, Conference Report, October 1907, Afternoon Session, 55-56; and President Rudger Clawson, Conference Report, October 1920, First Day—Morning Session, 22. Official Mormon Church publications have repeatedly used these derogatory terms have been both the Contributor and the Improvement Era, well into the 1950s.
I have often wondered how the African American members of the Church of Jesus Christ of Latter-day Saints dismiss these teachings, since the church itself has not. In an apparent bid for some self-recognition of the true history of blacks within the Mormon Church, a unique Web site has chronicled some of the historical issues I have captured within question 3 in the questions I raise in chapter 5.
The point of this discussion is not to suggest that the Mormon Church is now infected with a disproportional number of racists and bigots. However, I do believe that within the early years of the Mormon Church, especially under the leadership of Brigham Young, John Taylor, and many of the General Authorities of the church well into the twentieth century, racial discrimination and bigotry were generally accepted. I further believe that as with polygamy, polyandry, and disobeying the laws of the land, the social, spiritual, and emotional damage done by widespread bigotry within the Mormon Church has never been sufficiently acknowledged.
Teachings of the Past Prophets and the Value of a Living Prophet
Within the Church of Jesus Christ of Latter-day Saints, the current and living Prophet of the church is both the president of the corporation of the church and the only man on the earth who holds all the keys of the priesthood and is authorized to receive revelation for the entire church. Below is a typical affirmation of that belief, as stated during one of the many semiannual general conferences of the Church of Jesus Christ of Latter-day Saints:
I move that, recognizing Wilford Woodruff as the President of the Church of Jesus Christ of Latter-day Saints, and the only man on the earth at the present time who holds the keys of the sealing ordinances, we consider him fully authorized by virtue of his position to issue the Manifesto which has been read in our hearing and which is dated September 24th, 1890, and that as a Church in General Conference assembled, we accept his declaration concerning plural marriages as authoritative and binding.
Formalities notwithstanding, as polygamy continued long after the first manifesto denouncing the practice in 1890, this church-wide recognition of the power and authority of the President of the church is sufficient for the discussion at hand. I have been told several times by Stake President Michael D. Jones, of the Arvada, Colorado Stake, that I should “follow the keys, follow the keys,” meaning the keys of the priesthood. This reprimand was in reference to my inability to understand the Mormon philosophy that whatever the Prophet says or does is of the Lord. My rebuttal to President Jones, a large and powerful man, was that my issue was with the teachings of the past Prophets that had not been corrected by the succeeding Prophets. An example of how that can happen follows.
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.
Shall I tell you the law of God in regard to the African race? If the white man who belongs to the chosen seed mixes his blood with the seed of Cain, the penalty, under the law of God, is death on the spot. This will always be so.
I remind you that no man who makes disparaging remarks concerning those of another race can consider himself a true disciple of Christ.
In this case, President Hinckley in 2006 clearly and concisely corrected the earlier teachings of Brigham Young in both 1859 and 1863. It was straightforward and the right thing to do. And yet the church did not collapse the next day. I believe that it is possible for any organization, especially a religious organization that claims to be the “only true church on the earth today,” to correct irregularities or mistakes in doctrine. In the case of Mormonism, it is the foundation itself, specifically the early years of the church, that is suspect, and with each passing year, the modern Church of Jesus Christ of Latter-day Saints endeavors to assimilate more to the mainstream of Christianity. It has been my observation that no other reportedly Christian church has undergone more changes in such a shorter period of time than Mormonism. In the early years of the church, being different was a hallmark to be proud of. Today, however, the unique and peculiar doctrines of the church have been pushed backstage or de-emphasized whenever possible.
The Latter-day Saints possess the truth, and have many principles of truth in addition to what is possessed by the people of the world. Of course, we are peculiar for a number of reasons. It is our peculiarities that make us different from other Christian people.
In contemplating the remarks of Elder McKay yesterday, with regard to the Latter-day Saints being a peculiar people, I am reminded that we are peculiar in this particular, that, unlike all other “orthodox” Christians, we believe that men must be called of God to preach the gospel and officiate in the ordinances thereof.
It is said that this is a most peculiar doctrine that we preach, a most peculiar religion that we have embraced. The fact is this is the religion of Jesus Christ, the Church that He established. That is the reason it is regarded as a peculiar religion.
Introduction to the LDS Collectors Library 2005
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Valid and Precise References from the LDS Collectors Library Follow:
Word Search for “Nigger” from the 2005 LDS Collectors Library
Elder Matthias F. Cowley, Conference Report, April 1902, Second Day—Morning Session, p.36 – 37
I have felt impressed with one idea while listening to my brethren, and that is that the whole history of this work has gone to show that we do not need the help of the world to sustain it. I do not mean by this to depreciate any kind assistance, sentiment or support that may be accorded unto us by honest and upright men who, from time to time, defend the rights of the Latter-day Saints, and who have sufficient of the light of truth to see the purity and power of the doctrines that are taught by this people; but I mean to say that it all goes to show that God has established this great work, and that He has sustained it in every sense of the word. When I heard Brother Smoot this morning talking and reading a little about the ideas of men concerning the effect of “Mormonism,” as it is termed, more especially in the eastern states, some of them entertaining the idea that it was a great menace to the people, I thought to myself that the world had got the nightmare. I heard Sol Smith Russell once read an essay on the horse. He said that the horse was a noble animal. It would live on oats and sawdust, he said. Then he went on to describe the various kinds of horses there were in existence. He said there was the sawhorse, and there was the horse-radish, and then there was the Colt’s revolver, and then there was the nightmare. He said, “the nightmare is a horse that is born in the night, and my Aunt Jane has lots of them.” I think sectarianism has the nightmare over this work, and possibly it is all right that they should have. It makes me feel that there are not only prophets among the people of God, but there are some prophets in the world. I heard one of our local politicians a few years ago stand up before a public audience, when the question of dividing on national Political lines was agitated among this people, and some doubted the propriety of it. They wanted to hold the old anti-Mormon party together, and more thoroughly crowd us to the wall, and use their power with the great parties of the nation to distress and oppress this people by inimical legislation. One of the speakers that stood up to address that audience made this statement: “The Mormons will come out on top, no matter what you do.” He said he did not believe in dividing on political lines; he believed in keeping the hand over the Mormons just as long as possible, because, said he, they will come out on top. To illustrate his prophecy he told an anecdote about Genesis Mahone of Virginia, and one of his negro slaves, and he compared us to the general and themselves to the slave. He said this poor slave had a dream. He dreamed that he died and went to the gates of heaven, and there he met the Apostle Peter. Peter asked him who he was. “Why,” said he, “I am the slave of Genesis Mahone of Virginia.” “Well,” said Peter, “are you mounted, or are you on foot?… I’m on foot,” he replied. “Well,” said Peter, “you can’t come in here.” So the poor nigger started down the steps, and he met his master at the bottom, and he said to him, “General, whar d’ye think you’re gwine?… I’m going to heaven,” said the General. “No, you’re not,” he said; “you can’t get in dar, unless you’re mounted.” At this a happy thought struck the nigger, and he said to the General: “I’ll tell you, General, I’ll git down on all fours, and you git on my back, and when Peter ask you if you’re mounted, say, yes, and we both ride right in.” So the General got on his back, and when they got up to the gates of heaven, Peter asked who he was. He replied that he was General Mahone, of Virginia. “Are you mounted or are you on foot?… I’m mounted,” said the General. “Well,” said Peter, “tie your horse on the outside, and come in.” This great politician that was opposed to the Latter-day Saints being identified with the national political parties said, “They will walk right in whether they are mounted or on foot.” And I thought to myself, he has got the key to the whole thing; he understands it just about right. And why is it, my brethren and sisters? It is because God has established this work. I want to read just a little. The brethren have been reading the Scriptures, and I believe it is all right to have a little Scripture reading on these occasions. The Lord says, as recorded in section 1 of the Book of Doctrine and Covenants, that this is “the only true and living Church upon the face of the whole earth, with which I, the Lord, am well pleased, speaking unto the Church collectively and not individually.” While God has established this work, and He is pleased with it because it is His work, we ought not to lose sight of the fact that He is not pleased with every individual in it, only to the extent that that individual conforms his life to the principles and spirit of this Gospel. The only safe thing for a Latter-day Saint is to be found in the discharge of every duty, to be found absolutely free from sin and complying with every principle, as far as possible, that the Lord our God has revealed. A great deal has been said at this conference and at our meeting last night respecting evils that creep in among the Latter-day Saints. While we speak of them from this stand and warn the people, while President Smith gives unto us the word of God, it is the bounden duty of the local Priesthood in every stake of Zion and in every ward to see that iniquity is rooted out from among the people of God, that the day may come when the Lord shall say that He is not only pleased with the Church collectively, but individually also, it having been purified and sanctified from every sin.
Elder Heber J. Grant, Conference Report, October 1900, Second Day—Morning Session, p.35 – 36
I believe it is better to have the nineteen dollars circulating around here. I heard Bishop Farrell some years ago. in the Assembly Hall tell a very good story on home manufacture. He said he believed in home manufacture because it benefitted him as well as other people. He said that when he was coming down to conference he met at the depot a brother to whom he owed five dollars for making some shoes for his children. He gave this brother the five dollars. and he turned around and handed the money to another brother whom he owed, and he handed it to another, and he handed it to another, and the fourth brother came up and handed it back to Brother Farrell, saying “I owe you six dollars, here is five of it,” and Brother Farrell put the money back into his pocket. That money paid five hundred per cent in debt there in just about the same length of time that it takes me to tell the story. But if the Bishop had bought the imported goods it would not have paid the five hundred per cent, because it would have gone out of the country. I went to a negro minstrel show once, and there were about ten or fifteen on the stage. One of them rushed in with his hat off and said. “which of these here niggers am lost two dollars?” holding up a two dollar bill. There hadn’t any of them lost two dollars. “Well,” he said, “if none of you have lost it, I found these two dollars right by the door here and it is my money.” They said all right, and he put it in his pocket. No sooner had he got it in his pocket than up jumped a nigger and said: “Look here, George Washington Jones, you owe me two dollars; pay your honest debts!” He handed the two dollars to him. Another nigger jumps up and says: “Look here, Julius C. Brown, you owes me two dollars; pay your debt.” He got it, and in this way it went clear round. When the last man got it, up jumps George Washington Jones, and says: “Here, give me back the two dollars; you owes me two dollar.” No sooner had he got it in his pocket than a fellow rushes in and said “which of you niggers has found two dollars?” George Washington Jones took it out of his pocket and said: “Here, take your money and go home; we’ve all paid our debts.”
Jeffrey R. Holland and Patricia T. Holland, On Earth As It Is in Heaven, p.148
“The man was gone for approximately half an hour, only to return and report that he could not budge the wounded officer-he was too heavy. . . . The men started grumbling about getting out of there before somebody else got hit. [Then] someone was heard to say, ‘Let’s forget about the lieutenant; after all, he’s just a nigger!’ At this point Sergeant Stewart turned to his men, and pulling himself up to his full 65-inch stature, he spoke in very matter-of-fact tones: ‘I don’t care if he’s black or green or any other color. We’re not leaving without him. He wouldn’t leave any of us in similar circumstances. Besides, he’s our commanding officer and I love him like my own brother.’ ”
Journal of Discourses, 26 vols., 2:, p.169
We started for Ottoway, and arrived at Pawpaw Grove, thirty-two miles, where we stopped for the night. Squire Walker sent Mr. Campbell, Sheriff of Lee County, to my assistance, and he came, and slept by me. In the morning, certain men wished to see me, but I was not allowed to see them. The news of my arrival had hastily circulated about the neighborhood; and very early in the morning the largest room in the hotel was filled with citizens, who were anxious to hear me preach, and requested me to address them. Sheriff Reynolds entered the room, and said, pointing to me, “I wish you to understand this man is my prisoner, and I want you should disperse; you must not gather round here in this way.” Upon which an aged gentleman who was lame, and carried a large hickory walking-stick, advanced towards Reynolds, bringing his hickory upon the floor, said, “You damned infernal puke; we’ll learn you to come here and interrupt gentlemen: sit down there, [pointing to a very low chair,] and sit still, don’t open your head till General Smith gets through talking; if you never learned manners in Missouri, we’ll teach you that gentlemen are not to be imposed upon by a nigger driver: you can not kidnap men here, if you do in Missouri; and if you attempt it here, there’s a committee in this Grove that will sit on your case; and, sir, it is the highest tribunal in the United States, as from its decision there is no appeal.” Reynolds, no doubt aware that the person addressing him was at the head of a committee, who had prevented the settlers on the public domain from being imposed upon by land speculators, sat down in silence, while I addressed the assembly for an hour and a half on the subject of marriage; my visitors having requested me to give them my views of the law of God respecting marriage.
Journal of Discourses, 26 vols., 4:, p.39
Brother Robbins also spoke of what they term the “nigger drivers and nigger worshippers,” and observed how keen their feelings are upon their favourite topic slavery. The State of New York used to be a slave State, but there slavery has for some time been abolished. Under their law for abolishing slavery the then male slaves had to serve until they were 28 years old, and if my memory serves me correctly, the females until they were 25, before they could be free. This was to avoid the loss of, what they called, property in the hands of individuals. After that law was passed the people began to dispose of their blacks, and to let them buy themselves off. They then passed a law that black children should be free, the same as white children, and so it remains to this day.
Journal of Discourses, 26 vols., 5:, p.127
Brother Taylor says that language cannot express the conduct, the feelings, and the spirit that are upon the people in the States. Well, suppose you take up a labour and swear about them, what are the worst words that can be spoken? ‘Nigger stealing,’ Mobs or Vigilance Committees, and Rotten-hearted Administrators of a Government are three of the meanest and wickedest words that can be spoken. I expect that somebody will write that back to the States, as being treasonable, because spoken by a Latter-day Saint.
Sir Geoffrey Furlonge, January 21, 1963, BYU Speeches of the Year, 1963, p.5
I turn now to Ethiopia. I would like to begin by explaining why I call the country “Ethiopia” instead of “Abyssinia”; I have even been asked what relationship there is between these two countries. The answer is, of course, that they are one and the same; but the reason why we nowadays speak of “Ethiopia” and not of “Abyssinia” is that the rulers of the country in question prefer it that way: they believe that “Abyssinia” means “nigger-country,” being derived from a Semitic root “Habash,” a nigger; and as they are in fact far from negroid they regard this as derogatory and insist on being described as “Ethiopians,” which comes from two Greek words meaning “burnt faces,” and therefore has the merit of accuracy; and in any case it costs nothing to meet their wishes over this.
Joseph Fielding Smith, Church History and Modern Revelation, 4 vols., 1:, p.119
Since singing is pleasing to the Lord and a prayer unto him when it is “sacred” and a song of the heart, Latter-day Saints should endeavor always to sing in harmony with the Spirit and with understanding. Frequently the spirit of a meeting is hampered by improper music and singing. Jazz, under no condition can be called sacred. Light frivolous songs are always out of place in the sacred services of the Church. Recently in a Sabbath meeting a quartet sang: “Some Folks Say That a Nigger Won’t Steal,” a pleasing melody, but entirely out of place in a meeting of worship. Our songs should be always in keeping with the Gospel truth. False doctrine is discovered frequently in sectarian hymns. Beautiful melody cannot compensate for false sentiment, yet we have this to contend with constantly in the services of the Church. For instance, The Rosary, is NOT in harmony with gospel truth. “Just As I Am, Without One Plea,” is false in sentiment, and “Beautiful Isle of Somewhere,” is a contradiction of the revealed word of God. Choir leaders should endeavor to be prepared with songs which will harmonize perfectly with the theme of the meeting. Musical numbers should be made to harmonize with the spirit of such meetings.
Joseph Fielding Smith, Church History and Modern Revelation, 4 vols., 4:, p.152 – 153
“You-infernal puke, we’ll learn you to come here and interrupt gentlemen. Sit down there (pointing to a very low chair), and sit still. Don’t open your head till General Smith gets through talking. If you never learned manners in Missouri, we’ll teach you that gentlemen are not to be imposed upon by nigger-drivers. You cannot kidnap men here, if you do in Missouri; and if you attempt it here, there’s a committee in this grove that will sit on your case; and, sir, it is the highest tribunal in the United States, as from its decision there is no appeal!”
Hugh Nibley, Brother Brigham Challenges the Saints, edited by Don E. Norton and Shirley S. Ricks, p.257 – 258
We can never feel quite right about the commercializing of sacred things, including Christmas and the Flag, yet that is the sort of thing that really pays off. “Yes,” says Haley the slaveholder in Uncle Tom’s Cabin, “I consider religion a valeyable thing in a nigger, when it’s the genuine article, and no mistake,” for Haley “knew the price of everything,” and was quite sincere about it. Since the days of Nimrod, ambitious men have known that patriotism of others can be a gold-mine. Was there ever a more fervent American than Daddy Warbucks, or more stirring appeals to national sentiment than the advertising of those industries which loudly proclaim their self-sacrificing heroism in converting to wartime economy (with unlimited profits to themselves), or who describe their systematic looting of the most valuable and available of our national resources as a valiant conquest of the wilderness in the manner of the brave pioneers? Today the knack of getting rich by enlisting the willingness of others to make patriotic sacrifices, once a well-kept secret, is becoming common knowledge as we make increasingly heavy drafts upon a rapidly dwindling capital of national virtue. Breaking the rules can be profitable only if others are willing to keep them, for which reason those who exploit patriotism are the sincerest of its advocates-they would be nowhere without it. The idealistic youngster who volunteers for a dangerous mission in war goes out into the dark with the chorus of “So long, sucker!” ringing in his ears. He is the indispensable fall guy without whose heroism the rest would never get home to show their decorations.
Hugh Nibley, Tinkling Cymbals and Sounding Brass: The Art of Telling Tales About Joseph Smith and Brigham Young, edited by David Whittaker, p.705
After this culmination of terror, the rest of the little book is an anticlimax, albeit a lucid commentary on the personality of the author. The very next day he has a run-in with Sidney Rigdon, who maintains that any single man in the camp should be willing to do his own washing “or get a nigger to do it,” since “the fair daughters of Zion should not touch a dirty rag!” He was referring to Swartzell’s shirt, but our hero replied with spirit, “For my part, I will go with a dirty shirt before I will be my own washerman”-not a very helpful addition to a camp of religious refugees. The next day he discovers that Hiram Smith is a dirty swindler (no particulars), and on July 28 attends a “Daranite meeting,” where there was “a vast expenditure of breath in expounding to the dupes,” but nothing worse. Of a speaker who suggested on August 5, 1838, “it may be that we will have to flee beyond the Rocky Mountains,” Swartzell comments, “He seemed to talk unreasonably, but many of the innocent dupes did not see the destruction that was coming, and I dared not give them any warning.” We have underlined the “was” to show that this entry was put down not on the day indicated but in retrospect, after the Missouri disaster.
Leon R. Hartshorn, comp., Powerful Stories from the Lives of Latter-day Saint Men, p.240
The man was gone for approximately half an hour, only to return and report that he could not budge the wounded officer-he was too heavy. It was like trying to lift a dead horse. The men started grumbling about getting out of there before someone else got hit. Someone was heard to say, “Let’s forget about the lieutenant; after all, he’s just a nigger!” At this point Sergeant Stewart turned to his men, and pulling himself up to his 65-inch stature, he spoke in very matter-of-fact tones: “I don’t care if he’s black or green or any other color. We’re not leaving without him. He wouldn’t leave any of us in similar circumstances. Besides, he’s our commanding officer and I love him like my own brother.”
Kidnapping., Times and Seasons, vol. 4 (November 1842-November 1843), Vol. 4 No. 24 November 1, 1843, p.376
To cap the climax, and put on the top-stone, we are really informed that this pack of renegadoes were taking these men for some alleged crime, committed some three or four years ago, and being such great sticklers for law and justice, came without process, decoyed and stole-not negroes, but free American citizens, for fear they could not get justice O, tempera! O, mores!! What shall we have next-a Colonel in the Illinois militia, a stickler for patriotism, a lover of equal rights; a commander of military forces, leading forth his gallant band in the honorable employment of assisting nigger drivers to steal white men. And a schoolmaster who has come here for the purpose of ‘teaching the young idea how to shoot,’ is setting his pupils a lesson that will not soon be forgotten.
The Contributor, Volume 1
Of such, we have a few, even among us. “By their fruits ye shall know them.” When they pray, and they do sometimes pray, their prayer is something after this fashion: “Oh Lord bless me and my wife, my son and his wife, us four and no more. Amen.” Thus, even in worship their narrow souls reach never beyond the feelings of selfishness, by which they are governed. Should such unfortunately bear a little brief authority among the people, the latter will be sure to mourn; for in the acts of others they always see “a nigger in the fence,” and are not slow in informing the community that they have preserved it from imminent danger and great harm, by their wonderful discovery of the said “nigger.”
The Contributor, Volume 2
Our faith, in the innocent nature of their calling, and in the purity of their designs upon our children, is further wrecked, when we hear that they tell other stories of their purposes and objects to their patrons abroad. They say that a famous bishop of one of the leading sectarian churches here, told his fellow bishops in Boston, that he could do nothing towards converting the adult Mormons to the popular creeds, for they were rooted and grounded in their delusion, but “in ten years you will see we will make great inroads upon their children.” His remarks were applauded. Remarks like this, and their bitter denunciation of our Church leaders and some of the principles of our faith, which they compare to diabolism, animalism, etc., necessarily cause thinking Latter-day Saints to suspect that “there’s a nigger in the fence” somewhere.
The Contributor, Volume 8
“You damned infernal puke, 1 we’ll learn you to come here and interrupt gentlemen! Sit down there, pointing to a very low chair, and sit still. Don’t open your head till General Smith gets through talking. If you never learned manners in Missouri, we’ll teach you that gentlemen are not to be imposed upon by a nigger-driver. You cannot kidnap men here. There’s committee in this Grove that will sit on your case; and sir, it is the highest tribunal in the United States, as from its decision there is no appeal.”
Improvement Era 1899
“The passengers shrieked with laughter; but I got out of that car pretty quick, I can tell you. That fellow was a thorougbred, and I believe he would have done it, even if his nigger had refused, which was not likely.”
Improvement Era 1900
The man who faced the court was black, with a blackness not often seen even among the negroes of the south; in age, he was perhaps sixty-five; his form was bent, not alone with age, but bent and drawn with rheumatism. His attire, such as there was of it, showed that he not only belonged to the poorer class, but that he was one of the poorest among them. As he looked around the court room, no kindly face appeared, and he knew that among those men, who had either been slave-holders themselves, or their fathers had, there was no friends for him,-the “nigger” who was charged with theft. As he spoke, his voice trembled, not alone with age, but with a tinge of fear, for he knew to whom he spoke, and how their hearts beat for a “worthless nigger.”
Improvement Era 1906
“Maybe you don’t,” replied the conductor, “but the nigger might object.”-Harper’s Weekly
Improvement Era 1910
“What did your show tickets cost ye?” continued Dick, instead of replying to the question. “I’ll bet they come mighty high. She wouldn’t go to nigger heaven.”
Improvement Era 1910
“If he was a real nigger he’d come crawling up here to ask my forgiveness in about an hour, but that fellow’s got enough white blood in him and enough education that if there’s any asking forgiveness done it’ll be old Dan Crawford that’s got to do it.”
Improvement Era 1912
“I think I could tell a ‘Mormon’ if I should see one. They’re between a Nigger and an Indian in color, old Palmer told me. Palmer, he was a trapper in the West years ago, and he saw three ‘Mormons’ once. Still I can’t exactly imagine what they look like, though I’ve seen plenty of Niggers and Indians. But I think I could tell one, though.”
Improvement Era 1914
Jones Township, Union Co. Iowa. The “Mormon’s” sojourn from 1846 to 1852-called the Big Field. It comprised sections 7, 8, 16, 17, containing 1400 acres of land. On the 23rd. of May, 1850, Wm. M. Lock, “Uncle Billy,” as he was known, and Henry Peters, settled on land owned by L. G. Williams, J. K. White, and Stephen White. The “Mormons” built a small horse-power mill for cracking corn, on Grand River. The burrs were made from common boulders known as nigger-heads. These stones can now be seen at the house of Mrs. Stephen White, on section “8”, Jones Township. They are two by one and one-half feet in diameter, and two feet thick. The “Mormon” cemetery is on the north quarter of section “8.” A head-stone remains in it, can be seen from the door yard of A. C. White. It is made of lime-stone and has cut upon it the Masonic Square and Compass, with the letters O. E. on it.
Improvement Era 1915
It was dark when the train wound down the Hudson and approached the great city. Mary, who had been sitting stiffly with her hat on for an hour had her first misgiving when she peered out through the rain-bespattered window and saw the lights of the elevated. The Fergusons, who lived in Harlem, met her at the 125th street station, so she was spared the rush and roar of the great central depot. They rushed her in a taxi to their flat. As it was already overcrowded, they explained to her that they had engaged a room for her at a “family” hotel next door, for the present, until she could look around a little more and get located. When they mentioned the price Mary felt the chills run up and down her back. Mary hunched herself on the Ferguson sofa that night and the next day she procured her trunk and took up her abode in a dark back room of the family hotel. Her one window opened onto a court which emitted many smells. At night the mice ran through her room and at two o’clock in the morning she could hear the guests stumbling up the back stairs. The hotel parlor was decorated with gilt mirrors and lacquer vases but the curtains at the windows were dirty and even the great glittering dining room at the fashionable dinner hour had an unwholesome atmosphere. The electric bulbs shone on the tinsel dresses of the women, but above the bare shoulders were sallow complexions and drug-dulled eyes. The food was mostly mixed up messes with French names. Mary had yet to learn that clean, plain food in New York cost more than “a las.” If there were any fresh eggs they never drifted down to the “Woodward;” beefsteak was the most expensive thing in the city; and even the milk, Mary imagined the nigger wench in the kitchen had stuck her finger into. When Mary thought of what she paid for these things here, and then remembered how her father toiled to wring every dollar from the soil with his potatoes and wheat, it turned her sick.
Improvement Era 1916
To be a gentleman does not mean to part your hair in the middle, and sport a gold-headed cane. It doesn’t mean to wear broadcloth. A man can be a gentleman in buckskin. A woman can be a lady in homespun. Of course, there are little courtesies and amenities, such as lifting your hat to a lady, or to someone above you in authority. These things are beautiful, and pertain to gentility. General Washington was walking one day with a friend, and they met an aged negro, who doffed his hat as they approached. Off came Washington’s hat in return. The friend was shocked: “Why, General, do you take off your hat to a nigger?” Washington replied: “Would you have me outdone in politeness by one?” A splendid answer. The Father of our Country was a true gentleman.
Improvement Era 1921
‘In Harper’s Ferry section, they’ve had an insurrection,
John Brown thought the nigger would sustain him,
But old Governor Wise put his specs upon his eyes;
And sent him to the happy land of Caanan.
Improvement Era 1921
“No! What? That nigger, wasn’t he funny, you don’t want me to get you any niggers with the house, do you?”
Improvement Era 1925
“You damned infernal Puke, (a pet nick-name for Missourians) we’ll learn you to come here and interrupt gentlemen. Sit down there and sit still. If you never learned manners in Missouri we’ll teach you that gentlemen are not to be imposed upon by a nigger-driver. You cannot kidnap men here. There is a committee in this grove that will sit on your case; and, sir, it is the highest tribunal in the United States, and from its decision there is no appeal.”
Improvement Era 1926
“No, Chrissy, he didn’t, but he has been both father and mother to me. You know it’s an awfully fine thing to be able to think of your father as the greatest man you ever knew. He made nigger-shooters for me, and showed me how to shoot ’em; there was not a boy in the neighborhood who could beat him at marbles; he taught me how to skate, to sail that tiny cat-boat of ours; he played tennis with me-and golf. In all my life, Chrissy, I have kept no secrets from him; he has been broad-minded, forgiving, understanding.”
Improvement Era 1929
Economics has had something to do with the shrinking of the family; desire for freedom and pleasure have also done their share; but sentiment has been the “nigger in the wood pile,” the unseen force which has done its best to destroy the home by shattering the glory of motherhood, and it began by undermining man first and woman afterwards.
Improvement Era 1930
Hammond (to Rowley): So this is what you brought me out in this storm for. I thought there must be a nigger in the wood pile-a Mormon apostle in trouble. Hay for a Mormon’s horses. Ha! Ha! Ha! Well, I guess not. Not at any price, Sir. Why, I’d see you in hell first. (Exits angrily.)
Improvement Era 1930
“Why did you take such offense at that red-headed nigger?” the captain queried mirthfully. “Of course he did not have much on but at that he had no less than the Samoan men usually wear and you’re no longer shocked at them.”
Improvement Era 1930
THE unhappy girl was sufficiently well-bred to take the raillery good naturedly, but the word “nigger” had aroused tumult in her breast greater than anything which had occurred since leaving home. To hear one of her own race called by that odious name was the exorbitant price she was paying for a few days of pleasure.
Improvement Era 1933
SAID the farmer to the nigger in the mellon patch: “Say young man, you cantelope with that mellon without paying for it.”-Aubrey J. Parker.
Improvement Era 1940
“Ho! Ho! for the Gingerbread Boy!” she laughed and went about getting him all happy on the inside and spick and span on the outside. “Now, let’s hurry,” she cautioned playfully. “Last one’s the nigger baby.” They started out on a run.
Improvement Era 1940
“Here, old man, this may help the nigger baby situation,” and Jimmie was forthwith hoisted to broad shoulders. It made something swell up inside of Nan. Now what other of these young know-it-alls would have done that? Those broad shoulders seemed to register the assurance that they would meet any condition or circumstance in the same way.
Improvement Era 1941
The sun had not topped Indian Mountain when they drove over a small hill and came in sight of Simpson. The oxen were all yoked to the wagons. They saw the big black climb on the lead wagon and start to untie the binding rope. Just then the loping mules came to a sudden stop, unnoticed by any except the other boy, who had stood there insisting on the trains going on. The Scotchman jumped out, a bull whip in one hand, a loaded revolver in the other. He cracked the whip uncomfortably close to the big boss “nigger,” who thought someone had taken a shot at him. Then snapped out the Scotchman: “I’ll gee ye yer pick a three things: Go on peaceably-go on by force-stay here fer coyote bait.”
Improvement Era 1941
“There’s a nigger in the woodpile, when kids don’t want to eat!” declared Mamie, sourly, brushing past with a platter of smoking ham. Rusty and Buddy edged quietly in behind her and slipped into the seats allotted them.
Improvement Era 1943
BETWEEN the covers of my Bible is an old and venerable letter. It lay there undiscovered for many years until the expression of admiration by great American critic called it to my attention. After listing for the Golden Book nine of “The Ten Books I Reread Most,” Mr. J. C. Grey, literary editor of the New York Sun added, “There they stand, my nine books like the nine little nigger boys after the fatal dinner. There is a tenth book, the best of all our English speech. The letter of Paul about Onesimus is my favorite letter.”
Improvement Era 1952
In the morning her father was tugging weakly to pull a broken spoke together and bind it with rawhide. The train was moving. Asa saw him and thought, “Now’s my chance.” His strong arms had sooned joined the splintered ends and bound them securely, receiving the gratitude of the parents and the admiration of the boys. “Us Saints have gotta help each other,” Asa offered quite solemnly. “Uh-got a little job on mah wagon wheel afore I push on. If you’d like, the gal could stay at the Fort here while I do it and then ride in the wagon, and ah’ll walk, to catch up. A one-eyed nigger could see she’s needin’ a rest from pullin’.”
Improvement Era 1952
That night when Viggo helped her make the family bed, he asked, “Tina, what does the new English word mean, ‘one-eyed nigger’?” he repeated slowly.
Improvement Era 1952
Most of the Saints were sleeping when she went to the well for water. The captain was listening to an officer, who talked loud enough that she heard. “He stabbed a darkey and ran off with the owner’s cotton money. Plantation overseer, ‘nigger driver,’ they call ’em down south. They think he joined some train for the west. Lew Pinkerton is his name,” the officer was saying.
Improvement Era 1954
“One step up and two steps back
One step up and two steps back!
Last one down is a nigger baby!”
Dickens and the Mormons by Richard J. Dunn Fn, BYU Studies, vol. 8 (1967-1968), Number 3 – Spring 1968, p.329
As an editor who exercised strict control over the articles in his journals, Dickens certainly would not have permitted the appearance of any anti-Mormon propaganda with which he did not personally agree. Thus, although there is no mention of the Mormons in Dickens’ own writing between American Notes and The Uncommercial Traveller, the articles in Household Words and in the early volumes of All the Year Round may be accepted as reflecting his views. For the first of the articles, “In the Name of the Prophet–Smith!” appearing in Household Words in 1851, we know from Dickens’ letters that he suggested the title and directed changes in content. The author, James Hannay, attacked Mormon “fanaticism–singing hymns to nigger tunes,” and this attitude certainly must have pleased Dickens, who, as shown by his numerous attacks on Dissenters, distrusted fanaticism in any form. Also, Dickens approved as Hannay charged the Mormons with “the absurdity of seeing visions in the age of railways.” Praising their “work; hard, useful, wealth-creating labour,” Hannay separated praise for practical achievement from condemnation of religious belief; he defined Mormonism as a combination of two of Joseph Smith’s personal qualities–“immense practical industry, and pitiable superstitious delusion.” It is here, and in Hannay’s remark, “What the Mormons do, seems to be excellent; what they say is mostly nonsense,” that Dickens had his most direct editorial influence. In the letter concerning this article he admonished his sub-editor to have Hannay delete “anything about such a man [as Smith] believing in himself–which he has no right to do and which would by inference justify about anything.” Obviously Dickens was wary of permitting the slightest suggestion that there was any spiritual truth in the Mormon religion, a faith about which neither he nor the majority of his readers were well informed. What is remarkable about this 1851 article is its endorsement of Mormon practicality. It was this aspect of the Latter-day Saints which Dickens himself praised when twelve years later he overcame his prejudice.
The Gentle Blasphemer: Mark Twain, Holy Scripture, and the Book of Mormon by Richard H. Cracroft Fn, BYU Studies, vol. 11 (1970-1971), Number 1 – Autumn 1970, p.122
And when Jim got so he could believe it was the land of Egypt he was looking at, he wouldn’t enter it standing up, but got down on his knees and took off his hat, because he said it wasn’t fittin’ for a humble poor nigger to come any other way where such men had been as Moses and Joseph and Pharaoh and the other prophets. He was a Presbyterian and had a most deep respect for Moses who was a Presbyterian, too, he said.
Sail and Rail Pioneers Before 1869, BYU Studies, vol. 35 (1995), Number 1–1995
Jean Rio Griffiths Baker Pearce, Diary, March 21, 1851, 7. At about the same time that this sister recorded her views of slavery, a brother from Scotland had a similar experience in Saint Louis:
I witnessed the sale of Negro slaves at public auction in the slave market several times, and my sympathies went out to them in their forlorn and inhuman condition. Sometimes Husbands and Wives were separated, parents from their children brothers and sisters torn away from each other, sometimes pleading to be sold together to one person, but their remonstrances and wailings fell generally on the ears of hard hearted beings destitute of any kindly or humanly feelings. Sellers, buyers, spectators alike only scoffed and laughed at their entreaties. (Richard Bee, Autobiography, 1850)
The sources reveal a few other relatively unimportant comments about blacks of that time and place. I am pleased to report that only once did the epithet nigger surface: it was expectedly in an 1864 account by a native of Saint Louis, who was “waited on by niggers” (Moroni Dunford, Journal; apparently written by a Mormon). In 1867 one English convert used the much less pejorative term “darkies,” as in “The crew was all darkies and not very sociable.” Charles K. Hansen, Record Books. Thomas Fisher, who sailed from Liverpool in 1854, recorded:
The passangers underwent medical inspection, the results terminating in the rejection of Sister Jane Hunter, from the London Conference, on the grounds of her being a coloured woman or [of] the Negro race. It appears that [in] New Orleans, the capital of the Slave State, Louisiana…colored persons emigrating there are liable of being kidnapped on the plea of being runaway slaves. (Thomas Fisher, Journal)
One might wonder how many “colored people” in Europe became Mormons and were not permitted to emigrate.
Milton V. Backman, Jr., Eyewitness Accounts of the Restoration, p.69
After my father’s family moved to New York State, in about five years they cleared sixty acres of land, and fenced it. The timber on this land was very heavy. Some of the elms were so large that we had to nigger them off. They were too large to be cut with a cross-cut saw. We built a frame dwelling house and out buildings. My brothers Joseph and Hyrum had to work. Joseph did not have time to make gold plates.
Nelle Hatch, Colonia Juarez: An Intimate Account of a Mormon Village, p.64
Catch a nigger by the toe,
E. Cecil McGavin, Nauvoo the Beautiful , p.66
Six yoke of oxen with yoke and chains: three bedsteads with beds: three nigger wenches: four nigger bucks: three nigger boys: four nigger girls: two prairie plows: one barrel of pickled cabbage: one lot of nigger hoses: one hogshead of tobacco: one spinning wheel: one loom: 23 fox hounds, all well trained: a lot of coon, mink and skunk hides: a lot of other articles.
B. H. Roberts, The Rise and Fall of Nauvoo, p.222 – 223
You damned infernal Puke, we’ll learn you to come here and interrupt gentlemen! Sit down there, pointing to a very low chair, and sit still. Don’t open your head till General Smith gets through talking. If you never learned manners in Missouri, we’ll teach you that gentlemen are not to be imposed upon by a nigger-driver. You cannot kidnap men here. There’s a committee in this grove that will sit on your case; and, sir, it is the highest tribunal in the United States, as from its decision there is no appeal.
Joseph Smith, History of The Church of Jesus Christ of Latter-day Saints, 7 vols., introduction and notes by B. H. Roberts, 5:, p.445
“You damned infernal puke, we’ll learn you to come here and interrupt gentlemen. Sit down there, (pointing to a very low chair,) and sit still. Don’t open your head till General Smith gets through talking. If you never learned manners in Missouri, we’ll teach you that gentlemen are not to be imposed upon by a nigger-driver. You cannot kidnap men here, if you do in Missouri; and if you attempt it here, there’s a committee in this grove that will sit on your case; and, sir, it is the highest tribunal in the United States, as from its decision there is no appeal.”
Joseph Smith, History of The Church of Jesus Christ of Latter-day Saints, 7 vols., introduction and notes by B. H. Roberts, 5:, p.472
Sheriff Reynolds entered the room and said, pointing to me, “I wish you to understand (his man is my prisoner, and I want you should disperse. You must not gather round here in this way.” Upon which, an aged gentleman, who was lame and carried a large hickory walking-stick, advanced towards Reynolds, bringing his hickory upon the floor and said, “You damned infernal puke! we’ll learn you to come here and interrupt gentlemen. Sit down there [pointing to a very low chair] and sit still. Don’t open your head till General Smith gets through talking. If you never learned manners in Missouri, we’ll teach you that gentlemen are not to be imposed upon by a nigger-driver. You cannot kidnap men here, if you do in Missouri; and if you attempt it here, there is a committee in this grove that will sit on your case. And, sir, it is the highest tribunal in the United States, as from its decision there is no appeal.”
Joseph Fielding Smith, Essentials in Church History, p.286
“You–Infernal puke, we’ll learn you to come here and interrupt gentlemen. Sit down there (pointing to a very low chair), and sit still. Don’t open your head till General Smith gets through talking. If you never learned manners in Missouri, we’ll teach you that gentlemen are not to be imposed upon by a nigger-driver. You cannot kidnap men here, if you do in Missouri; and if you attempt it here, there’s a committee in this grove that will sit on your case; and sir, it is the highest tribunal in the United States, as from its decision there is no appeal!”
George Q. Cannon, The Life of Joseph Smith, the Prophet, p.447
You damned infernal puke, we’ll learn you to come here and interrupt gentlemen. Sit down there, [pointing to a very low chair] and sit still. Don’t you open your head till General Smith gets through talking. If you never learned manners in Missouri, we’ll teach you that gentlemen are not to be imposed upon by a nigger-driver. You cannot kidnap men here. There’s a committee in this grove that will sit on your case; and, sir, it is the highest tribunal in the United States, as from its decision there is no appeal.
John Henry Evans, Joseph Smith, an American Prophet, p.169
Here he remained the entire time-nearly a year, sleeping on straw without any bedding, eating corn pone “so hard you could knock a nigger down with it,” and being served at other times with food so putrid he could not eat it. On being incarcerated all his possessions, except the clothes he stood up in, were taken away from him-a bowie knife, a brace of pistols, and a watch. Here, too, he was “ironed.” Once he escaped, but was immediately caught, and came within an ace of being lynched. In the daylight he spent his time fishing for “pukes” with a bent pin out of an upper window. “Puke” was a name given a Missourian.
John Henry Evans, Joseph Smith, an American Prophet, p.174
Many friends, on that long journey of two hundred and sixty miles, came to the Prophet’s aid. At Dixon, as we have seen, they made it possible for him to consult a lawyer. In another place they thwarted a plot on the part of Reynolds and Wilson to escape with him into Missouri, where men were waiting to do their pleasure. And at still another point an old gentleman with a heavy cane, when the sheriffs objected to the Prophet making an address to the crowds, bluntly told them that “nigger-driving pukes” could not “kidnap men here,” and if they were not careful “a committee in this grove” would handle their case, “from whose decision there was no appeal.”
Clarissa Young Spencer, Brigham Young at Home, p.138
Don Carlos, the only son now living, thought that he preferred to be with the teamsters, so Father immediately took him out of school and put him to work driving a pair of blind mules up to the sawmill in City Creek Canyon to get flooring for the Tabernacle. Carlos didn’t like driving the mules either so he went back and finished college and then went to Troy, New York, to the Rensselaer Polytechnic School of Engineering. He entered with five conditions but was graduated and came back to Utah, where he first taught in the Brigham Young University and eventually became Church architect. Altogether, five of the boys went to Eastern universities. Willard W. went to West Point and was an outstanding student there. The New York papers carried stories of the Mormon and the nigger at West Point, and there were actually people who came from the city to see the two curiosities. Willard became a Colonel in the United States Army, was an instructor at West Point for some years, fought in the Spanish-American War, and was head engineer for the locks on the Columbia River.
Llewelyn R. McKay, Home Memories of President David O. McKay, p.157
“Over fifty years have passed since I sailed from Philadelphia for my first mission. . . . Among the passengers were the Fiske Jubilee Singers, going abroad on a concert tour. They were a famous colored chorus. As we were standing aside getting our assignments to dining room tables, word passed among the missionaries that we were going to be seated at the same table with the Negroes. One unwise member . . . spoke out in loud tones so that the Negroes could hear: ‘I’ll not sit at the table with any nigger!’ It was a very disrespectful remark, and . . . it wounded the feelings of our colored friends. I noticed before we were very far out at sea, that the leader of the Jubilee Singers was an honored guest at the captain’s table, and that the night before landing at the usual concert given by the passengers, the soloist of that group indicated, I thought, a good rebuke to the elder who made the unwise remark. The soprano, a beautiful mulatto, had been sick nearly all the way across, but she came to the concert that night and sang a lovely song, the chorus of which is this:
William Clayton, William Clayton’s Journal: A Daily Record of the Journey of the Original Company of Mormon Pioneers from Nauvoo, Illinois, to the Valley of the Great Salt Lake [Salt Lake City: Clayt, p.189
“I remarked last Sunday that I had not felt much like preaching to the brethren on this mission. This morning I feel like preaching a little, and shall take for my text, ‘That as to pursuing our journey with this company with the spirit they possess, I am about to revolt against it.’ This is the text I feel like preaching on this morning, consequently I am in no hurry. In the first place, before we left Winter Quarters, it was told to the brethren and many knew it by experience, that we had to leave our homes, our houses, our land and our all because we believed in the Gospel as revealed to the Saints in these last days. The rise of the persecutions against the Church was in consequence of the doctrines of eternal truth taught by Joseph. Many knew this by experience. Some lost their husbands, some lost their wives, and some their children through persecution, and yet we have not been disposed to forsake the truth and turn and mingle with the gentiles, except a few who have turned aside and gone away from us, and we have learned in a measure, the difference between a professor of religion and a possessor of religion. Before we left Winter Quarters it was told to the brethren that we were going to look out a home for the Saints where they would be free from persecution by the gentiles, where we could dwell in peace and serve God according to the Holy Priesthood, where we could build up the kingdom so that the nations would begin to flock to our standard. I have said many things to the brethren about the strictness of their walk and conduct when we left the gentiles, and told them that we would have to walk upright or the law would be put in force, etc. Many have left and turned aside through fear, but no good upright, honest man will fear. The Gospel does not bind a good man down and deprive him of his rights and privileges. It does not prevent him from enjoying the fruits of his labors. It does not rob him of blessings. It does not stop his increase. It does not diminish his kingdom, but it is calculated to enlarge his kingdom as well as to enlarge his heart. It is calculated to give him privileges and power, and honor, and exaltation and everything which his heart can desire in righteousness all the days of his life, and then, when he gets exalted into the eternal world he can still turn around and say it hath not entered into the heart of man to conceive the glory and honor and blessings which God hath in store for those that love and serve Him. I want the brethren to understand and comprehend the principles of eternal life, and to watch the spirit, be wide awake and not be overcome by the adversary. You can see the fruits of the spirit, but you cannot see the spirit itself with the natural eye, you behold it not. You can see the result of yielding to the evil spirit and what it will lead you to, but you do not see the spirit itself nor its operations, only by the spirit that’s in you. Nobody has told me what has been going on in the camp, but I have known it all the while. I have been watching its movements, its influence, its effects, and I know the result if it is not put a stop to. I want you to understand that inasmuch as we are beyond the power of the gentiles where the devil has tabernacles in the priests and the people, we are beyond their reach, we are beyond their power, we are beyond their grasp, and what has the devil now to work upon ? Upon the spirits of men in this camp, and if you do not open your hearts so that the Spirit of God can enter your hearts and teach you the right way, I know that you are a ruined people and will be destroyed and that without remedy, and unless there is a change and a different course of conduct, a different spirit to what is now in this camp, I go no farther. I am in no hurry. Give me the man of prayers, give me the man of faith, give me the man of meditation, a sober-minded man, and I would far rather go amongst the savages with six or eight such men than to trust myself with the whole of this camp with the spirit they now possess. Here is an opportunity for every man to prove himself, to know whether he will pray and remember his God without being asked to do it every day; to know whether he will have confidence enough to ask of God that he may receive without my telling him to do it. If this camp was composed of men who had newly received the Gospel, men who had not received the priesthood, men who had not been through the ordinances in the temple and who had not had years of experience, enough to have learned the influence of the spirits and the difference between a good and an evil spirit, I should feel like preaching to them and watching over them and telling them all the time, day by day. But here are the Elders of Israel, men who have had years of experience, men who have had the priesthood for years,-and have they got faith enough to rise up and stop a mean, low, groveling, covetous, quarrelsome spirit ? No, they have not, nor would they try to stop it, unless I rise up in the power of God and put it down. I do not mean to bow down to the spirit that is in this camp, and which is rankling in the bosoms of the brethren, and which will lead to knock downs and perhaps to the use of the knife to cut each other’s throats if it is not put a stop to. I do not mean to bow down to the spirit which causes the brethren to quarrel. When I wake up in the morning, the first thing I hear is some of
I have read everything you have posted and studied everything you have said to study about the church. It has taken a very very long time but I think I have read nearly everything you have said on all of the topics you have posted articles or videos on. And there are reasons behind every single argument you have. And it is sad that you have let yourself become this way. But hey, you have a way of beliefs and so do I. But I guess we will see who is right in the end. But I would like to ask you, now that you are no longer a member and you have “disproven” the truthfulness of the church to yourself, what are your beliefs now? What church do you associate yourself with? What do you think about the idea of pre-earth existence? The three degrees of glory? The need for works? And what about the need for baptisms for the dead? Do you still believe in eternal marriage? Do you just believe you automatically are with each other forever or what? And what do you think happens to those who die at a young age like 7 years old? What do you think happens to those who never have the chance to be taught any sort of Christianity when they die? Do you still believe in baptism by Emersion? What about the need for priesthood? What’s your beliefs on the trinity? Are they the same being? Or three seperate and just one in purpose?If the Mormon church isn’t the true church(Christ’s church just as is was before) then who is? Who has the full gospel? Who has the full and correct organization of Christ’s church as it was on the earth? Don’t skip over and questions. I’d give you my email but you’d probably just fill it up with a lot of spam or a bunch of literature that I will most likely read and study but will get me nowhere. I’m not trying to convert you back to Mormonism. I am just interested in your beliefs on those topics. Besides, I’m sure you’re making a killing off of being the “ex Mormon bishop who Can give us more of a reason not to like Mormons and will make us feel better about ours beliefs instead of researching the truth on our own”
I would like to hear Baker’s religious beliefs I am not interested in hearing anti Mormon or anti catholic or anti any other church beliefs or doctrines. What are his religious beliefs, scripture, doctrine etc. Has he founded a church and what principles and teachings is it founded on. Leave out the Anti-anything I can think for myself.
Dear Anonymous,
Good Question and a Fair Point. Following is the link to the Statement of Faith to the Church, that Kathy and I now attend. We believe in these statements 100%. Let me know if you have any questions or comments.
Thank you. Lee Baker
http://www.oakhurstevfree.org/about-2/statement-of-faith/
Lee and Kathy,
So glad you found a Christian Church to grow in Jesus.
Sue J
Thank you so much for these updates… I do not know if they are automatic, but Thank you for your Ministry.
May God Bless you.
Lee and Kathy
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