Event

The Mormons in Black and White: Racial Mixing among the Latter-day Saints

Join W. Paul Reeve, Simmons Chair of Mormon Studies in the History Department at the University of Utah, for a discussion on shifting complexities of race relations within the Mormon church, drawing on evidence from Century of Black Mormons, a public history project.
Lectures

The Church of Jesus Christ of Latter-day Saints was born in 1830 into a fraught American racial culture. The fear of Black and white race mixing was woven into the political and social fabric of the nation and shaped how outsiders viewed the Latter-day Saints. Over time it also shaped how Latter-day Saints viewed themselves. This lecture will draw on evidence from the Century of Black Mormons digital database to highlight the shifting complexities of racial understandings in the 19th and early 20th centuries. It will explore how those shifting understandings played out in the lives of Latter-day Saints of mixed racial descent and what that teaches us about race and religion from the vantage point of the pews.

This is the Huntington Lecture in Mormon Studies.

A black and white family portrait taken outdoors in front of a house.

Nelson Holder Ritchie Family. Back right Esther, and Russell standing. Front left Olive Ellen, Annie, Nelson, and Mary Alexander. Courtesy Deena Porcaro Hill. | Century of Black Mormons

About the Speaker

W. Paul Reeve is the Simmons Chair of Mormon Studies in the History Department at the University of Utah. A historian and scholar of Mormon race history and Utah history, he is the project manager and general editor of Century of Black Mormons.