When did Mormons start allowing Black people to join the church?

Answer 1

I think you are confused.
They have always been able to join the Mormon church. The black males were not allowed to have the Priesthood until the 1970's.

Answer 2

African-Americans were never denied baptism; it was the 'priesthood' that was denied. Mormon Priesthood is held by all males 12 and older, so this was a subtle form of racism, but mormons are quick to say "It was God's Idea. We don't know why he changed his mind" in 1978 when the 'ban' was lifted. Not rescinded, voided, repealed or apologized for, but 'lifted'.

None of the bigoted race-baiting talks have been purged from their Journal of Discourses, magazines or other church-related publications - it is assumed that everyone will simply forget there was any controversy at all.

It's like "Let's just forget about the Holocaust" or the Mississippi lynchings or even World War II. Didn't Elder Paul Dunn single handedly save the world that time?

Answer 3

1978.

From PBS's 'The Mormons':

NARRATOR: The Mormons had ambitions to be a worldwide church, but their only missionaries on the African continent were in white South Africa, none in black Africa. But then in the early 1960s, a copy of the Book of Mormon appeared in Ghana and Nigeria. A few people read it and were converted instantly. They founded their own version of the Church of Jesus Christ of Latter Day Saints.

BILLY JOHNSON, Co-Founder, LDS Church, Ghana: And I read the Book of Mormon. I was pulled by the power of the Holy Ghost to believe, that it was a sound and a true testimony. I started from street to street, from town to town, from house to house, spreading the message.

NARRATOR: They started to write the leaders in Salt Lake for instructions. Over the next frustrating 20 years, they would implore them to send missionaries so that they could be baptized.

SAM BAINSON, LDS Convert: And they kept writing to Salt Lake City. They want the missionaries to come and baptize this group of people they're getting. They want Salt Lake to come and show them how to form the church properly. But the church couldn't send missionaries to Ghana to baptize them because of the ban on the priesthood for blacks.

GREG PRINCE: Later into the 1970s, you now have a new president, Spencer Kimball, and you have new forces at work. Most of these are internal. There was also the injunction that had existed for decades, "Take the gospel to all the world." There wasn't an asterisk at the end of it saying, "Oh, by the way, you can exclude black Africa." This weighed on Spencer Kimball.

All of those things, I think, had a cumulative effect. The 1st of June, 1978, Spencer Kimball, his two counselors, the Quorum of the Twelve Apostles, met in the temple. They engaged in group prayer, and it was described as a Pentecostal experience.

EDWARD KIMBALL, Son of Spencer W. Kimball: One described it as though there were the tongues of flame that are talked about in Acts. Another said it was like a rushing of wind for him.

GORDON B. HINCKLEY, LDS Church President: I was there. There was something of a Pentecostal spirit. But on the other hand, it was peaceful, quiet, not a cataclysmic thing in any sense. It was just a feeling that came over all of us, and we knew that it was the right thing at the right time and that we should proceed.

NARRATOR: President Kimball announced that God had heard their prayers and had revealed that "all male members of the church may be ordained to the priesthood without regard to race or color."

RICHARD OSTLING: What happened in 1978 was that this burden was lifted from black Mormons. More importantly, a huge burden was lifted from Mormonism because it was rid of theological racism. This enabled the church, of course, to reach out more effectively to blacks. It made the church fully acceptable after American society had undergone this tremendous Civil Rights revolution. It really was the moment for the modernization of the Mormon church.

Answer 4

They always had a prophecy that some day they would. I think they did it some time in the 1960s, one day after they lost a court decision about a phony will leaving megabucks to the church. I suppose the timing was just coincidental.

Answer 5

when did black people start wanting to become Mormon?

Answer 6

I can not believe they ever did not allow it but then I have never known any mormans.

Answer 7

embarassing...