| Summary: | "This book provides a detailed look at how the Church of Jesus Christ of Latter-day Saints lifted its longstanding ban barring Black men from the priesthood and Black families from access to Mormon temples. Adapting a Protestant teaching that Black people bore a divine curse, and reinforced by a unique Latter-day teaching that Black people were "less valiant" in a pre-earth existence, these twin teachings became the fulcrum that underpinned the church's priesthood and temple ban. The book discusses how the ban began in 1852 under the church's second prophet-president, Brigham Young, and ended in 1978 under the church's twelve prophet-president, Spencer W. Kimball. The book further highlights how the ban collided with efforts to globalize the church following the Second World War, why it forced LDS church leaders to resist the civil rights movement, why it prompted dozens of universities to boycott BYU athletic competitions, and finally, why it led federal authorities to investigate BYU for alleged violations of the Civil Rights Act of 1964. The book also details how perceived threats from the Jimmy Carter administration to revoke the church's tax exemption status provoked a swift backlash from critics who claimed that the church lifted the ban out of political expedience. The final third of the book probes how public pressure led church leaders to repudiate Mormon racial teachings in a seminal essay called "Race and the Priesthood.""--
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