Elijah Abel would be the first black Mormon to hold the priesthood. No other black Mormon would be ordained as a priesthood holder for 130 years.

The Church of Jesus Christ of Latter Day Saints today allows any male over the age of 12 in good standing to hold the priesthood, but this was not always the case. Before Brigham Young gained control of the church after the assassination of Joseph Smith, men and women of all races could hold the priesthood. After the first prophet's assassination, the Mormon church instituted the black priesthood ban.

How women and blacks lost the right to hold the priesthood in the Mormon Church will not be covered in this article, but it will cover how the ban got overturned, although the theology has never been repudiated. The Church and the Negro and other books that tried to explain the black priesthood ban have been out of print since the late 1970s.

Mormon Doctrine on Who Can Hold the Priesthood

Joseph Smith, the founder of the Mormon Church ordained one African-American, Elijah Abel, into the priesthood. He would be the last person of African descent to hold the priesthood until Spencer W. Kimball, the then prophet of the church, overturned the ban in 1978.

The flood did not end this curse, as the sins of Ham allowed the curse placed on Cain and his descendants to continue. This restriction would later become known as the black priesthood ban.

The former church prophet, Joseph Fielding Smith, and apostle Bruce R. McConkie, the author of Mormon Doctrine, stated that blacks were not allowed to hold the skin because of some act they committed in the preexistence.

The Black Priesthood Ban Weakens

In the 1950s, several other minorities had to be declared eligible or ineligible for the priesthood. Nowhere did this pose a greater problem than it did in Latin America, where the conquistadors had no particular qualms about mixing their genes with the native population. For the most part, the black priesthood ban that the Mormon Church imposed remained an internal matter.

When the civil rights movement started to bring attention to racial inequalities in the 1960s, the black priesthood ban remained, but more people criticized this racist policy. The answer from the leadership of the Mormon Church was, “It’s not time yet.” The Church and the Negro stated that Abel needed to start his own celestial family before the ban could be lifted.

The Reversal of the Black Priesthood Ban

The black priesthood ban fall would come from pressure by the U.S. Congress and from problems determining whether or not a person in Latin America was eligible to hold the priesthood, especially when the temples started to be constructed.

The full fall of the priesthood ban took place over a period of many decades, but in 1979, President Spencer W. Kimball announced that the time had come for blacks to hold the priesthood and an official declaration was placed at the end of the Doctrine and Covenants.

Although there were political pressures and monetary concerns that may have contributed to the announcement, the declaration was given in theological terms. After the ban was lifted, many blacks were ordained into the priesthood.

Signature Books publishes several books detailing the decline and fall of the black priesthood ban imposed by the Mormon church. Faithful Mormons say that political and economic pressures were not the reason for the reversal, although they likely did play into President Kimball's decision to reverse a policy that had been in place since the days of Brigham Young.

Resources:

Neither Black Nor White. Signature Books, Midvale Utah. 1984.

The Church and the Negro, John Lewis Lund. Deseret Books.