The 1978 priesthood revelation was the culmination of a decades-long process to reverse the priesthood ban. Most scholars today agree that the policy was initiated by Brigham Young and that racism played a role in its beginnings. What is less known is that the 1978 revelation wasn’t a singular event, but rather a laborious process that took a heavy toll on participants like Spencer W. Kimball, Joseph Fielding Smith, David O. McKay, Hugh B. Brown, and Bruce R. McConkie. In this interview, Matthew L. Harris explains more about the history of the revelation on the priesthood.
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Learn more in the new book by Matt Harris, Second Class Saints: Black Mormons and the Struggle for Racial Equality (Oxford University Press, 2024).
What was the 1978 priesthood revelation?
The priesthood revelation is one of the most significant events in the history of the Church. On June 9, 1978, President Spencer W. Kimball announced a revelation stating that Black Latter-day Saints could now enjoy the full privileges of the Church. This included priesthood ordination for Black men and temple ordinances for Black couples and families.
Although the significance of this historic revelation would not be realized for years to come, it meant that the Brethren could now open church missions in Sub-Saharan Africa and other regions of the world with majority Black populations. As President Kimball wisely knew, he and his colleagues could now fulfill the scriptural mandate to take the gospel “to every kindred, nation, tongue, and people” (Mosiah 15:28).
Why was a revelation needed to end the priesthood ban?
With the exception of First Presidency counselor Hugh B. Brown, all of the Brethren believed that lifting the ban would require a Revelation.
Brown claimed it was a policy, which meant for him that it could be lifted at President McKay’s discretion. And while McKay himself also believed it was a policy, he claimed it would require consensus among the Brethren to overturn something so entrenched in church doctrine and culture.
The other Brethren—led by Joseph Fielding Smith, Harold B. Lee, Ezra Taft Benson, and others—all proclaimed the ban a doctrine. They shared President McKay’s belief that it would require a Revelation. This was both practical and moral for them, for a Revelation meant consensus, and consensus meant that the president couldn’t do it unilaterally.
One of the most poignant moments in my book is when I tell the story of how President Brown collaborated with President McKay’s sons to get the aging prophet to overturn the ban unilaterally.
In the fall of 1969, they convinced him to ordain a faithful Black man named Monroe Fleming to the priesthood. The president agreed, but when Elder Lee found out about it, he put a stop to it. Lee believed that overturning the ban required the unified front of the Quorum of the Twelve and the First Presidency.
Anecdotally, what do you think most members have heard about the 1978 revelation?
It depends on the generation. Today’s generation of Latter-day Saints glean what they know about the priesthood and temple ban from materials the church publishes and from church leaders. This includes church magazines and manuals, both of which treat the ban briskly without probing the backstory that led to it or the process that overturned it.
President Brown described revelation as a process.
The standard Church account treats the Revelation as an event, but my book takes a deep dive into the personalities, ideas, and conflicts that led to the process of the Brethren lifting it.
In contrast, an older generation of Latter-day Saints would have learned that “heavenly beings” were present in the Salt Lake Temple on June 1, 1978, but President Kimball rejected those fanciful accounts, as my book explains.
Which of those anecdotes align with the historical record?
Neither of the accounts I explain above can be supported with evidence. In Second-Class Saints, I tease out very methodically what rumors were true and which were false. I also go into great detail the contingencies and contexts that inspired President Kimball to lift the ban.
How did Hugh B. Brown describe the process of revelation pursued by church leaders?
Rarely have the Brethren described how institutional revelation works in such a clear and succinct manner as First Presidency counselor Hugh B. Brown. President Brown described it as a process, which nuances how the Church typically describes it.
What you see below derives from an oral history he gave with his grandson Edward in 1969, and is included on page xii of Second Class Saints: Black Mormons and the Struggle for Racial Equality:
When a question arises today, we work over the details and come up with an idea. It is submitted to the First Presidency and Twelve, thrashed out, discussed and re-discussed until it seems right. Then, kneeling together in a circle in the temple, they seek divine guidance, and the president says, “I feel to say this is the will of the Lord.” That becomes a revelation. It is usually not thought necessary to publish or proclaim it as such, but this is the way it happens.
Hugh B. Brown
This apt description describes beautifully how the Revelation occurred when the Brethren lifted the ban.
Over a period of many months, President Kimball “thrashed [it] out” with the apostles, prayed with them, then moved to overturn the ban as he felt directed by God. The culmination of this defining moment occurred on June 1, 1978, when the prophet reached a consensus with the Brethren.
What does that definition infer about the roles of personal experience and divine intervention?
In Second Class Saints: Black Mormons and the Struggle for Racial Equality, I describe revelation as a process—but the process couldn’t commence until the Brethren began asking the right questions. In this case, it was President Kimball who began to ask the probing questions.
He once said the ban “may have been a possible error,” and he supported President Brown’s attempt to ordain a Black man to the priesthood in 1969—about four years before he became the church president. He also asked several close friends and advisers about what they thought about lifting the ban.
The prophet already knew what to do.
Thus, it was on his mind and during the early stages of his presidency he began asking hard questions to his colleagues to help them see the wisdom of lifting it.
A couple of the most important questions he posed were:
- “How can we build a temple in Brazil if the vast majority of members will not be able to enjoy the sacred ordinances therein?”
- “How is it just to deny these faithful Latter-day Saints temple privileges in Brazil when so many of them have sacrificed their limited funds to help build it?”
These are my paraphrases of the kinds of questions that President Kimball posed to the Brethren. As I note in my book, the road to the priesthood for Black Latter-day Saints went through Brazil.
What is the role of unity when it comes to receiving revelation for the entire church?
The Doctrine and Covenants states that the Brethren need to be unified when they produce new doctrine or announce new policy changes for the Church. Achieving this, of course, is not always easy because the Brethren bring their own personalities, biases, and experiences when they are called into the Twelve. But the scriptures ensure that they will be unified when they announce something significant like the end of the priesthood and temple ban.
How did church leaders “thrash it out” as part of the priesthood revelation process?
Second Class Saints has several examples of how church leaders worked with each other to grapple with the complicated issues that led to the 1978 priesthood revelation. Here’s one that you might find interesting.
President Kimball met with Elder Bruce R. McConkie behind closed doors in March 1977 and told him about the problems that the Church would experience in Brazil when the Brethren were building a new Temple there.
Spencer W. Kimball had long felt uneasy about the ban.
Contextually, the prophet already knew what to do. He wasn’t seeking answers from the apostle. Rather, he posed it as a problem to help make Elder McConkie part of the solution. President Kimball explained to Elder McConkie the difficulty in determining African ancestry in a nation that was richly mixed with interracial marriage. He also explained the difficulty in pronouncing lineage in patriarchal blessings when the Church had long taught that Black and biracial people derived from a cursed lineage.
Thus, President Kimball asked: “What should we do?” and the intuitive apostle surprised the president by announcing that they should lift the ban.
This is just one example among many where President Kimball’s leadership shined brightly.
When did Spencer W. Kimball know that he wanted to overturn the priesthood ban?
One of the major claims of Second Class Saints: Black Mormons and the Struggle for Racial Equality is that President Kimball sought to overturn the ban the moment he became the prophet in 1973.
Spencer W. Kimball had long felt uneasy about the ban. The prophet witnessed the pain it caused Black Latter-day Saints in South America and elsewhere when they asked to serve church missions or marry in the temple, so he knew how the policy had affected them.
He also supported President Hugh B. Brown’s ill-fated attempt in 1969 to lift the ban, but recanted his support when senior apostle Harold B. Lee convinced him to do so.
What kind of proactive measures did President Kimball take to secure unity?
Spencer W. Kimball was a brilliant leader. When he realized he could not achieve a consensus to lift the ban he sent one of the biggest hold-outs, Elder Mark E. Petersen, to Ecuador on a church assignment. The other hold-out, Elder Delbert L. Stapley, was in the hospital gravely ill. (He would die two months after the Revelation.)
The only other hold-out on the day of the Revelation was Elder Ezra Taft Benson. He wanted to “table” the discussion, but President Kimball overrode him and insisted that the Brethren talk about it.
However, the president knew that he needed Elder Benson’s support, so he called on Elder McConkie and others for assistance. As I note in Second Class Saints, President Kimball “won over” Elder McConkie in the spring of 1977 and then enlisted his support to convince Elder Benson that it was time to lift the ban.
It had been an intense discussion since at least the 1950s.
But it wasn’t just Elder McConkie that Kimball won over in the weeks and months leading up to the ban. He also met privately with each of the Brethren to seek their input about ordaining Black men to the priesthood. He listened patiently as they expressed their concerns, and he gently persuaded them that it was time.
My book covers this fascinating story in great detail; I explain who President Kimball won over first—and who the last hold-outs were.
How did participants describe the 1978 priesthood revelation?
Except for Elder McConkie, none of the Brethren have written about the Revelation in any detail. Most explained briefly what happened, noting their feelings in their authorized biographies. But none have discussed the bruises and scrapes that some of them accrued over the years in both defending the ban or trying to overturn it.
The truth is, the ban had been an intense discussion since at least the 1950s when President McKay sought to globalize the Church after the Second World War. President McKay wanted to overturn it in 1954 when he saw how difficult it was to police racial boundaries in two heavily mixed-race countries: South Africa and Brazil.
But the president didn’t do it because he couldn’t achieve a consensus to proclaim a Revelation. Many of the Brethren had rigid, scripturally orthodox views of scripture, which prevented them from overturning the ban.
Your book is hundreds of pages long. How do you think ‘Saints 4’ will cover the priesthood revelation?
It will definitely be a challenge to address all of the nuance in a smaller word count, but I’m hopeful sources like Second Class Saints will prompt the authors to treat the revelation like the process that it was rather than an event.
For example, the “event” of the 1978 priesthood revelation follows the traditional account in which the Brethren showed up at the Temple on June 1, 1978, prayed, felt inspired to lift the ban, then triumphantly removed it.
He wanted unity.
But looking only at the event obscures what actually happened. The priesthood revelation was a decade-long process in which President Kimball felt inspired to lift the ban the moment he became the president. But he had to secure buy-in from the rest of the Brethren first. He wanted unity to enact the momentous policy and doctrinal change, rather than risk the fractures that occurred in the aftermath of the 1890 plural marriage manifesto. It took him five years to convince the Brethren to lift the ban.
In my book, I explain in great detail the strategies the prophet used to accomplish this. When I shared these ideas with President Kimball’s son Edward, he listened patiently and said, “That’s absolutely right!”
So, my hope would be that “Saints 4” will engage the new evidence rather than adhere to traditional narratives that don’t align with the historical record.
What do you wish people asked you about the 1978 priesthood revelation?
My question would be: “How did the priesthood and temple ban affect Black and biracial Latter-day Saints, and were the Brethren aware of this effect?”
And the answer is a resounding yes—the Brethren knew!
After reading President Kimball’s unredacted diaries, I had a liberating moment when I saw him grapple with the justness of the ban. His diaries are replete with instances when Black and biracial Latter-day Saint men and boys approached him after a stake conference pleading with him to serve missions or advance in the priesthood or take their families to the Temple to be sealed.
All of this affected Kimball’s sense of fairness, and you could sense the pain that he felt after numerous experiences like these.
His diaries are rich and vivid, and I am grateful that President Kimball’s son Edward made them available to me when I began this research years ago.
Joseph Fielding Smith is another apostle who experienced the emotional effect of the ban. During one difficult moment, after he attended a stake conference and learned of a young man in the stake who was White in appearance but Black according to the one-drop rule, Smith told the young man to keep the matter to himself. Reporting it, Smith said, would jeopardize the young man’s forthcoming temple marriage and trigger a release of his brothers from their church callings, all of whom were serving in important priesthood positions in their respective wards and branches.
Reading this gave me a perspective of Smith I hadn’t seen, and it made me appreciate how deeply personal the ban was for some apostles.
About the interview participant
Matthew L. Harris is a Professor of History at Colorado State University-Pueblo. He holds a PhD in history from the Maxwell School of Citizenship and Public Affairs at Syracuse University and specializes in topics such as race and religion, civil rights, and African American history. Harris is the author of several books about Latter-day Saint history, including the newly-published Second Class Saints: Black Mormons and the Struggle for Racial Equality.
Further reading
- What Did Spencer W. Kimball Write About in His Journal?
- What Role Did Racism Play in the Priesthood Ban?
- Let’s Talk About Church History Books
- What Do Historians Think About Brigham Young?
- President Nelson Repentance Quotes
1978 priesthood revelation resources
- Second Class Saints: Black Mormons and the Struggle for Racial Equality (Oxford)
- Revelation on Priesthood Accepted, Church Officers Sustained (October 1978)
- Spencer W. Kimball and the Revelation on Priesthood (BYU Studies)
- Revelations in the Summer of 1978: A Personal Essay on Race and the Priesthood (Ahmad Corbitt)
- How the 1978 Priesthood Revelation Changed the Lives of the Martins Family in Brazil (Church News)
3 replies on “How Did President Kimball Receive the 1978 Priesthood Revelation?”
An excellent piece of work. Well researched and answered many questions. I remember the day it was announced and had the honour of being a witness at the first sealing of a mixed race child to his parents in the London temple.
He didn’t send Mark E. Petersen to South America to get unity among the twelve. Elder Petersen was there in the weeks preceding discussing overturning the ban. He fully accepted the revelation when he was called over the phone. Had he been in the room when President Kimball asked for the apostles feelings on ending the ban he would of supported President Kimball.
The President of the Twelve not the President of the church makes the assignments Elder Petersen was on. Bulk of assignments are weekend stake conference assignments. With a few midweek assignments throughout the year. Elder Petersen happened to have an out of country assignment himself at the time.
The Lord calls his leaders and can speak to them. It’s his priesthood he can give to who he wants. Had to be revelation. When God chose to give the priesthood to all men he did through revelation to the prophet and other apostles.
Couldn’t of happened sooner if some apostles disagreed or later do to apostolic disagreement. If the lord wants his will known he will call the right people and speak to them. Servants he called won’t prevent God from accomplishing his work. Because God calls people who will get his work accomplished and is omnipotent. Who knows more than him?
Fascinating account! I still remember pulling into my driveway after work the day the revelation was announced. My neighbor, standing next to my driveway, exclaimed, “They’ve received a revelation giving the Priesthood to the Blacks!” Knowing that my neighbor liked to pull practical jokes, nevertheless, I IMMEDIATELY felt the confirming witness of the Spirit that her statement was true, and began to weep tears of joy.