Brigham Young said that the “mark of Cain” referred to Black skin, and taught that the descendants of Cain were cursed because the Old Testament figure murdered his brother in the book of Genesis. While initially open to Black men holding the priesthood, Young’s stance shifted in 1849, eventually hardening into firm opposition communicated through racist language. Although never presented as a “revelation,” his arguments played a key role in the creation of priesthood and temple restrictions that lasted until the 1978 revelation. In this interview, scholar W. Paul Reeve explores the history and legacy of Brigham Young’s racial teachings.
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Table of Contents
- Brigham Young’s Teachings
- Historical Context
- Modern Response
- Legacy and Priesthood Ban
- Further Reading
Brigham Young’s Teachings About the Mark of Cain
What’s the difference between the “mark of Cain” and “curse of Cain”?
Brigham Young distinguished between the “mark of Cain” and the “curse of Cain”:
- He drew on the book of Genesis in the Bible to suggest that the “mark of Cain” was Black skin and a flat nose.
- The “curse of Cain” was to bar men of Black African descent from priesthood ordination.
What quotes most powerfully summarize Brigham Young’s views on the mark and curse of Cain?
Two teachings clearly illustrate Brigham Young’s views, namely (1) an 1852 speech on slavery to the Utah territorial legislature and (2) an 1859 speech in the Salt Lake Tabernacle.
1. Brigham Young’s 1852 speech on slavery
Brigham Young articulates his most strident enunciation of the mark of Cain and curse of Cain in his 5 February 1852 speech to the Utah Territorial legislature in a debate with Orson Pratt over voting rights and slavery.
According to Brigham Young, after Cain killed his brother Abel, God said:
I won’t destroy the seed of Michael and his wife and Cain I will not kill you nor suffer anybody else to kill you. I will put a mark on you.
What is the mark? You see that mark on the face [and] the countenance of every African you ever did see on [the] face of [the] earth, [or] ever will see.
Now I tell you what I know then, when the mark was put upon Cain, Abel[’s] seed, [or] his children, were in all probability young. The Lord told Cain [that] he should not receive the blessings of [the] priesthood until the last of [the] posterity of Abel had received the priesthood, until the redemption of [the] earth.
If there never was a prophet or Apostle of Jesus Christ [who] spoke it before, I tell you this people that [are] commonly called Negros are [the] children of Cain, I know they are; I know they cannot bear rule in [the] priesthood, [in the] first sense of [the] word.
For the curse upon them was to continue on them, [it] was to remain [on them] until the residue of [the] posterity of Michael and his wife receive the blessings; they should bear rule and hold the keys of [the] priesthood until [the] times of [the] restitution come [and] the curse [is] wiped off from the earth [and from] Michael’s seed [to the] fullest extent.
Then Cain’s seed [will be] had in remembrance and the time come when that [curse] should be wiped off.
Brigham Young gives his most forceful articulation of a racial priesthood restriction in relationship to the election bill, February 5, 1852
The full speech is available at this website, which offers all of the primary sources that Christopher Rich, LaJean Purcell Carruth, and I used to produce our book, This Abominable Slavery: Race, Religion, and the Battle over Human Bondage in Antebellum Utah (Oxford, 2024).
2. Brigham Young’s Salt Lake Tabernacle speech (1859)
In another speech, this time in the Salt Lake Tabernacle in 1859, Brigham Young called the mark of Cain “the flat nose and black skin,” and he reiterated the “curse of Cain” as the denial of priesthood for those of African ancestry:
You see some classes of the human family that are black, uncouth, uncomely, disagreeable and low in their habits, wild, and seemingly deprived of nearly all the blessings of the intelligence that is generally bestowed upon mankind.
The first man that committed the odious crime of killing one of his brethren will be cursed the longest of anyone of the children of Adam. Cain slew his brother. Cain might have been killed, and that would have put a termination to that line of human beings. This was not to be, and the Lord put a mark upon him, which is the flat nose and black skin.
Trace mankind down to after the flood, and then another curse is pronounced upon the same race—that they should be the “servant of servants;” and they will be, until that curse is removed; and the Abolitionists cannot help it, nor in the least alter that decree.
How long is that race to endure the dreadful curse that is upon them? That curse will remain upon them, and they never can hold the Priesthood or share in it until all the other descendants of Adam have received the promises and enjoyed the blessings of the Priesthood and the keys thereof. Until the last ones of the residue of Adam’s children are brought up to that favorable position, the children of Cain cannot receive the first ordinances of the Priesthood. They were the first that were cursed, and they will be the last from whom the curse will be removed.
When the residue of the family of Adam come up and receive their blessings, then the curse will be removed from the seed of Cain, and they will receive blessings in like proportion.
Brigham Young, “Intelligence, Etc.,” 9 October 1859, Journal of Discourses, vol. 7 (London: Latter-day Saints’ Book Depot, 1860), 290.
How did Brigham Young’s teachings about the connection between dark skin, the curse of Cain, and the priesthood restriction evolve?
Brigham Young transitioned from an open attitude about priesthood ordination to a strident stance grounded in the “curse of Cain” between March 1847 and January 1852.
In March 1847, he offered a favorable assessment of Q. Walker Lewis, a Black priesthood holder in the Lowell, Massachusetts, Branch of the Church of Jesus Christ of Latter-day Saints, when he called Lewis “one of the best elders, an African.”
Brigham Young replaced that open attitude with a deep and abiding concern over race mixing beginning in December 1847.
After he articulated a cursed racial identity for those of African descent, in a private meeting in 1849, and then publicly in 1852, he did not deviate from it for the rest of his presidency.
How did Brigham incorporate the curse of Cain teachings into Latter-day Saint theology?
Brigham Young used teachings about the curse of Cain to suggest that people of Black African descent were barred from priesthood ordination and, by extension, temple admission until all of Abel’s descendants (whom he presumed to be white people) could receive the priesthood.
He thus created a theological conundrum that violated the second Article of Faith.
Brigham Young held the supposed descendants of Cain accountable for a murder in which they took no part.
Joseph Smith taught that humankind would be held accountable for their own sins and not for Adam’s transgression. Brigham Young, in contrast, held the supposed descendants of Cain accountable for a murder in which they took no part.
Other Latter-day Saint leaders sought to resolve this theological problem by insisting that agency must be involved. They suggested that Black people exercised their agency poorly in the premortal realm and therefore were cursed from the priesthood in mortality.
Historical Context of the Curse of Cain Teaching
Were Brigham Young’s views unique to Mormonism?
Ideas bout the curse of Cain and the mark of Cain predated the founding of the Church of Jesus Christ of Latter-day Saints by several hundred years and trace back to biblical exegesis.
By 1830, the curses of Cain, Ham, and Canaan were common justifications used to explain where Black skin came from and to justify the enslavement of Black people.
Did Brigham Young’s priesthood ban originate with Joseph Smith?
There is no indication that Joseph Smith established a racial priesthood restriction during his lifetime
The Prophet did produce the Book of Abraham, which offers confusing language about an Egyptian pharaoh who was “cursed… as pertaining to the priesthood” (Abraham 1:26). However, there is no evidence that he ever drew on the Book of Abraham to justify a racial curse—even though subsequent Latter-day Saint church leaders would do so.
In fact, the opposite is true.
For example:
- Joseph Smith sanctioned the ordination of Elijah Able to the priesthood in 1836.
- His brother William Smith ordained Q. Walker Lewis to the priesthood in 1843 or 1844.
- Joseph Smith expressed an open racial vision for temple admittance in 1840.
In 1836, Joseph Smith did buy into the existing justification for slavery, the curse of Canaan. However, by the time the Prophet died, he instead advocated for government-funded compensated emancipation of all slaves within six years.
By the end of his life, Joseph Smith also argued that white and Black people were equal.
If you gave Black people the same educational and economic opportunities as white people, they would be equal to or exceed white people in achievement, Joseph Smith explained.
How did civil debates over slavery in the 1850s shape the way Brigham Young taught about the Curse of Cain?
Debates over whether human beings could be held as property animated politics in the 1850s United States and ultimately led the nation into war.
That question proved irresolvable except through bloodshed and the loss of over 600,000 lives. It is natural, then, that similar debates would play out in Utah Territory.
Debates over what laws should govern the relationship between white slaves and their Black enslaved in Utah Territory (a newly created political entity with no prior laws on the books regarding slavery) produced Brigham Young’s most forceful articulation of a racial priesthood curse.
White Latter-day Saint converts from the U.S. South brought their Black enslaved people with them to Utah Territory. Some of those Black enslaved people were also baptized Latter-day Saints.
Utah Territory, thus included white Latter-day Saints who enslaved their fellow Black Latter-day Saints.
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What was the 1852 debate between Brigham Young and Orson Pratt?
In 1852, a debate ensued between Orson Pratt (a territorial legislator and Latter-day Saint apostle) and Brigham Young (a territorial governor and Latter-day Saint president):
- Slavery: Pratt did not want slavery legalized in any form in Utah Territory. Conversely, Young argued for a form of “servitude” that granted enslaved people some rights—but that freed no one then enslaved.
- Innocence: Orson Pratt described people of African descent as “innocent,” while Brigham Young defined them as “cursed.”
- Voting Rights: Orson Pratt argued that Black men should be allowed to vote in Utah Territory. Brigham Young said, “we just as well make a bill here for mules to vote, as negros or Indians.”
Did Brigham Young receive his ideas about the curse of Cain from God?
Brigham Young does not claim revelation as the source for his ideas, and Orson Pratt rejects his only rationale for a priesthood restriction, the “curse of Cain.”
It is important to understand that the context is earthly, and Brigham Young’s first public articulation of a priesthood curse comes in a debate with Orson Pratt before the territorial legislature.
In 1856, Pratt emphatically states, “we have no proof that the Africans are the descendants of old Cain who was cursed, and even if we had that evidence we have not been ordered to inflict that [curse] upon that race.”
It is the only rationale that Brigham Young offers for the racial restrictions—and Pratt discards it.
The Church’s Modern Response to the Mark of Cain Doctrine
Does the Church accept the Curse of Cain as a belief today?
No. In 2013, in the Race and the Priesthood essay, a document approved by the First Presidency and the Quorum of Twelve Apostles, it states:
Today, the Church disavows the theories advanced in the past that black skin is a sign of divine disfavor or curse, or that it reflects unrighteous actions in a premortal life; that mixed-race marriages are a sin; or that blacks or people of any other race or ethnicity are inferior in any way to anyone else. Church leaders today unequivocally condemn all racism, past and present, in any form.
Race and Priesthood (Gospel Topics Essay)
Is the Race and Priesthood essay ambiguous in what it disavows?
Major disavowals of prior teachings by past prophets are not ambiguous. They are rare.
The Race and Priesthood Gospel Topics Essay disavows past teachings, but not the racial priesthood and temple restrictions themselves; that is a further step I would welcome.
Even still, the Race and Priesthood essay “unequivocally condemn[s] all racism, past and present, in any form.”
If we understand the racial priesthood and temple restrictions as acts of racism (how are they not?), then the essay condemns them.
Legacy of the Curse of Cain and the Priesthood Ban
Could the priesthood restriction have been overturned during Brigham Young’s life?
Brigham Young’s teachings were not set in stone at his first utterance. They grew in accumulating precedent over the course of the 19th century, until firmly solidified under Joseph F. Smith in 1908 at the beginning of the 20th century.
Certainly, the fact that Brigham Young forcefully articulated a racial priesthood curse in 1852 established a precedent difficult to overturn, but there were nonetheless moments of contingency in the last half of the 19th century when decisions could have gone differently.
What role did Joseph F. Smith play in solidifying the priesthood restriction?
The final brick in the wall of segregation, I believe, came under Joseph F. Smith when he falsely claimed in 1908 that Elijah Able’s priesthood had been “declared null and void by the Prophet himself.”
Thus, Joseph F. Smith created a new memory moving forward: that the priesthood and temples had always been white and that the restrictions had always existed.
That idea entrenched itself in the minds of Latter-day Saint leaders in the twentieth century and took a revelation to get rid of—but not until 1978.
What do varying justifications for the priesthood ban reveal about the place of the curse of Cain in Latter-day Saint theology?
Evolving, sometimes contradictory, justifications for the priesthood and temple restrictions indicate that leaders and followers alike struggled to make sense of the curse of Cain, which contradicted foundational Latter-day Saint tenets.
Why do some people continue to teach that we don’t know why the ban existed?
The “we don’t know” explanation for the priesthood and temple restriction serves as a scapegoat to alleviate the real work of rooting out racism and of confronting the challenge of prophetic fallibility.
What is the value of knowing the historical context of Brigham Young’s teachings about race?
Understanding the historical evolution of the Church’s teaching on race—from open priesthood and temples under Joseph Smith, to segregated priesthood and temples beginning with Brigham Young (lasting for almost 130 years), to a return to the original universalism in June 1978—can offer hope.
The Church strayed from the scriptures of the Restoration and its founding ideals. The full historical context puts the restrictions in perspective, making it easier to own up to them and then commit to leading out by abandoning actions and attitudes of prejudice.
How can Latter-day Saints “root out racism” if they are unwilling to examine its roots?
What do you most want people to know about what Brigham Young said about the curse of Cain?
I want people to know that Brigham Young’s teachings about the curse of Cain were unequivocally wrong and grounded in racism.
In a Church that teaches the concept of eternal progression, do Latter-day Saints really believe that Brigham Young is in some corner of the eternities stuck on his position on race from 1852?
No. I believe that Brigham Young has repented and progressed—and wants us to do so as well.
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About the Scholar
W. Paul Reeve is Simmons Chair of Mormon Studies at the University of Utah, where he specializes in Latter-day Saint history and race. He holds a PhD in History from the University of Utah and leads the Century of Black Mormons public history database. Reeve is the author of Religion of a Different Color: Race and the Mormon Struggle for Whiteness (Oxford, 2015) and co-author of This Abominable Slavery: Race, Religion, and the Battle over Human Bondage in Antebellum Utah (Oxford, 2024), both peer-reviewed works that situate teachings like the “mark of Cain” within their nineteenth-century context. He also wrote Let’s Talk About Race and Priesthood (2023), a concise treatment of the Church’s racial restrictions.
Further Reading
Explore more From the Desk articles topics related to things Brigham Young said about the mark of Cain:
- Was Slavery Practiced in Utah Territory?
- Did Brigham Young Really Say That? A Closer Look at Rediscovered Sermons
- How Has Temple Worship Evolved Since Joseph Smith’s Time?
- Did Brigham Young Believe That Adam Was God?
- How Did the Joseph Smith Papers Project Influence Recent Scripture Updates?
Brigham Young and the Curse of Cain in Latter-day Saint Theology
Read what top scholars and publishers say regarding Brigham Young’s teachings about the curse of Cain:
- Race and Priesthood (Gospel Topics Essays)
- Holiness to the Lord: Latter-day Saint Temple Worship (Oxford University Press)
- Reconsidering the Curse of Cain (Times & Seasons)
- Brigham Young Articulates a Racial Priesthood Restriction, February 5, 1852 (This Abominable Slavery)
- Moses 5: Cain’s Offering and the Curse (BYU Religious Studies Center)
- The Mark of the Curse: Lingering Racism in Mormon Doctrine (Dialogue)
Latter-day Saint Priesthood and Temple Restriction
Learn more about the origins, lifting, and legacy of the Latter-day Saint priesthood ban:
- Priesthood and Temple Restriction (Church History Topics)
- Race, the Priesthood, and Temples: A History of the Priesthood Ban (and How It Ended) (LDS Living)
- Rooting Out “It Was Right for Its Time”: Paul Reeves & Ramesus Stewart-Johnson on Teaching Official Declaration 2 (Faith Matters)
- Whether the Temple and Priesthood Restriction Was Mistaken (Juvenile Instructor)
- Defending the Temple and Priesthood Restriction as God’s Will (By Common Consent)
3 replies on “What Did Brigham Young Say About the Curse of Cain?”
It makes me wonder about what led to Brigham Young’s hardening stance. Was he always of that opinion and finally spoke it out loud, or what was it that led him to choose to walk down that path?
I think it’s unfortunate that some of our scholars continue advance the unequivocal “Brigham Young was a racist” narrative. This is either done out of convenience or ignorance. In this era of divisiveness, many a historian seems eager to join the camp that points the accusatory finger of “racism”. I am one historian that is grateful for the timely revelations that have been unearthed in recent years in the LDS Church’s History department–largely due to the lady scholar who reads Pittman Shorthand: Brigham Young actually sermonized during the Utah Territorial period that men of African ancestry would one day hold the Priesthood and he promised great blessings upon black people that would be realized at a future time.
I will note in response to David M. that the “lady scholar” does have a name (LaJean Purcell Carruth) and that she has been a coathor with Paul Reeve on some of his research related to this topic. The discussion about Orson Pratt opposing Young’s beliefs about the curse of Cain, for example, was possible because of her work. So, the research cuts both ways and does, in many cases, highlight Brigham Young’s racism more starkly than was available in the past. And I don’t think it’s stated as racism on Young’s part out of convenience or ignorance, in this case. I think it’s just following what the data shows, even if it’s a difficult pill to swallow.
When it comes to that racism, it is what it is – I think President Young did a lot of great and admirable things. Understanding the legacy of racism that he inherited and that he did not overcome during his lifetime helps us to take steps to untangle that legacy as inherited today, but it also doesn’t negate his other accomplishments.