Black Mormons mark milestone

End of priesthood ban in '78 to be celebrated

By | Sunday, June 8, 2008

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SALT LAKE CITY (AP) | Thirty years have passed, but Heber G. Wolsey still cries when he recalls the day the Mormon church abandoned a policy that had kept black men out of the priesthood.

"It was one of the greatest days of my life," said Mr. Wolsey, who was head of public affairs at the Church of Jesus Christ of Latter-day Saints.

On June 8, 1978, Mr. Wolsey was called to a secret rendezvous with N. Eldon Tanner, a member of the church's First Presidency, in a tunnel beneath the Salt Lake City temple.

He was handed a slip of paper: "The long-promised day has come when every faithful, worthy man in the church may receive the holy priesthood ... without regard for race or color."

"I started to bawl," Mr. Wolsey recalled, his eyes again welling with tears. "It's something we'd all been praying for, a long, long time."

Mormons will mark the 30th anniversary Sunday with an evening celebration of words and music in the Salt Lake City Tabernacle.

Heralded as a revelation from God to church President Spencer W. Kimball, the four-paragraph statement gave blacks full membership in the church for the first time after nearly 130 years.

Unlike most other religions, the Mormon priesthood is not a set of trained clerics. It is a lay status granted to virtually every Mormon male at age 12, allowing them to bestow blessings and hold certain church callings.

Until 1978, black men could attend priesthood meetings but could not pass sacraments or give blessings, even on their own families. They could not enter Mormon temples for sacred ceremonies, including marriage.

Darius A. Gray, a black man who is joined the church in 1964 said he learned about the restriction the day before his baptism. He was raised to value his race, and the policy went against that. But prayer and study had left him with a belief in the church that he couldn't ignore.

"So you go forward and walk through the darkness in faith," he said.

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