The One Drop Rule was used to justify slavery and segregation in America. Unfortunately, it seeped into the LDS Church in the form of a ban on blacks from priesthood and temple ordinances. But did Brigham Young use the word in his famous 1852 speech to the Utah Legislature? Paul Reeve says no. Find out more in our next conversation…..
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Russell Dewey Ritchie
Paul 00:56 So we have other people who have who pass as white in the database. In the database, we have a couple of cases where people, Latter-day Saints in the 21st century have written to us and said, “Hey, we have African ancestry in our DNA in the 21st century, and we think it traces back to ancestor X or Y, and if so, we would love to have them included in the database.” And we’ve done the research and there have been other examples like that. Russell…
GT 01:34 Stephenson?
Paul 01:35 Russell Dewey Ritchie is in the database, and he is ordained in 1971. He’s in his 70s. And his father was formerly enslaved. So, he’s the son…
GT 01:53 Did you say 1871 or 1971?
Paul 01:54 Correct, 1971, 1971. His father was born into slavery. So, this is the son of a slave. He was ordained in 1971. But, you know, he passed as white by that point. His father is likely the result of interracial rape and born into slavery,
GT 02:21 Because the slaveholders used to purposely impregnate slaves to get more slaves, right?
Paul 02:26 Correct.
GT 02:27 Is that probably what happened?
Paul 02:28 Well, I don’t know the intent. The family has done all kinds of DNA work in this particular case. And so Russell’s father, Nelson Holder Ritchie is the descendant of a white enslaver, and a black enslaved [mother.] And the circumstantial evidence suggests that it was more than likely an interracial rape and she becomes pregnant, is sold into Missouri. That’s where Nelson Holder Ritchie is born. And then he shows up in the 1860s, in the home of a man by the last name of Ritchie in Kansas, who runs a stop on the Underground Railroad. And Nelson takes that as his last name. He fights in the Civil War on the side of freedom. He’s a product of an interracial rape, more than likely. And then after the Civil War, he establishes a livery stable and hotel in Great Bend, Kansas, marries a white woman. Missionaries from the Church of Jesus Christ of Latter-day Saints take room and board at his hotel. You can predict the rest of the story. The family converts, they moved to Utah. Nelson and his wife, Annie Kellen Russell, apply to be sealed to each other. They apply for a temple admission in 1909 and are prevented because Nelson is black, and his bishop says “No. You can’t.” And they appeal and they say, “But our two oldest daughters have already been sealed in the Salt Lake Temple.”
GT 04:20 Oh, wow.
Paul 04:21 And they had. They had. So they are, then, the product of two generations of interracial marriages, because Nelson’s wife, Annie is white. He’s a formerly enslaved man. Their children are light enough to pass [as white.] The two oldest daughters had moved out of the home, weren’t living in the same ward, found people to marry and went to the Salt Lake Temple. No one had any questions about it. So, they were sealed. So, when Nelson and Annie wanted to be sealed as well, they said, “Well, our two oldest daughters are sealed.” The bishop said “I don’t care. I’m not letting you go,” and never gave them a recommend. They had nine kids and every one of the kids either in life or by proxy after death received priesthood ordination and temple admission before 1978. One of the daughters is a Relief Society president in Layton, Utah and sealed to her husband, and passes away in 1976. The daughter of a slave dies in Utah as a temple worker in 1976.
GT 05:32 Wow.
Paul 05:33 The whole family, in other words, it’s just one experience after the next. The youngest son is Russell, and he’s not ordained to the priesthood when he turns 12. He was 11 when his parents are denied temple admission. So, I only presume that the same bishop said, “I’m not ordaining your son to the priesthood.” He eventually moves out, goes to California, becomes a pharmacist, marries his wife in the Presbyterian Church eventually returns to the Church of Jesus Christ of Latter-day Saints. I have no idea what story he tells his bishop as to why he’s not ordained to the priesthood. But I found the ordination records, all in the same year, his Bishop first ordains him…
GT 06:20 Now wait a minute. Let me back up with here because you said that he married his wife in the Presbyterian Church. Did he join the Presbyterian Church?
Paul 06:28 I have no indication that he joined, but his wife was not LDS.
GT 06:32 Okay. And so, does it sound like he got rebaptized, or no?
Paul 06:36 No. He was already a member.
GT 06:39 Okay.
Paul 06:39 No, no reason given.
GT 06:41 I mean, I guess that it would be easy enough story to be like, “Well, I’m inactive. I’m a kind of a Jack Mormon and my wife’s Presbyterian. Yeah, that’s why I didn’t get ordained.” I mean, that would probably be a pretty easy story, a lot easier than, “Well, my grandpa’s black, or my father.”
Paul 06:55 And I don’t even know what he understood about why he wasn’t ordained. I have no indication. I don’t know if they even understood that their father was formerly enslaved. I don’t know what the parents said. I don’t know how much they understood about their own father’s racial identity. There’s just no indication. The dad dies. Nelson dies in 1913. And so, his wife, Annie Cowan Russell waits a decade and then goes to the Salt Lake Temple, and has her husband sealed to her posthumously.
GT 07:35 And there’s no race record on that card.
Paul 07:38 No!
GT 07:39 Because we don’t look at race.
Paul 07:41 She’s white. So, temple policy, in place at the time, was supposed to prevent that from happening. But the entire family demonstrate the impossibility of policing racial boundaries in life, let alone after death. And so, she just waits a decade and then has him ordained to the priesthood, goes to the temple, has him sealed to her posthumously. And all the rest of the family, all the kids marry white spouses. They raised their families as Latter-day Saints. The grandson of one of the daughters, or excuse me, Nelson Holder Ritchie’s grandson is actually the quarterback at BYU in 1945.
GT 08:24 No way.
Paul 08:25 Yeah. So, the grandson of an enslaved man is a quarterback of the BYU football team.
GT 08:31 What was his name?
Paul 08:33 Rex Olsen.
GT 08:34 No way.
Paul 08:34 Yeah, yeah. And, he was ordained to the priesthood. No one is cognizant of this. And so those generations all had passed as white. They still have African ancestry in their DNA, because this family contacted me and said, “We would like our ancestor included in your database.” And they had done extensive DNA research by the time they even contacted me. And so, for us, it was a matter of tracing the historical record, verifying the evidence. And it’s a remarkable family story that demonstrates–in fact, I open the book with Nelson Holder Ritchie. He’s in the introduction to the book…
GT 09:18 Wow!
Paul 09:18 …to demonstrate the impossibility of policing racial boundaries. So, like I said, his youngest son, then in California, returns to the LDS faith and was ordained a deacon at age 71.
GT 09:37 Wow.
Paul 09:37 And then a couple of months later, [he was ordained] a teacher, a couple of months later a priest, and then a couple of months later an elder. Eventually, he moves to Roy, Utah becomes a High Priest. He moves to Arizona and is a temple worker, until he passes away in the 1980s. So, think how long slavery cast a shadow, the son of an enslaved man passes away as a temple worker in the 1980s in Arizona.
GT 10:09 That’s really hard to believe.
Paul 10:10 Yeah, it’s pretty remarkable.
GT 10:12 Wow. And that’s how you start the book.
Paul 10:14 I started the book with that family, just to demonstrate the impossibilities of policing racial boundaries and [I] try to get the reader to think about, well, what is race? Is it something biological? Is something that’s passed through the blood, like people said in the 19th century? Or is it just simply something we have made up in our minds, to try to distinguish between people who look like us and people who look different from us, and use it to justify discriminatory policies across the long course of human history?
Black Pete
Interview
GT 10:51 Wow. That brings up two questions. I want to finish up the first six that I thought I had identified, that you’ve already [been] shooting some holes in. Hopefully, you don’t shoot a hole in this one. But Black Pete, that was the last one I couldn’t remember. Would it be safe to say that Black Pete was the first black Mormon?
Paul 11:11 Yes, yes. Yeah.
GT 11:13 So tell us that story. And do you think he was ordained?
Paul 11:16 So he is baptized in Kirtland. I mean, there’s no early records. So, this is 1830. And you have the Latter-day Saint missionaries–I mean, most of your listeners probably know that story. The missionaries pass through the Kirtland region. And they convert a whole group of people. And I think amongst them is a formerly enslaved man that’s only known in the written record as Black Pete. But the researcher for Century of Black Mormons, Matthew McBride does the research on him and identifies him as a formerly enslaved man, enslaved to the Kerr family.
GT 11:59 I think Mark Staker figured that out.
Paul 12:06 Well, you know…
GT 12:08 Or did he get that from McBride?
Paul 12:10 Well. Matt’s research is after Mark Staker’s. So, Staker does include him as Black Pete in his book.
GT 12:24 Yeah.
Paul 12:24 And, his conversion and all those kinds of things are there. We don’t think that he was ordained to the priesthood.
GT 12:34 Really?
Paul 12:34 Yeah. Yeah.
GT 12:35 Didn’t he serve a mission in Ashtabula, Ohio? Because there’s a newspaper article Mark told me [about.] I remember.
Paul 12:44 Hmmm.
GT 12:45 It said he had served a mission and it was in the Ashtabula Journal. I don’t remember what the name of the article was. He told me that on my podcast. I remember that.
Paul 12:53 Okay. Well, then we should follow that up. We should follow that up. If we miss something, then we can correct it.
GT 13:01 Well, I will say what Mark said, and I’ll provide a link to that, as well. But what Mark said was [that] there were newspaper reports, I’m pretty sure it was in Ashtabula, that called him a leader among the people, a leader and a chief. I remember, because there was kind of a play on the Lamanite chief, Indian Chief. I thought he had served a mission between December of 1830 and February of 1831. And Mark says, there’s no smoking gun. There’s no certificate. I don’t even know if they would have had those in 1830. But Mark says it seems likely that he was ordained. Mark’s case was [that] a lot of times in 1830, especially men were ordained or baptized and ordained simultaneously. And being such a small church, it would make sense that Black Pete might have been [ordained], because he was seen kind of as a leader. Mark also says he believes that Black Pete brought speaking in tongues into the Church, which I think is really exciting. But, yeah, I thought there was some information there, because Mark says, we don’t have a smoking gun. But it seems likely that Black Pete was ordained.
Paul 14:22 Yeah, that could be. I can’t remember. I mean, it’s been a while since I looked at how Matt McBride characterizes it for our biography in Century of Black Mormons. So, I could leave that window open.
GT 14:37 Because you keep shooting all my windows Paul.
Paul 14:39 I know. I know. I know. And you’re correct in terms of those earlier [times.] There are no certificates. There’s no formal bureaucracy to even track this and so the earlier you go, even baptismal records are non-existent. And so, you’re reliant upon a missionary happening to keep a diary and then record the names of those who they baptized. So, it’s sporadic at best in terms of those early records.
GT 15:14 I mean, we can’t even officially say who the first six were. I know Michael Marquardt has tried to do that. We did a podcast about that. But yeah, we’re not even 100% sure who the six people were who baptized on April 6, 1830.
Paul 15:26 Correct. Yeah. So yeah. So, the record keeping was not great and remains spotty, especially baptisms of enslaved people in the South. We’ve identified 26 people who were enslaved at the moment of baptism, but I think the number is probably higher than that. It’s just that the records don’t survive to substantiate that.
GT 15:52 Okay.
Paul 15:53 At least 26 enslaved people were enslaved at the moment of baptism.
GT 15:59 Wow. That’s interesting.
One Drop Rule
GT 16:01 Now, I want to go to one more point, and then we’ll jump into your book. You had just mentioned that it was impossible to police a person’s DNA, the one drop rule. I had Joe Jessop on recently. And he, in my podcast said, there were three pillars of fundamentalism: polygamy, the race ban, and Adam/God theory. These are the three [pillars.] And you know, that might differ depending on your polygamous group, or whatever. But I know in a recent Sunstone presentation, I’m trying to decide whether I should say his name. There is somebody I am trying to get on my podcast. I’ll leave him vague for now. But he was a member of the Apostolic United Brethren. And, as I understand it, he had done a DNA test and found out he had black ancestry, and was basically excommunicated from the AUB, because of that black ancestry, which I personally find appalling. But it goes to this one drop rule. Obviously, we didn’t really have that technology until say, 2000, to even test if somebody had black ancestry. But apparently, you can get kicked out of fundamentalist groups by having one drop. Any comments on that?
Paul 17:34 Wow. Well, that’s not my research expertise. But I think the point that I made earlier, the Century of Black Mormons database just demonstrates the impossibility of trying to police that. I mean, now we can do DNA.
GT 17:54 And they’ll kick you out, apparently.
Paul 17:58 Apparently, but for what purpose?
GT 18:01 To keep it pure. Keep the white race pure, right? I mean, I know that’s a racist thing to say. But I mean, that’s what it is. Right? It’s ugly. It’s ugly.
Paul 18:09 That’s apparently the justification. I mean, I don’t know.
Hardest Book Paul Has Written
GT 18:16 So all right, well, let’s talk about race and priesthood. You gave a presentation at Writ & Vision about a week ago, with Darius Gray. And one of the things that I found really interesting was you said this was it the hardest book you’ve ever written. I guess you haven’t written a lot of books.
Paul 18:43 Yeah, I mean, just in terms of hardest book I’ve ever written simply because I am writing as a Latter-day Saint to fellow Latter-day Saints. So that was not my typical approach in my scholarship. I’m typically writing for an academic audience, not necessarily for a Latter-day Saint audience. And then, also, sort of just identifying myself as a Latter-day Saints, inserting me into the narrative is something I’m not accustomed to. So, because of that, it made it really challenging for me. Yeah, it was hard to figure out the voice for this narrative. And I struggled at first. I sent three draft chapters to the editor at Deseret Book, Lisa Roper, who was fantastic to work with. I didn’t want to get too far into the manuscript and have Deseret Book say, “No, that’s not where we’re looking for.”
Paul 20:26 And so I said, “Hey, Lisa, can you look at these three first chapters and just give me an indication of what you think?” And Lisa is a phenomenal editor. I just had a great experience working with her. And she was she’s really diplomatic. So, what I’m describing is not what she said. But it was basically the message that she conveyed.
Paul 20:52 She basically said like, “You’re keeping your reader at arm’s distance. This is dry and sterile. And you’re trying for academic objectivity. And it just reads like you’re holding your reader out here at arm’s length.” And she was absolutely correct. I don’t think much of those first three draft chapters made it into the final manuscript. I basically had to start over, in other words. And I had to figure out my voice and figure out how I’m going to approach this. And it was difficult. So that’s what made it the most difficult book I’ve written, is just trying to figure out how I’m going to speak as a Latter-day Saint to a Latter-day Saint audience, which was just not something I’m accustomed to.
GT 21:16 Yeah. Well, the other thing that you said was that Deseret Book approached you and said, “We want you to write a book,” and what was your reaction?
Paul 21:26 Well, I was really skeptical, and I said that, I think, the first time Lisa approached me, [which] was in 2018, at the Mormon History Association Conference in Boise, where she…
GT 21:41 You were president at that one, weren’t you?
Paul 21:42 No, no, I was president at the next one. So, I was on the board. I was president at the Salt Lake conference.
GT 21:49 Was it Patrick Mason? Was he president?
Paul 21:51 Yeah, Patrick Mason was president in Boise. And then I was president at the Salt Lake conference the following year. And I just expressed skepticism that Deseret Book would be willing to publish something that I wrote on race and the priesthood.
GT 22:09 Because they didn’t publish your first book, Religion of a Different Color. Did they stock it, even?
Paul 22:16 I think, initially, they did. I think they did carry it on their shelves. I mean, obviously, I’m in an academic position. So, for it to count towards tenure, promotion, anything like that, I have to publish with an Academic Press.
GT 22:31 So, Deseret Book won’t help you professionally.
Paul 22:35 No, not at all. And I wasn’t interested in publishing with them because it doesn’t count professionally for me, and I have to get an academic press. And so, Oxford published Religion of a Different Color. But, Lisa approached me about this. And she described the “Let’s Talk About” series that they were envisioning. And she laid out their big picture vision of a series that was kind of modeled on Oxford’s Short Introduction series, where they write short introductions to a topic, so like…
GT 23:09 Patrick did something with peace and violence.
Paul 23:11 Yes, a short introduction to religion and violence, or Mormonism and Violence. I can’t remember. But yeah, that’s an example. I think his was not an Oxford series.[1] But there are other presses that have these short introduction series. And so, they wanted that model, but aimed not an academic audience, but at a general Latter-day Saint audience, devoid of academic jargon, but still with all of the sources and footnotes and the academic credentials, but still speaking to a lay Latter-day Saint audience. They wanted to tackle topics that are sometimes seen as controversial, to give Latter-day Saints something a little bit more than the Gospel Topics Essays, to sink their teeth into. So, when she described the series, I was intrigued. I think that’s a good idea. I liked the vision that she articulated. But I, nonetheless, expressed my skepticism that something that I wrote [that] Deseret Book would be willing to publish on race, just because I didn’t think they would be willing to go where I would want to go. And Lisa reassured me that they wanted to be open and honest and “Hey, please give us a chance,” is, I think, what I remember. “Hey, we would really like to try this out.” They started this series with other books and they re-approached me and said, “We’re still interested.” One of my conditions was, “You have to read Brigham Young’s 15 February 1852 speech and know that I will be quoting from it. You can’t come to me after the manuscript is completed and say, ‘Hey, you can’t say that.'” So I said, “You have to be aware of what I will be quoting.” And they agreed to that.
GT 25:20 They read the speech.
Paul 25:22 Yeah, they did.
GT 25:22 Have you published that, yet?
Paul 25:23 They did.
GT 25:24 Because that’s coming up in your next book, isn’t it?
Paul 25:29 It is. Yeah. Yeah.
GT 25:30 I’ve been waiting for that speech for six years.
Paul 25:31 [It’s] a separate project. But yeah, that will be coming out. We’ll make all of those speeches publicly available.
GT 25:38 We will have you on again.
Paul 25:39 Yeah. (Chuckling) I will look forward to that. Anyway, I produced the manuscript, and I mean, it now exists.
Wilford Woodruff “One Drop” Problem
GT 25:53 And one thing I want to talk about with that speech-because I think it’s amazing–because it deals, well, I don’t want to say it deals with one drop, but there’s a one drop problem, I guess we’ll say. I believe and correct me if I’m wrong. Wilford Woodruff had quoted Brigham Young as saying something about one drop in the speech. But you said Brigham Young never actually said that.
Paul 26:23 Right.
GT 26:23 So tell us about that little issue.
Paul 26:25 Sure. So, Wilford Woodruff is a legislator in the 1852 territorial legislature. He attempts to capture Brigham Young’s 5 February speech in longhand. He captures roughly 800 words of a 3000-word speech. And I think he gets the general sense of the speech pretty good but makes (I think) some critical mistakes. And one of those critical mistakes is he introduces the language of one drop into his version of the speech. And we then found the Pitman shorthand version, which LaJean Carruth, who’s employed by the Church of Jesus Christ of Latter-day Saints Church History Department, transcribed it, based on the Pitman shorthand version, which was recorded by George Watt. And so that’s how we know [that] we have a much longer speech than what Woodruff captured. And [we know] that Woodruff introduced some critical errors into his version.
GT 27:32 The problem is, people have been using Woodruff’s version for a century.
Paul 27:36 That’s right.
GT 27:36 We still we still don’t have this speech yet.
Paul 27:39 Yeah. {chuckles} We’re working on it. We’re working on it. It will be publicly available. Yeah, so that’s right. Most scholars had relied upon it and Woodruff doesn’t date it, either. So that led to confusion as to the chronology of events at the legislative session. He doesn’t date it as 5th of February. He just sticks it in his journal with no date. And so that also led to confusion amongst scholars. So, we now know it’s a 5th of February speech, and we have the full Pitman transcription. And we will have them side by side, the Woodruff version versus the Pitman transcription version.
GT 28:22 Okay.
Paul 28:22 So scholars can compare across columns.
GT 28:26 Nice.
Paul 28:26 Yeah. And the Pitman version has, “No one of African ancestry can hold one jot or tittle of priesthood.” And I think that’s…
GT 28:40 Jot sounds a lot like drop.
Paul 28:41 I think Woodruff is going with one drop, right? And the speech says one jot or tittle.
GT 28:51 Really, semantically, it isn’t really that much better.
Paul 28:55 Well, but it’s not one drop of African blood. It’s “can hold one jot or tittle of priesthood.” And so, he’s not talking about African ancestry. He’s saying, “If you have African ancestry, you can’t hold one jot or tittle of priesthood.” That is what the Pitman Version says. Woodruff gets “one drop of African blood.” I think he gets confused there.
GT 29:20 Okay. Because one drop was a common phrase of the day…
Paul 29:24 It was.
GT 29:25 …in dealing with slavery and that sort of thing, right?
Paul 29:27 It was. Right.
GT 29:30 This is where my US history is really rusty. Wasn’t it Virginia, or someplace like that talked about one drop of African blood or something?
Paul 29:39 Well, so in the 1850s, enslavers were using the one drop rule for passing on slavery to the next generation.
GT 29:51 So, even if they raped the slave, then the [offspring] could still be a slave.
Paul 29:56 Based on the condition of the mother, right? So a white man raping a black woman, the condition of slavery passes through the mother. So, some states passed these one-drop rules in terms of slavery. They could have 99 white ancestors and one black ancestor, and they could still be enslaved. Then after Plessy versus Ferguson,[2] you have segregation running rampant across the United States. You have some states then trying to define, “How much African ancestry can you have for us to legally segregate you?” And so, in this case…
Paul 31:12 So then it became a segregation issue.
Paul 31:14 It became a segregation issue. And so, some states, this is after slavery has died, so we’re not talking about inheriting slavery. We’re talking about who can legally be defined as black in some states, like the state of Virginia. So, you are remembering that correctly. The State of Virginia, during segregation, does pass a one drop rule, which legally defines someone as black, if they have one drop of African ancestry, in the State of Virginia. They are legally defined as black. It became a segregation issue.
GT 31:13 Wasn’t Virginia, also, the Loving versus Virginia case?[3]
Paul 31:17 Correct.
GT 31:18 Virginia is all over this.
Paul 31:20 Yes. Yeah. There’s a one drop chapter in the book.
GT 31:26 Oh, okay.
Paul 31:27 So, I addressed that in the book, because Latter-day Saints, then, are attempting [something similar.] It plays out in terms of temple admission and priesthood ordination. How much African ancestry can a person have? And I demonstrate a couple of examples where they’re trying to figure this out. Across the course of the 19th century, they increasingly go with a one drop attitude. George Q. Cannon argues for basically a one drop policy in 1900. It’s formally put in place in 1907. So, the Church does adopt its own one drop policy in 1907, simply stipulating that it doesn’t matter how remote a degree African ancestry. So, a person could look white, but if they have African ancestry, then they are barred from the priesthood and temple admission, no matter how otherwise worthy they may be, the policy says. So, it’s not based on worthiness. It’s based on race. And that’s what they attempt to enforce from 1907 onward.
GT 32:40 I mean, I don’t know if this is too inflammatory, but I’m going to say it. It reminds me of the yellow star that the Jews had to wear in Nazi Germany. Right? I mean, isn’t that a similar idea?
Paul 32:56 Well, I mean, this is just an effort at trying to ferret out a racial identity. And, I opened with the Ritchie family, which demonstrates the impossibility of doing that.
GT 33:15 Because Hitler was trying to do the same thing with Judaism. Right?
Paul 33:19 Right. Right.
GT 33:20 It’s just terrible.
Paul 33:21 Yeah.
[1] It was published with Cambridge University Press.
[2] Plessy v. Ferguson, 163 U.S. 537 (1896), was a landmark U.S. Supreme Court decision in which the Court ruled that racial segregation laws did not violate the U.S. Constitution as long as the facilities for each race were equal in quality, a doctrine that came to be known as “separate but equal.”
[3] Loving v. Virginia, 388 U.S. 1 (1967), was a landmark civil rights decision of the U.S. Supreme Court in which the Court ruled that laws banning interracial marriage violate the Equal Protection and Due Process Clauses of the Fourteenth Amendment to the U.S. Constitution. The case effectively legalized interracial marriage throughout the United States.
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