Hugh B Brown risked literally everything to try to overturn the priesthood/temple ban in the LDS Church. For that he was dismissed from First Presidency. Dr Matt Harris discusses Brown’s attempts to end the ban just before Pres McKay’s death, which led to him being dropped from the First Presidency. Check out our conversation…
Don’t miss our other conversations with Matt: https://gospeltangents.com/people/matt-harris/
Copyright © 2024
Gospel Tangents
All Rights Reserved
Except for book reviews, no content may be reproduced without written permission.
Fired From First Presidency
GT 00:13 I’m trying to remember where to go next. I’ve got two or three questions here. I want to do them all. Since we’re talking about the apostles, I want to dive back in. I know we talked about that in our previous interview, but when I read your book, it sounded like there was new information that you didn’t know five years ago. So, let me frame it this way. In 1969, [Michael Quinn] tells a story that there was a vote to rescind the ban, and it was unanimous for all present, but Harold B. Lee wasn’t there. I’m trying to remember. So, basically there was a re-vote, and I remember you said that President Kimball went to President Brown and said, basically, “I’m with you, President Brown, but I fear Elder Lee.”
Matt 1:13 Yes.
GT 1:14 And I think that was the genesis for the 1969 statement, and it wasn’t signed by President McKay, because he died a month later, I think it was.
Matt 1:26 Correct.
GT 1:27 And basically it said, “We don’t know why the ban is, but God knows.” So, then fast forward to 1978 and then the ban is lifted. I remember the question that I had at the time, and I think, at the time, you didn’t know what was Elder Benson’s position in 1969 and 1978? Because when I read that in your book, I was floored to hear, especially President Benson, how he changed. So, can you talk about those two important meetings, as well as the 1969 statement that was a result of that?
Matt 2:18 So there’s two events going on here. One would be September of 1969 where Hugh Brown, he’s a counselor in the First Presidency. When he was called into the First Presidency in 1961, he gave the brethren fits from the get go. He is a liberal Canadian. Those are not my words. Those are words he used. In fact, a couple of years before he died, he gave an oral history with his [grand]son, Ed Firmage, who was a law professor at the University of Utah for his career. Ed passed away a few years ago, and Ed was very close with his grandfather and recognized that his grandfather was a significant leader. So, gratefully, Ed interviewed hours worth of interviews with his grandfather in 1968 and 1969. A little tiny bit of that interview was published by Signature Books in the late 1980s. It’s billed as the memoir of Hugh Brown, and the tiny bit of that, it’s not a very big book. It’s definitely worth looking at. But only a fraction of those dozens and dozens of hours made it into that book. I have all the hours in the transcripts. So, I can tell you what made it in and what didn’t. But maybe 5% of the interview made it in that book. So ,there’s a whole chunk that’s not. Brown was very candid in those interviews. He told his [grand]son, Now, keep in mind he’s in his eighties when he’s giving these interviews, and his mind is still really sharp. And he said to his grandson. His mind is still really sharp. He said to Ed Firmage that I am more a liberal today than I’ve ever been, and the longer I’ve lived, the more I believe in the rightness of my Democratic Party. It’s a good thing Ezra Taft Benson wasn’t in the room. And so that’s what he said. He always identified as a liberal. Those are not my words. [In] reading his politics. That’s how he identified.
Matt 4:34 And so he posed fits for the brethren on two fronts. One was the ban. He never thought it was compatible with the gospel. He never thought it was doctrine, kind of like David O McKay, and he thought it was just a policy and a practice that began in Missouri that Joseph Smith created to appease Missourians. When the Saints went in, they [the Missourians] were pro-slavery and the Saints were–the rumor was they were abolitionists. They were not.
GT 5:02 That was Taggart’s position, right?
Matt 5:05 Well, but Taggart–no, it was Fawn Brodie’s position.
GT 5:09 Okay.
Matt 5:10 And Taggart’s just repeating Fawn Brodie because she’s the first person to create what we call the Missouri thesis, that the ban began under Joseph Smith’s tenure, to show the Missouri government that, “Hey, we don’t believe in racial equality. Look, we’re keeping them out of our ecclesiastical rights.” And nobody accepts this thesis today, I might add. It’s been thoroughly demolished. As I said a minute ago, the ban didn’t even begin with Joseph Smith. But that’s what Fawn Brodie said. And Stephen Taggart and others picked up on it, including Hugh Brown. So Hugh Brown believed in the Missouri thesis. That was \ the prevailing thing of the day. So, Hugh Brown had been pushing the Church to lift the ban, and he pushed for racial equality. He wanted the Church to acknowledge the Civil Rights Act of 1964. Of course, the brethren are pushing back on that. And when he tries to lift the ban in 1969 with the help of David O. McKay’s sons, who are also not in approval of the Church’s race teachings, they gang up on their father, and there’s like three of the boys, and there’s Hugh Brown, and they go to the Hotel Utah, this is in September. they convince him to ordain a Black man to the priesthood. He agrees to do it.
GT 6:26 I remember my jaw dropped on the floor when you told me this.
Matt 6:30 Yeah, he agrees to do it.
GT 6:33 And his name was?
Matt 6:34 Monroe Fleming. He had worked at the Hotel Utah for 26 years. I think he worked–he had various jobs. But one of which I think he worked in the restaurant as a waiter, and he often saw General Authorities coming in. He would serve them food. He saw missionaries in those days, I think it was called the LTM.[1]
GT 6:54 Yeah, Language Training Mission.
Matt 6:55 Yeah, before the MTC today, but the LTM in those days, and the LTM was at that space. And so he got to see a lot of missionaries, too, including the late, great Michael Quinn who talks about meeting him there.
GT 7:07 Oh, wow.
Matt 7:08 Yeah. And so the so they targeted Monroe Fleming because they thought he was a loyal Latter-day Saint. What’s instructive about this story is, for years, President McKay said, “Yeah, I don’t like the ban.” This is in private, he would tell people, “I don’t like the ban, but it requires a revelation. Even though it’s not doctrine, even though it’s a policy, it requires a revelation”/consensus. But now what you have…
GT 7:37 So, you’re saying revelation equals consensus?
Matt 7:39 Yes, so now what you have is in 1969, September, he’s taking a different tact. He’s saying, “Okay, I’ll ordain him.” There’s more to the story that I go into great detail that we don’t have the time to cover here, but he agrees to ordain him. And when the word gets out from Harold Lee and others that this is what the President’s going to do, he’s going to ordain him unilaterally, without consensus–that’s what I’ve learned since our last time. There were some people supporting it, and Spencer Kimball knew about it and supported it.
GT 8:16 Yeah, I knew that.
Matt 8:17 But I wish I knew about other people and their voices with this. But I do know that Harold Lee did not support it because he put a stop to it. Absolutely, he put a stop to it. Hugh Brown was crushed. He thought this was holding the Church back. He thought that it wasn’t scriptural. He thought that there was no proof that the Prophet Joseph Smith had founded the ban. It wasn’t based on revelation. I mean, Brown was a follower of the Bennion report and the conclusions that they drew, and he was also very close friends of Lowell Bennion. So, they put a stop to it. And Brown is depressed. I mean, he’s really depressed. And Brown had struggled with depression throughout his life for reasons we can talk about, maybe on a different occasion.
GT 9:05 Because you’re writing a new book about it.
Matt 9:07 Because I’m writing a book about Hugh B. Brown. I figured if I wrote about the right wing of the Church in Elder Benson, it’s only fair that I write about the left wing of the Church. So this is sort of balancing out the universe. I just hugely admire Hugh B. Brown, as I do Marion Hanks. So Brown is depressed. He’s upset. He’s an older man. There’s a lot of context that we’re not really talking about. But the BYU athletic protests are harming the Church. There are athletic teams that are refusing to play BYU because of the Church’s racial teachings. There’s a federal investigation going on that I’m sure we’ll talk about, where the feds are investigating BYU for alleged civil rights violations, and they’re threatening to close BYU down. I mean, the stakes are high, so Brown’s just sick over all of this. In November, the WAC, the Western Athletic Conference, of which BYU was a part of at the time, they’re going to have a vote to kick BYU out because of the racism. They’re not recruiting black student athletes or black faculty. And so that’s another reason why Brown wants to give black people to priesthood.
Matt 10:28 So the Board of Trustees, which is comprised of the brethren, they decide to allow BYU to recruit a limited number of black student athletes, to get the Feds off their backs and to keep from getting kicked out of the conference. And oh, did I tell you that they were just trying to build a Marriott Center and putting all this money into it, and they were worried they’re building this beautiful building that they’re not going to have any teams to play in. So, in that context, all of that, where they’re fighting with the WAC to not kick them out, they agreed to recruit black student athletes. Brown tells the press, the Stanford University Press and this is after Stanford didn’t want to play against BYU. Brown says, “We’re going to lift the ban.” This is late November of 1969. That’s what produces the First Presidency statement on December 5, 1969, is Brown talking to the press. “We’re going to lift this thing.” He tried in September, two months earlier, didn’t succeed, but he’s doing what he had done before.
GT 11:41 This is the quorum meeting, where– or there was a meeting, Lee wasn’t there.
Matt 11:49 There’s not a meeting.
GT 11:50 Oh, there’s not a meeting.
Matt 11:53 There’s not a meeting.
GT 11:55 There’s not a meeting at all?
Matt 11:56 No, not that I have any evidence for or anybody else.
GT 11:58 I thought Greg Prince said there was a meeting, and it was nine said yes, but Lee wasn’t there.
Matt 12:06 I don’t think so.
GT 12:07 Petersen wasn’t there, if I remember right.
Matt 12:09 No, I’ll stand corrected if– but I don’t think so. Greg and I are friends, and we’ve–yeah, I don’t think so, no.
GT 12:16 Okay.
Matt 12:17 The first person to talk about this was Mike Quinn years ago, but Mike didn’t have any details. He didn’t know about Monroe Fleming. He didn’t have the documents that I have. And as far as I know, and again, I’ll stand corrected if there’s evidence, but I’ve yet to see evidence that there was a vote. What it was, was Harold Lee going around telling each of the apostles they had to change their tune, and there was no vote. That’s the whole thing about this, is that President McKay thought he could do it unilaterally, after years of him saying it would require revelation, he’s changed his tune. His sons and President Brown, and probably Sterling McMurrin behind the scenes, you know, “Just do it, President, do it, do it.” The Church president, giving into peer pressure. But jokes aside, so President McKay changed his tune, and they told him, “You can do this unilaterally. You have the authority as the Church president.” At this point, President McKay is 95, I think he turns 96 that fall. I mean, he’s out of it. He has good days and bad days. And the day that they met with him in late September to get him to change his mind, he was having a decent day. He understood what was going on.
Matt 13:31 And so, Alvin Dyer was at this meeting, he was in the First Presidency, and Dyer was a bulldog in defending the Church’s race teachings. And Dyer is the one that told Harold Lee, “Hey, I’ve got to tell you about this meeting I just went to at the Hotel Utah. It’s not good. You’re going to want to hear about this.” Lee had been in the hospital recovering from an injury or an illness. So, when he got out of the hospital, that’s when he went around to the Twelve and said, “Did you know about this meeting?” Kimball’s like, yeah, I knew what Brown is up to, and I support him. “Not anymore, you’re not…” And Lee, I can’t emphasize enough how much of a dominant personality Harold Lee was. Spencer Kimball, who was a senior apostle at that point, he feared Elder Lee, as did a lot of other authorities, because they knew that he would be the new Church president. And he was such a dominant personality. He was like the polar opposite than to someone like Howard Hunter, who would oftentimes kowtow, not kowtow, but not he was non-confrontational. Howard Hunter was nonconfrontational. And so when people like Boyd Packer and others pressed an issue, even though he had seniority over them, he wouldn’t put up a fight. Anyway, so Harold Lee, whoever knew about it, and it’s not even clear how many apostles knew about it. I just want to be clear on that. We don’t have the evidence, I wish I did. But Harold Lee got Spencer Kimball and others, if they knew about it, to change course. But as far as I know, there has been a vote, or there wasn’t a vote. Because the vote would imply that President McKay try to reach a consensus, and that’s the point of Hugh Brown, he was very astute politically. If you put this to a vote, it will never pass, because Mark Petersen, Benson, the others, they would never have supported it [blacks getting the priesthood.] Harold Lee, Alvin Dyer [would not have supported.] So there is no vote.
GT 15:24 Oh, I thought there was.
Matt 15:26 No, there’s no vote, at least we don’t have evidence for a vote.
GT 15:30 Okay.
Matt 15:31 And that’s the whole point of trying to convince the President that you could do this unilaterally. Because they knew it wouldn’t pass.
GT 15:36 So, it was this leak that Brown did to the Stanford University president, they were going to lift it, that caused the December of 1969 statements.
Matt 15:46 That’s exactly what happened. That’s what happens. And just to put little context to the leak here where Hugh Brown, this is late November of 1969, where Hugh Brown tells Stanford, who had just let it be known to the newspapers and to Wilkinson, that we’re not going to play you anymore. We’re not going to play BYU anymore because it’s a racist institution.
GT 16:08 And so he was like, “Wait! We’re going to lift the ban!”
Matt 16:11 Yeah, Brown said, “Hey, we’re going to lift the ban.” And he had been coordinating this statement with Ken Fitzer, or Fit-zer, I think is how you say it, the president of Stanford. I went through the Fitzer papers at Stanford, which is a marvelous collection. And so he and Brown are coordinating this together, where Brown says, “Hey, I’m going to make a statement to the press, and let’s see if we can put a little pressure here on my colleagues.” This is not the first time Brown spoke to the media about the ban. He did it in 1963, too. And so he’s using external outlets, journalists, to publish stories. I hate to say this, but to embarrass the Church and to push them in a direction, to lift the ban. That’s how, that’s how deep this was for Brown, that he would violate Church protocols by speaking to the press. He knows what he’s doing. This is the second or third time he does this with the race issue. And you wonder why he gets dropped in the First Presidency. So, he spoke to the press, and that angered Harold Lee, and it was confusing to the Saints, that when you read and the AP picks up on this. So he speaks to a press in Palo Alto, and the AP they–wow–so the Associated Press publishes it, too. So, it’s out there, and that’s what motivated Harold Lee to produce this First Presidency statement, even though he’s not a First Presidency member, he’s going to require that this presidency produce a statement.
GT 17:46 But McKay is so sick he can’t sign it.
Matt 17:48 McKay is non-compos mentis, at this point, he’s out of it. And so it falls to Brown and to Tanner to sign their names. And so when the when Harold Lee told Brown that he must do this, I don’t have a recording of the office or a transcript of the meeting, but I’m sure– I do know one thing is that I’m certain that Brown said, “No way I’m not going to sign this.” And then Lee put pressure on him, huge pressure. But Brown, he said, when he read it, he didn’t want to sign it, because it reaffirms the Church race doctrine. It says that we don’t know why the ban began, and I’ll comment on that in a minute why that’s controversial. But the draft that Brown initially read was that it said nothing about civil rights. So he demanded the that Lee put in a statement saying the Church approves of civil rights, and Lee reluctantly agreed to do that. So, Brown wept when he signed the statement. He didn’t want to sign it. He didn’t agree with any of it. But he signed it anyway, because Lee wanted to assure Latter-day Saints and to the larger public that this is still the doctrine of the Church. Contrary to what Brown’s been telling the press, we’re not going to live this ban anytime soon. So they put this together on, I think, December 5, and they hold on to it. They agree to not release it for a while. There are reasons for it.
GT 19:25 They’re probably waiting to get McKay’s signature.
Matt 19:27 No, that wasn’t it. I’m not sure. I have to think about this. It wasn’t that at all. I think they knew he was out of it, by that point. But there was something strategic about it, that they didn’t want it. They wanted to release it, but it could have been the holidays, too. They wanted to have maximum impact. So, wait till after Christmas. And I think January was the targeted date to release the statement. And it was a difficult statement to begin with, because they had taken–there were three people that were asked to produce–this is how they do things at the Church. Harold Lee would write his statement. Homer Durham, who was the president of Arizona State, he’s a political scientist, very close friends with Gordon Hinckley.
GT 20:12 And later, Church Historian.
Matt 20:13 Later Church Historian and General Authority. Homer Durham, was asked to write his a statement. And then Neil Maxwell, who would later become an apostle, was asked to write a statement.
GT 20:25 He was a Seventy at the time.
Matt 20:26 He was a Seventy at the time. Gordon Hinckley was asked to take those three statements and meld them together into one. And Sheri Dew, Gordon Hinckley’s biographer, said that it was the most mentally exhausting task, I think, is how she worded it. So that’s what became the statement. It was something that was melded together. And I want to say a quick aside from the Hanks diary. Hanks was not asked to contribute. But this is Elder Hanks, and why I love him. He writes in his diary. “You know, when I heard about the statement, I thought I was going to contribute my views.” Then when the statement comes out, “they didn’t take any of my views.” That made me laugh, too. I’m like, well, all right, Elder Hanks. I’m glad that you tried. And so they decide to sit on the statement for a while. I think they’re going to release it in January, but they recognize that the brethren are, to the public, they’re not on the same page. And one of the things the brethren want to do is always give the impression that there’s agreement. Here you have the First Presidency counselor telling the Palo Alto Times that we’re going to lift the ban, and then you’ve got this new statement that contradicts that.
GT 21:44 Signed by Brown.
Matt 21:45 Signed by Brown. What is going on here? So that’s what’s going on and on Christmas Day, Brown, I have no idea why he’s talking to the press on Christmas Day, but he talks to a guy named Lester Kinsolving, a journalist in Northern California, and he says, again, “We’re going to lift the ban.
GT 22:04 Oh no. And he’s already signed it.
Matt 22:07 Yes. This is how deep this is for Brown. He’s risking everything by talking to this reporter, “And we’re going to lift the ban. Now, this is the third time he’s talked to a reporter. The first time was in June of 1963, the second time in November of 1969 and now Christmas Day, 1969. I mean, he’s going at it hard. Well, when Kinsolving says, “Hey, they’re going to lift the ban,” he publishes a story that comes out on Christmas Day. Harold Lee explodes in anger, and he fumes to Ernest Wilkinson. He says, “President Brown is talking too much!” He’s angry. And word gets out that Lester Kinsolving and Wallace Turner, with whom Brown had spoken in 1963 and also this New York Times journalist, Turner, was a very close follower of LDS racial teachings. Well, word gets out that the New York Times and The San Francisco Chronicle, where Kinsolving works, they’re going to publish the First Presidency statement. Somebody leaks it to them. Gee, I wonder who it is. {Rick laughs} Now, I want to be clear. I want to be clear. I don’t have any proof that Hugh Brown sent it to them. Come on. Who else sent it to them? {Rick laughs} Where would they have received it? It wasn’t Elder Lee. It wasn’t Elder Hinckley. It wasn’t Homer Durham. it wasn’t Neil Maxwell. So that leaves–this is like Clue. Right? The person in the room with a–so it’s probably, I’m sure, it’s Hugh Brown. So, he lets it be known that this is–so they get word. The brethren [know] that this is going to be leaked, the newspapers are going to publish this statement. So, they decide to publish it early in, I think, January of 1970, the same month where David O. McKay dies. And so when President McKay died in 1970, they dropped Hugh Brown from the First Presidency.
GT 24:27 Yeah.
Matt 24:28 And he’s crushed.
GT 24:29 But he probably wasn’t surprised, was he? I mean, I’m sure he was crushed, but he probably wasn’t surprised.
Matt 24:34 Oh my gosh, that’s the million-dollar question. I’m certain that he probably wasn’t surprised, but it just shows you that he’s willing to risk everything because he believes in racial equality so much. And he really couldn’t sleep at night. He says, “The condition of the Church is keeping me up at night.” And he’s talking about all the race stuff, the federal investigation, the BYU riots. He can’t sleep. He interprets scripture differently from the brethren. He called the curse of Cain and the curse of Ham. He called it, “gobbledy-gook.” He didn’t believe in any of that stuff, the less valiant position. He just thought it was tradition that needed to be overturned. So, he says in private to his friend, J. Willard Marriott, who wrote him a letter. “Oh, President Brown, I understand they’re not going to retain you. I’m so sorry.” And Brown gave him a great response. He wrote, J Willard Marriott back. This is in the Marriott papers at the University of Utah, this letter. And he wrote Marriott back, and he said, “Thank you. I will now relieve myself from many irksome duties that I’ve experienced.” Essentially, it was a positive letter. You know, I’ll go where the Lord needs me. It was positive. But he’s reading and writhing in pain. And just about two days after he wrote Bill Marriott this letter saying, “I’ll go where the Lord needs me,” you know, all that stuff, he has an interview, in which he bears his soul. In the interview, his daughter is with him, and the interviewer asked him, “What do you think about Joseph Fielding Smith? Do you support him in his new role as president?” And Brown snaps at him. He says, “He is 95! He is worn out. He is done.” That’s how he responds.
GT 26:29 Wow.
Matt 26:30 It turns out he was 93, not 95, but that’s what he says in the interview, he was 95. “He is 95. He is worn out. He is done.”
GT 26:38 Yeah, he only had a year left, I think, or so.
Matt 26:41 Yes. The interviewer, of course, you know how interviewers are. Right? They smell blood in the water.
GT 26:51 Who would do such a thing?
Matt 26:53 Oh, my goodness. They smell blood in the water. “President Brown, do say more.” And he does. He says more. He starts talking. Brown, I might add, mostly had a filter on. I’ve read a lot of his interviews, mostly had a filter on. There are a few times in interviews where the filter was out and you get this raw emotion. Well, this is one of the times where the filter was out. So he started to say more about his feelings. He had been dropped. He’s hurt by this, this very proud general authority, Charles Brown or Chuck Brown or Manly Brown, same guy, different names, but Hugh Brown’s son, Chuck Brown said that my dad was a very proud man. He had a big ego. That’s what his son said about his father. And Brown was a magnificent speaker, and just really changed people’s lives through his gift to connect with the Saints. And people would write him. ” I heard your conference talk last night. It changed my life,” and they would list the seven ways it changed their life. I mean, really heartfelt. Then I’d read another letter in the Church Archives, different sermon, different occasion, different setting, same thing. “You changed my life. Here are the eight ways you changed my life.” That’s the gift that he had to speak and your listeners can go, not take my word for it, go punch in Hugh Brown YouTube, and you’ll find some talks.
Matt 28:10 Well, Profile of a Prophet, which is an amazing speech.
GT 28:13 Profile of a Prophet is one of his famous ones. God is the Gardener, The Currant Bush, there’s a number of them that are classics. There’s a number of lesser-known sermons that he gives that are not classics, but he’s just magnificent. I’m a little biased, because I really like him, but I do think that he’s one of the church’s greatest orators of the 20th century. So you have this proud man, and he’s being unceremoniously dropped in the First Presidency, and in this interview in February of 1970, just a few days after the Bill Marriott letter exchange, he gives this raw and uncut interview with this guy, and says that Joseph Fielding Smith’s worn out. And then he talks some more, and he’s telling how he feels. He’s not holding back. And his daughter’s there, and she says, “Daddy, they’re taping this.” He snaps at his daughter. “I don’t give a damn.”
GT 29:10 Really?
Matt 29:11 Yep, wow. I mean, he’s really emotional and raw. Let me say a couple more things about him, if you don’t mind, I’m doing a book on him.
GT 29:20 I don’t mind.
Matt 29:21 Okay, yeah, yeah. So there’s a couple things, I haven’t talked about Brown in public yet, but I’ll share a few things with you here today.
GT 29:31 Love it.
Matt 29:32 So, Brown is dropped. He’s bitter, and I’m not using that word loosely. He is a bitter human being. His kids recognize it. “Daddy, you’ve got to let this bitterness go,” they tell him. So, he’s bitter and so when he’s dropped and President Smith is ordained the next Church President in April of 1970, it’s just customary for the apostles, the brethren [to say] congratulations, President Smith. I’m delighted. I will do whatever you need me to do to build the Church. That’s just customary. Well, Hugh Brown and Zina Brown, his wife, they can’t bring themselves to do that. Now, for your listeners who may not know how this works, when the Prophet dies, the First Presidency is dissolved. When the Prophet dies, the two counselors resume their seniority in the Quorum of the Twelve. The new president can retain the old counselors, if he chooses.
GT 30:34 Which he usually does.
Matt 30:35 Which he usually does. Thank you. That is a really important detail, which he usually does. And so in this instance, Joseph Fielding Smith retained one counselor, but not the other. And the official Church line was, “Oh, President Brown’s health is bad, so he’s going to resume his position in the Twelve.
GT 30:58 And this happened recently with Elder Uchtdorf.
Matt 31:00 It happened with Elder Uchtdorf, yeah.
GT 31:02 …who is kind of the Hugh B, Brown, number two. Right?
Matt 31:05 He’s Hugh B. Brown, number two. And we can talk about, I can speculate a little bit about Brother Uchtdorf in a minute. So, Brown is not retained. The public line of the Church is, oh, it’s his health. No, he wasn’t in great health. But that’s not the reason. I mean, there are plenty of Church presidents who have retained people who were in poor health, over the years.
GT 31:27 Marion Romney was retained, and he was in terrible health.
Matt 31:31 There’s a number of them. So that’s just a throwaway PR line. He’s an activist, and Brown is an activist on the race issue, and he was also badgering, I think, creating some issues with his strident views against the Birch Society. That was part of it, but it was mostly the race issue and speaking to the press, undermining their private deliberations. The brethren are very private their meetings, and they don’t want it out, especially to the press. So, they dropped him, and he’s bitter. In April of 1970, just after President Smith was ordained the next prophet, Hugh Brown’s daughter, Mary Woodward, decides to pay a courtesy call. Her parents don’t know anything about this. So, she goes to the First Presidency, and she tells President Tanner, who is her relative, by the way. He and Hugh Brown were cousins. N. Eldon Tanner and Hugh Brown were cousins.
GT 32:32 Oh, I didn’t know that.
Matt 32:33 They’re both from Canada. And so she knows Uncle Eldon. That’s what she called him. So she writes in her diary, “I went and I paid my respects to Uncle Eldon. He was so gracious, as you would expect.” Right, they’re relatives. “Then I went to Elder Lee,” or now President Lee. She writes, “This is really difficult,” because Lee was arguably the dominant person getting Brown dropped; Well, Joseph Fielding, too, and Lee. Lee felt badly about how it all happened. I mean, they kicked Brown to the curb. I can’t emphasize it enough. They absolutely defrocked him unceremoniously, this proud, effective Church leader. It was hurtful, especially since Brown and Lee used to be close. This drove a huge wedge between them, and that wedge had been growing throughout the years because of Brown’s activism. So, Lee was a family friend, too, including to his daughter, Mary. So, she went into President Lee’s office, and she writes about how difficult it was going into that office, because that’s where daddy’s office was. So, she sees a new person at her father’s chair. She always called him daddy, and all the Brown kids referred to daddy. It was a term of endearment. So, she talked to President Lee, and they had a very cordial conversation. “How’s your father doing?” They are just talking, and that’s his way of saying, “I’m recognizing there are issues.” Later on, President Lee will try to reach out and patch some things. That’s for another conversation, for a different day. But he’s very gracious towards her and very solicitous of her father’s well being, which is touching.
Matt 34:26 Then Mary went to Joseph Fielding next, to give her congratulations. She writes that he was just as cold as the night is long. “He barely looked at me. He couldn’t say a word. I tried to break the ice by saying, ‘Your father married my father and mother so many years ago. They’ve always admired your father.” Just trying to get him to talk. He wouldn’t talk. He was as cold as could be. She writes about all of that in her diary, and then she goes home to her parents and says to her parents, Hugh and Zina, I paid my respects today to the First Presidency, President Smith and his new counselors. Then Zina Brown, her mom, so Zina is Brigham Young’s granddaughter. STthere’s some royalty going on here. And told Zina Brown, she said that I paid my respect. And Zina said, “Oh, bless you, darling.” All of the Brown kids were darling. Again, another term of endearment, which to this day I find this really lovely. “Bless you, darling.”
Matt 35:46 And then she says, “We couldn’t do it.” We, meaning Hugh and Zina should have been the ones doing that. “Congratulations, congratulations. We support you. We sustain you.” All of that. “We couldn’t do that.” But Zina Brown was schooled in what’s etiquette and proper, and even though they had such harsh feelings about how everything just went down, they were grateful that their daughter paid respects as their surrogate, even though two of the three men she visited were warm and the other one wasn’t. Anyway, that’s the bitter stuff.
Matt 36:21 Let me say one last thing about how difficult this is. Hugh Brown, so he died in December of 1975 and there’s a couple things that are relevant to this. One is that Hugh Brown, before he died, Spencer Kimball visited him. Now, he’s depressed. Let me back up just real quick before we get to that visit. When Kimball was the Church president in December of 1973. So, Harold Lee died, Kimball was the next president. Brown was furious. He was furious because–and this time he’s getting really old and kind of cranky. When President Kimball called N. Eldon Tanner and Marion Romney into the [First Presidency as] counselors, he said, “That’s my position. That should be me.” Now, he’s approaching his early 90s at this point. That’s how bitter and heartfelt this is. He still thought that was his position. The last thing I’ll share with you is that before he died, President Kimball visited him, and Brown tried to extract a promise from President Kimball, which is, “Promise me you’ll lift this ban.” President Kimball, said that he would lift the ban, but that it would take time. The time part was the revelation, you’ve got to get consensus, and that requires working with the brethren one by one, because these are guys that are not inclined to lift the ban. And so, he extracted a confession from President Kimball, before he died, that he would lift the ban. And when the ban was lifted in 1978, Hugh Brown had been dead for five years. Mary Woodward writes in her in her diary, she says, “I can’t help but think that this was Daddy’s day, that daddy had a lot to do with this day, and that daddy is,” I think she words the Mormon term the veil, “That daddy is beyond the veil, dancing,” or “He’s happy. He’s shouting his approval.” Three of the brethren, Gordon Hinckley, Jim Faust and Eldon Tanner, each called Ed Firmage the day of the revelation. It’s probably among the earliest phone calls they made. They were each calling different people that had a high stake in this story, including black Latter-day Saints, with whom they were close. The brethren would call them first, among the first. Well among the first called from Faust, Hinckley and Monson– I think it was Monson, they called Ed Firmage and they said, “Your grandfather would have loved to have seen this day,” three different phone calls, and each of those men were teary eyed as they were telling Ed Firmage. So, all this is to say is that they were recognizing the bruises and wounds that Brown had incurred over the ban. This was an olive branch to the Brown family, who’d been so deeply wounded as with Brown, himself, for being dropped because of the race issue. When President Kimball lifted the ban, the family saw it as validation from their ancestor’s efforts to try to get it lifted. So, it’s a moving story in so many ways, but it is a tragic story in the sense that President Brown, I mean, he dies a broken-hearted man because of the way that he was treated toward the latter part of his ministry.
[1] Listener Dan Christensen clarified that “Before the MTC in Provo, all missionaries went through the Mission Home in Salt Lake for a week. Language learners would then move to one of the LTMs—in Provo, Rexburg or Laie. My older brothers and I all did the Mission Home 1964, 1967, and 1971 (two of us then moved to Provo). Our younger brother began his mission at the Provo MTC 1976.
{end of Part 5}
Copyright © 2024
Gospel Tangents
All Rights Reserved
Except for book reviews, no content may be reproduced without written permission.
Podcast: Play in new window | Download (Duration: 41:16 — 37.8MB) | Embed
Subscribe: Email | | More
