Are LDS Racists? Part II
Has there been a historical case of racism among the Mormons?
Continued from: http://clinchitsoonerorlater.blogspot.com/2018/06/are-mormons-racists-have-they-been.html
If you happened to have read the last post issued posing the question based on summaries and points regarding racism during the 1800s and the LDS Church, you may note that I mentioned baseball.
For the continued review of "Are Mormons racist, or have they been racist historically?" we will proceed to share thoughts and facts, beliefs and precedents from each decade of the 1900s until the 1930s. We will start by addressing the very American subject of its historic pastime, baseball.
Going into its second hundred years as a nation, now solidified with generations of post-slavery former owned and owners, and with a newly formed international footprint (post-Spanish-American War), the United States of America was a melting pot of multiple ethnicities. However, the top three ethnic groups to that point were more or less established as ethnically British, German, or African-American, and by far most of them tended to be Protestant.
The 20th century brought a whole new diverse influx of more ethnic diversity; linguistically, religiously, culturally, the United States grew in complexity with large waves of immigrants who were not the traditional white of Britain or Germany or the black African-American heritage from the legacy of slaves. There were Irish Catholics, Italian Catholics, east European Jewish and other Catholics and Eastern Orthodox from Poland and the Balkans. Asians from the Pacific were coming to the United States, and settling, like Chinese and Japanese; Latinos were finding themselves on the US side across the border from Mexico. Even native Americans were integrating into the larger US context of the American people, groups that had been marginalized were to some degree welcomed into the greater growing society, with far flung natively strong Alaska and Hawaii, Guam and American Samoa incorporating into the land of the free, extended to all.
Baseball became the quintessential American sport, uniting most peoples, at least in the northeast of the country. However, it is well known that blacks were excluded, that they had their own leagues that were not as popular or lucrative as the top league for whites and non-blacks in the original founding 16 US cities of the northeast.
For much of the United States throughout the 20th century baseball indicated normalcy and acceptance. Anyone who wasn't black had a fair shot, at least until it became all integrated by the late 1940s. Then it truly became the fair parameter for judgment across the races. But it was not so in the first half the 20th century.
The Latter-day Saints and blacks both struggled for normalcy and acceptance throughout the early times of the 20th century. African-Americans made up large numbers in the South; millions migrated towards the industrial jobs in the north. Some made their way to the western cities and even agricultural areas of the West Coast, especially California. Mormons slowly spread in some areas to all parts of the country, also to California in larger numbers. Latter-day Saints went to foreign lands and saw significant growth in some areas of the world, including Canada, Mexico, Latin America, parts of Europe, East Asia, and the South Pacific.
I cannot speak from personal experience during the times in the early 1900s, because I was not born until the century was over two thirds over. Also, my ancestors were neither black nor Mormon back then.
However, based on my understanding of how things progressed the last 118 years, here are some impressions.
The 1900s.
With new statehood for Utah (1896), a Mormon state with a decent population, and other LDS settlements in the Inter-Mountain west, its somewhat different former polygamist membership was newly reaching out socially and politically to the rest of the country, and by default to the rest of the world. Latter-day Saints were becoming more racially diverse, but not much in the ways of African-Americans, based on exclusive priesthood and temple polices established by Brigham Young in the 1850s. Blacks were also expanding socially and politically in the United States, but there were obvious double standards in the country socially, economically, and because of inherently unfair de facto and other legal differences between whites and those of color, especially African-Americans (like the infamous Jim Crow laws).
Despite the racial segregation of America's sport baseball, this somewhat unifying institution brought together Catholics and Jews and Latinos, the formerly entrenched White Anglo Saxon Protestants all intermixing with people of all backgrounds, cheering on the new Yankees or Senators or White Sox, regardless of ethnic back ground. Poles and Italians, Jews of all backgrounds, were celebrated as well as the traditional WASPS since the nation's founding.
Granted, the US was a racist or racially divided place; Mormons and blacks fell into that American divide. They did not live close to one another, in general, and their spheres of influence over each other were not great. In sheer numbers, Mormons were pushing above a quarter million members while blacks in the US numbered over 8.8 million nationwide. That is a ratio of 32 to 1, while almost no black Mormons were among the church rolls except the small numbers who had crossed the plains in the original days of the pioneers, albeit minimal per the statistics of the tens of thousands who accomplished this feat. Over the 20th century, the ratio of blacks to LDS has shrunk, which is augmented by the later adoption of the Second Manifesto of 1978. And perhaps the higher birth rates, longer living standards, and conversion rates of the Latter-day Saints helped in the shrinkage. Of this original 32 to 1 ratio.
Jack Johnson, an amazing boxing athlete and black pioneer who probably does not get enough due in US racial history one hundred plus years later, was an example of a black man who broke barriers in the early 1900s. The United States remained painfully segregated 50 years after emancipation (1863). The amazing multi-athlete Jim Thorpe was a native American who proved truly outstanding and gained world-wide respect. But white America was still very exclusive despite amazing athletes such as him. Meanwhile, a few Mormon athletes performed as Olympians, but none to a significant degree of fame or recognizable status. Part of being accepted by the country is becoming a part of the social and sports scene, which blacks were doing, like in the popular sport of boxing.
Conclusion for the 1900s: While the United States was gaining in some significant ways for the progress of newly stated Utahn Mormons and its periphery, and also notable progress was made for African-Americans as they continued to spread across the country, the two populations did not come in contact very much, and did not seem to influence the other much. The great newly codified sport of baseball, while providing equal opportunity for Latter-day Saints in the West, was not existent as a major league sport past the Mississippi River, and neither were American minorities to have much impact in this "northeast sport". These two minorities were still somewhat isolated from "regular" American life, and baseball was indicative of that.
The 1910s:
The World War in Europe from 1914-1918 changed the United States (and the world), proving that America was a global power and that it played a large part in global affairs; that the dough boys were truly "all" Americans, no matter their ethnic origins. In this war it was proven that we all bled the same despite differences in worship and skin color.
By the beginning of the decade (1910) the LDS numbers hit almost 400, 000, which does include international numbers, many of whom would migrate to the US eventually. African-Americans had grown in size to approximately 9.5 million, based on averaging the twenty year censuses surrounding 1910. The ratio of African-Americans to Mormons had dropped below 25 to 1 in a decade.
Conclusion for the 1920s: Culturally and racially the United States became more diverse in the Roaring Twenties; military conflict led to new mixing of social groups previously not involved with each other. Religiously the country became much more Catholic and Jewish, and Mormons continued to expand their sphere of influence, which had some cross over with black populations, most likely in West Coast cities like Los Angeles and California. Did LDS have any influence over racist Jim Crow laws or other attempts at keeping blacks from having political rights? Probably not.
Did statements by former Church leaders like Brigham Young and its exclusive priesthood policy, sometimes in justification for the spiritual nature of "the Negro" not being eligible for priesthood and temple blessings help bolster other white segregationists across the US? Did it help keep African-Americans from integrating into normal American activities and acceptance like major league baseball? I think that the United States was already on this segregationist course regardless of Latter-day Saint practices.
1920 LDS Overall Membership: 525,000
African-American: 10.4 million
Ratio: Approximately 25 to 1 ratio African-American to US Latter-day Saints. (Again, much of that overall number of LDS are internal to the US, perhaps one fifth being non-American).
1930s:
The time of the great Depression affected everyone across all ethnic lines in the United States and around the world. The Church of Jesus Christ of Latter-day Saints and its members weathered the financial storms in decent fashion as an organization and as general members despite universal hardships; some might say that due to some inspired leadership and inherent industriousness of its stalwart members, by virtue of the existential nature of their ways, the LDS more or less did better than most other Americans during the long decade of penury and hardships.
For generations, since its inception in the 1830s until the time of the
Great Depression of the 1930s (100 years, up to five generations of this newly founded people), the Latter-day Saints throughout the base
of the Inter-Mountain West had come to by and large own their land, own their property, and to master it.
I surmise this conclusion and the following general statements more in anecdotal logic than by quantitative proof: the line of reasoning of how land-owning agriculturalists (as many of the LDS of the 1930s tended to be) could be more protected financially than urban based laborers, is a thesis worth considering. In many ways Mormons in the 1930s, at least in the United States, were ready for this crisis of the stock market crash and job losses better than most. Certainly they were better prepared than the blacks of the United States in general, who were largely congregated in many urban areas, or residing in swaths in the US South where there was little wealth in their land ownership.
Having gone through the second most difficult economic crisis in the last 150 years as recently as 2008-2011, there are some corollaries that may be derived in order to analyze how people suffer and what wealth is at risk when economies "go south", or people lose their investments and jobs and chances to get ahead economically.
Despite Jesse Owens proving Hitler absurd in Berlin at the 1936 Summer
Games, the United States was still painfully segregated, was unfair to the hopes and dreams of African-Americans among others, and was by
definition, racist in the rough economic times of this decade. The United States deprived blacks of equal rights, hence the movements in the 1950s and the 1960s that would advance their and other causes.
The Church of Jesus Christ in the 1930s, like the country at large, the governments that ruled the majority of the states and the cities and communities, and many religious and other US social institutions like baseball, golf, and schools, was not inclusive in its policy towards African-Americans. While this missionary-oriented church was attempting to reach out to more parts of the world in diversity, in practice in inclusion of all races (specifically black descendants from Africa).
The next decades would change things for the country and all diverse groups for the better. And the Church would adapt to its policies as well.
1930s:
LDS Overall: 670,000 (possibly 500,000 US-based LDS)
African-American: 11.9 million
(Ratio ) Approximately 24 African-Americans per one LDS member, who were primarily white, minimal members that were black but without priesthood authority or temple access.
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BELOW: SAVED FOR PART III
1940s:
LDS Overall: 862,000
African-American: 12.7 million
1950s:
LDS Overall: 1.1 million
African-American: 15 million
1960s:
LDS Overall: 1.7 million
African-American: 18.8 million
1970s:
LDS Overall: 2.9 million
African-American: 22.6 million
1980s:
LDS Overall: 4.6 million
African-American: 26.7 million
1990s:
LDS Overall: 7.8 million (about 4 million in the United States)
African-American: 30 million
2000s:
LDS Overall: 11.1 million (about 5 million in the United States)
African-American: 39 million
2010s:
LDS Overall (14 million, 6.1 million in the United States)
African-American: 38.9 million (black alone, not counting 1-2 million mixed raced)
