Main Page: Latter-day Saint Racial History
The Church of Jesus Christ and Black People: Historical Context (Pre-1830)
For thousands of years, slavery was a ubiquitous practice in most civilizations throughout the world, almost never questioned or challenged. The Jews, and later Christians, who compiled the Bible were not exceptions to this norm. Kenton L. Sparks noted, "Modern Christianity maintains that the owning and trading of human beings as chattel is immoral and unacceptable in the eyes of God. How is it possible that this modern theological judgment, now so putatively unassailable and certain, was not reached and preached explicitly by the biblical writers themselves, who wrote under the influence of the Holy Spirit and so presumably knew - or should have known, it seems - that slavery was an abominable practice that dishonored human bearers of the divine image?"
Commenting on the New Testament, Tom Wright wrote, "Paul had a problem. It seems a simple one to us, but we don’t live in his world. Like every person of any substance in that world, Philemon owned slaves. To them, this was as natural as owning a car or a television is for people in the Western world today. Indeed, most people would wonder how you could get on without them. To us, of course, slavery is now abhorrent. To them (as we saw when looking at Ephesians 6 and Colossians 3) it was like electricity, gas, or cars. You couldn't imagine society without it. Suggesting you should get rid of it altogether was about as realistic as suggesting today that we should abandon all electric appliances and petrol-fired transport, including cars and planes."
Slavery took on an unprecedented ethnic component beginning in the 1420s when Prince Henry of Portugal began taking slaves exclusively from West Africa to circumvent Islamic slave traders. Warring tribes sold their captured enemies to the Portuguese and later other Europeans. The belief that Africans were descended from Noah's son Ham dates back at least to Hebraic literature from A.D. 200 to 600, but didn't become widespread until the British "discovery" of Africa in the sixteenth century. Because Ham's son Canaan was cursed by Noah to be a "servant of servants" after he saw his father naked (Genesis 9:25), in the seventeenth century this became a common rationalization for African slavery, which was a major component in the ongoing settlement of the New World. Like slavery in general it went unquestioned and unchallenged for a long time.
Commenting on the New Testament, Tom Wright wrote, "Paul had a problem. It seems a simple one to us, but we don’t live in his world. Like every person of any substance in that world, Philemon owned slaves. To them, this was as natural as owning a car or a television is for people in the Western world today. Indeed, most people would wonder how you could get on without them. To us, of course, slavery is now abhorrent. To them (as we saw when looking at Ephesians 6 and Colossians 3) it was like electricity, gas, or cars. You couldn't imagine society without it. Suggesting you should get rid of it altogether was about as realistic as suggesting today that we should abandon all electric appliances and petrol-fired transport, including cars and planes."
Slavery took on an unprecedented ethnic component beginning in the 1420s when Prince Henry of Portugal began taking slaves exclusively from West Africa to circumvent Islamic slave traders. Warring tribes sold their captured enemies to the Portuguese and later other Europeans. The belief that Africans were descended from Noah's son Ham dates back at least to Hebraic literature from A.D. 200 to 600, but didn't become widespread until the British "discovery" of Africa in the sixteenth century. Because Ham's son Canaan was cursed by Noah to be a "servant of servants" after he saw his father naked (Genesis 9:25), in the seventeenth century this became a common rationalization for African slavery, which was a major component in the ongoing settlement of the New World. Like slavery in general it went unquestioned and unchallenged for a long time.
"Noah Damning Ham" by Ivan Stepanovitch Ksenofontov, nineteenth century.
Europeans had of course long recognized that people from different parts of the world looked different from them, and generally considered those differences to indicate inferiority. Africans were referred to as "Negro", meaning "black" in Spanish and Portuguese, as early as 1442. Beginning in the late 1600s some scientists proposed a polygenesis theory of mankind, believing that some humans were too different to share a common descent from Adam and Eve. John Atkins wrote in 1723, "The black Colour, and woolly Tegument [covering] of these Guineans, is what first obtrudes it self on our Observations, and distinguishes them from the rest of Mankind, who no where else, in the warmest Latitudes, are seen thus totally changed; nor removing, will they ever alter, without missing in Generation. I have taken notice in my Navy-Surgeon, how difficultly the Colour is accounted for; and tho' it be a little Heterodox, I am persuaded the black and white Race have, ab origine [from the beginning], sprung from different-coloured first Parents." For those who didn't believe in the curse of Ham, polygenism became an alternative justification for African slavery.
In his 1735 publication Systema naturae, Carl Linnaeus became the first to classify humans as part of the animal kingdom, and divided them into four geographical varieties: Europaeus albus (European white), Americanus rubescens (American reddish), Asiaticus fuscus (Asian tawny), and Africanus niger (African black). This was a precursor to the concept of race, but Linnaeus did not believe there was any meaningful biological difference between these varieties; he attributed their different skin colors to the different climates in which they lived. Two years later he wrote, "[God] created one human, as the Holy Scripture teaches; but if the slightest trait [difference] was sufficient, there would easily stick out thousands of different species of man: they display, namely, white, red, black and grey hair; white, rosy, tawny and black faces; straight, stubby, crooked, flattened, and aquiline noses; among them we find giants and pygmies, fat and skinny people, erect, humpy, brittle, and lame people etc. etc. But who with a sane mind would be so frivolous as to call these distinct species?"
Philosopher David Hume wrote in 1752, "I am apt to suspect the Negroes to be naturally inferior to the Whites. There never was a civilized nation of any other complexion than white, nor even any individual eminent either in action or speculation. No ingenious manufacturer amongst them, no arts, no sciences. On the other hand, the most rude and barbarous of the Whites, such as the ancient German, the present Tartars, still have something eminent about them, in their valor, form of government, or some other particular. Such a uniform and constant difference could not happen in so many countries and ages, if nature had not made an original distinction betwixt these breeds of men. Not to mention our colonies, there are Negro slaves dispersed all over Europe, of whom none ever discovered any symptoms of ingenuity; though low people, without education, will start up amongst us, and distinguish themselves in every profession. In Jamaica, indeed, they talk of one Negro as a man of parts and learning; but it is likely he is admired for slender accomplishments, like a parrot who speaks a few words plainly."
In 1779 a young anthropologist named Johann Friedrich Blumenbach went further than Linnaeus and suggested that humans could be scientifically divided into five races: the "white" Caucasians, the "yellow" Mongolians, the "brown" Malayans, the "black" Ethiopians, and the "red" Americans. He believed that Adam and Eve had been Caucasians and that their descendants had degenerated into the other races due to environmental factors. In spite of this, Blumenbach did not believe these other races were inferior. Of Africans he wrote, "Finally, I am of opinion that after all these numerous instances I have brought together of negroes of capacity, it would not be difficult to mention entire well-known provinces of Europe, from out of which you would not easily expect to obtain off-hand such good authors, poets, philosophers, and correspondents of the Paris Academy; and on the other hand, there is no so-called savage nation known under the sun which has so much distinguished itself by such examples of perfectibility and original capacity for scientific culture, and thereby attached itself so closely to the most civilized nations of the earth, as the Negro." Nonetheless, his concept of race was weaponized by other academics and lay people alike to further justify slavery and create imaginary divisions within the human family.
Interracial marriage, or miscegenation, was taboo and uncommon. Black men in particular were stereotyped as having heavy libidos and lusting after white women, so that most white people saw a union between the two as frightening and repulsive, with white men especially feeling threatened that their wives would be stolen away. Because people had little firsthand experience with interracial marriage, and believed that the physiological differences between "races" went far deeper than they did in reality, some scholars even maintained that the offspring of such marriages would be sterile like mules and other animal hybrids. White people then had the additional worry that such marriages could threaten their race with extinction.
In his 1735 publication Systema naturae, Carl Linnaeus became the first to classify humans as part of the animal kingdom, and divided them into four geographical varieties: Europaeus albus (European white), Americanus rubescens (American reddish), Asiaticus fuscus (Asian tawny), and Africanus niger (African black). This was a precursor to the concept of race, but Linnaeus did not believe there was any meaningful biological difference between these varieties; he attributed their different skin colors to the different climates in which they lived. Two years later he wrote, "[God] created one human, as the Holy Scripture teaches; but if the slightest trait [difference] was sufficient, there would easily stick out thousands of different species of man: they display, namely, white, red, black and grey hair; white, rosy, tawny and black faces; straight, stubby, crooked, flattened, and aquiline noses; among them we find giants and pygmies, fat and skinny people, erect, humpy, brittle, and lame people etc. etc. But who with a sane mind would be so frivolous as to call these distinct species?"
Philosopher David Hume wrote in 1752, "I am apt to suspect the Negroes to be naturally inferior to the Whites. There never was a civilized nation of any other complexion than white, nor even any individual eminent either in action or speculation. No ingenious manufacturer amongst them, no arts, no sciences. On the other hand, the most rude and barbarous of the Whites, such as the ancient German, the present Tartars, still have something eminent about them, in their valor, form of government, or some other particular. Such a uniform and constant difference could not happen in so many countries and ages, if nature had not made an original distinction betwixt these breeds of men. Not to mention our colonies, there are Negro slaves dispersed all over Europe, of whom none ever discovered any symptoms of ingenuity; though low people, without education, will start up amongst us, and distinguish themselves in every profession. In Jamaica, indeed, they talk of one Negro as a man of parts and learning; but it is likely he is admired for slender accomplishments, like a parrot who speaks a few words plainly."
In 1779 a young anthropologist named Johann Friedrich Blumenbach went further than Linnaeus and suggested that humans could be scientifically divided into five races: the "white" Caucasians, the "yellow" Mongolians, the "brown" Malayans, the "black" Ethiopians, and the "red" Americans. He believed that Adam and Eve had been Caucasians and that their descendants had degenerated into the other races due to environmental factors. In spite of this, Blumenbach did not believe these other races were inferior. Of Africans he wrote, "Finally, I am of opinion that after all these numerous instances I have brought together of negroes of capacity, it would not be difficult to mention entire well-known provinces of Europe, from out of which you would not easily expect to obtain off-hand such good authors, poets, philosophers, and correspondents of the Paris Academy; and on the other hand, there is no so-called savage nation known under the sun which has so much distinguished itself by such examples of perfectibility and original capacity for scientific culture, and thereby attached itself so closely to the most civilized nations of the earth, as the Negro." Nonetheless, his concept of race was weaponized by other academics and lay people alike to further justify slavery and create imaginary divisions within the human family.
Interracial marriage, or miscegenation, was taboo and uncommon. Black men in particular were stereotyped as having heavy libidos and lusting after white women, so that most white people saw a union between the two as frightening and repulsive, with white men especially feeling threatened that their wives would be stolen away. Because people had little firsthand experience with interracial marriage, and believed that the physiological differences between "races" went far deeper than they did in reality, some scholars even maintained that the offspring of such marriages would be sterile like mules and other animal hybrids. White people then had the additional worry that such marriages could threaten their race with extinction.
Very Slow Change
Historian Craig Harline wrote, "Maybe the best reason not to argue that an idea or practice should continue just because it’s been around a long time is slavery. Slavery had been around seemingly forever when some Western Christians began to oppose it in the eighteenth century, setting off a debate in the United States that lasted into the Civil War. The most striking thing about the debate to us might be that those in favor of slavery had the best biblical arguments.
"Both Old and New Testaments assume the existence of slavery and never condemn it. They condemn only masters who treat slaves badly. The Bible taught 'clearly and conclusively that the holding of slaves is right,' said advocates of slavery, who could cite numerous passages specifically saying so. The Baptist minister Thornton Stringfellow wrote in 1860 that God approved slavery not only in the Bible, but in the 'only National Constitution which ever emanated from God.' And since God was the same God yesterday, today, and forever, then it followed that slavery had to be the same too. In fact, anyone in favor of freedom and equality for all, as the Declaration of Independence declared, was essentially rejecting the Bible itself, said Stringfellow, because the Bible was full of sanctioned inequality.
"Those against slavery weren’t simply going to ignore the Bible, of course, any more than Galileo or Calvin would have. They knew they didn’t have any passages on their side to specifically condemn slavery. Their strategy instead was to emphasize passages about human relationships in general, such as the Golden Rule, or Acts 17 (God has made of one blood all nations), or God created all in his own image, and other 'Family of Man' sorts of texts that might be derived from the Bible or from widely accepted principles of the Enlightenment. They also might use the historical approach: biblical passages in favor of slavery reflected the understanding of past societies rather than of some enduring practice. Or they relied on 'the general tenor of scripture.' That’s where lasting principles were to be found, not in specific rules for a specific place and time. Some Christians went even further and said slavery had never been right to begin with but was simply allowed by God because of human weakness."
"Both Old and New Testaments assume the existence of slavery and never condemn it. They condemn only masters who treat slaves badly. The Bible taught 'clearly and conclusively that the holding of slaves is right,' said advocates of slavery, who could cite numerous passages specifically saying so. The Baptist minister Thornton Stringfellow wrote in 1860 that God approved slavery not only in the Bible, but in the 'only National Constitution which ever emanated from God.' And since God was the same God yesterday, today, and forever, then it followed that slavery had to be the same too. In fact, anyone in favor of freedom and equality for all, as the Declaration of Independence declared, was essentially rejecting the Bible itself, said Stringfellow, because the Bible was full of sanctioned inequality.
"Those against slavery weren’t simply going to ignore the Bible, of course, any more than Galileo or Calvin would have. They knew they didn’t have any passages on their side to specifically condemn slavery. Their strategy instead was to emphasize passages about human relationships in general, such as the Golden Rule, or Acts 17 (God has made of one blood all nations), or God created all in his own image, and other 'Family of Man' sorts of texts that might be derived from the Bible or from widely accepted principles of the Enlightenment. They also might use the historical approach: biblical passages in favor of slavery reflected the understanding of past societies rather than of some enduring practice. Or they relied on 'the general tenor of scripture.' That’s where lasting principles were to be found, not in specific rules for a specific place and time. Some Christians went even further and said slavery had never been right to begin with but was simply allowed by God because of human weakness."
The belief that Africans were descended from Ham had fallen into disuse for a time but was revived in the nineteenth century to answer criticisms from evangelical abolitionists. While sharing this belief, abolitionists argued that Africans were descended not from Canaan but from one of Ham's other sons, Cush, or from all four, and that Noah's curse therefore didn't apply to them. Advocates of slavery thus formulated another argument: that Africans were also descendants of Cain, who was cursed for murdering his brother Abel and for loving Satan more than God. Hence they were cursed one way or another.
"Cain Flying Before Jehovah's Curse", Fernand Cormon, 1880. Based on the description in Victor Hugo's La Légende des siècles (The Legend of the Ages), a volume of poems covering humanity's history and evolution.
The actual curse on Cain was being cut off from the presence of God, but it also came with a mark so that people would recognize him and not kill him. The Bible is silent on what this mark was and never claims that it was passed on to his descendants. Even if it was, that wouldn't necessarily mean they were under the same curse forever. But pro-slavery Christians began to argue that this mark was black skin and that the curse justified slavery. In her poem "On Being Brought from Africa to America", eighteenth-century slave and poet Phillis Wheatley wrote:
"Twas mercy brought me from my Pagan land,
Taught my benighted soul to understand
That there's a God, that there's a Saviour too:
Once I redemption neither sought nor knew.
Some view our sable race with scornful eyes;
'Their color is a diabolic dye.'
Remember Christians; Negroes black as Cain,
May be refined, and join the angelic train."
The British colonies in the Americas declared their independence on July 4, 1776. The original draft of this declaration written by Thomas Jefferson, himself a slave owner, included this paragraph: "He [King George] has waged cruel war against human nature itself, violating its most sacred rights of life and liberty in the persons of a distant people who never offended him, captivating & carrying them into slavery in another hemisphere or to incur miserable death in their transportation thither. This piratical warfare, the opprobrium of infidel powers, is the warfare of the Christian King of Great Britain. Determined to keep open a market where Men should be bought & sold, he has prostituted his negative for suppressing every legislative attempt to prohibit or restrain this execrable commerce. And that this assemblage of horrors might want no fact of distinguished die, he is now exciting those very people to rise in arms among us, and to purchase that liberty of which he has deprived them, by murdering the people on whom he has obtruded them: thus paying off former crimes committed again the Liberties of one people, with crimes which he urges them to commit against the lives of another." The passage was removed at the insistence of delegates from South Carolina, Georgia, and various merchants who were still profiting from the Trans-Atlantic Slave Trade.
Ryan P. Williams wrote, "A union of all the states under one constitution and government with slavery... was deemed more important than no union at all. The Founders made concessions to the slave interests in the Constitution to secure a more powerful federal government that would be equal to the task of dealing with slavery when circumstances allowed it to do so. They thought that the most good that could be done was the limitation of slavery and establishment of the political and constitutional conditions to eradicate it....
"There is a powerfully attractive and simple moral view that any compromise with evil is evil and must be rejected. The Founders instead had the more realistic view that politics always strives for justice, but cannot ever achieve perfect justice. The essence of statesmanship is doing the most good under given circumstances and avoiding as much harm as possible. With ratification of the Constitution, the Founders thought they were putting slavery on the road to extinction."
British abolitionist Thomas Day wrote the same year, "If there be an object truly ridiculous in nature, it is an American patriot, signing resolutions of independency with the one hand, and with the other brandishing a whip over his affrighted slaves."
England abolished its slave trade in 1807, largely thanks to the efforts of an alliance of evangelicals and Quakers led by William Wilberforce. The United States Congress abolished its own slave trade the following year. Wilberforce continued fighting to end slavery altogether, and by 1830 was only three years away from victory. In the United States, Williams noted, "The Founders, however, overestimated the prospects for the gradual abolition of slavery. As so often happens in human things, powerful interests and wealth started to pervert principles. Despite the principles of the Declaration, the first Congress's prohibition of slavery in the territories and the abolition of the slave trade, the practice of and profit from slavery increased dramatically in the South after ratification of the Constitution.
"An ideology of anti-black racism at odds with American principles took hold of a good portion of America, as slavery matured in the early 1800s. The old anti-slavery principles of the Revolution that animated the Constitution were displaced in the South by a new set of principles, allegedly rooted in the latest evolutionary science. All men were not created equal, argued prominent men like John C. Calhoun. Instead, it was claimed, different races made their way to power over the course of human evolutionary history. The fact of whites enslaving blacks, under this understanding of morality and history, became a principle after long practice."
During this time, even some Americans who personally opposed the practice distanced themselves from full abolitionists, viewing them as dangerous extremists. And virtually no white people, whether for or against slavery, believed that black people were their intellectual or spiritual equals. This is the context in which all early Latter-day Saints were born and raised, and this is the context in which the Church of Jesus Christ was restored on April 6, 1830. Its founding prophet, Joseph Smith, and everyone around him took for granted the conventional wisdom that Africans were descended from Cain and Ham and that humans were divided into biologically distinct races. And most of them, consequently, also took for granted the inference that "black" people were inferior and cursed.
Next: The Church of Jesus Christ and Black People 1830-1837
Main Page: Latter-day Saint Racial History
"Twas mercy brought me from my Pagan land,
Taught my benighted soul to understand
That there's a God, that there's a Saviour too:
Once I redemption neither sought nor knew.
Some view our sable race with scornful eyes;
'Their color is a diabolic dye.'
Remember Christians; Negroes black as Cain,
May be refined, and join the angelic train."
The British colonies in the Americas declared their independence on July 4, 1776. The original draft of this declaration written by Thomas Jefferson, himself a slave owner, included this paragraph: "He [King George] has waged cruel war against human nature itself, violating its most sacred rights of life and liberty in the persons of a distant people who never offended him, captivating & carrying them into slavery in another hemisphere or to incur miserable death in their transportation thither. This piratical warfare, the opprobrium of infidel powers, is the warfare of the Christian King of Great Britain. Determined to keep open a market where Men should be bought & sold, he has prostituted his negative for suppressing every legislative attempt to prohibit or restrain this execrable commerce. And that this assemblage of horrors might want no fact of distinguished die, he is now exciting those very people to rise in arms among us, and to purchase that liberty of which he has deprived them, by murdering the people on whom he has obtruded them: thus paying off former crimes committed again the Liberties of one people, with crimes which he urges them to commit against the lives of another." The passage was removed at the insistence of delegates from South Carolina, Georgia, and various merchants who were still profiting from the Trans-Atlantic Slave Trade.
Ryan P. Williams wrote, "A union of all the states under one constitution and government with slavery... was deemed more important than no union at all. The Founders made concessions to the slave interests in the Constitution to secure a more powerful federal government that would be equal to the task of dealing with slavery when circumstances allowed it to do so. They thought that the most good that could be done was the limitation of slavery and establishment of the political and constitutional conditions to eradicate it....
"There is a powerfully attractive and simple moral view that any compromise with evil is evil and must be rejected. The Founders instead had the more realistic view that politics always strives for justice, but cannot ever achieve perfect justice. The essence of statesmanship is doing the most good under given circumstances and avoiding as much harm as possible. With ratification of the Constitution, the Founders thought they were putting slavery on the road to extinction."
British abolitionist Thomas Day wrote the same year, "If there be an object truly ridiculous in nature, it is an American patriot, signing resolutions of independency with the one hand, and with the other brandishing a whip over his affrighted slaves."
England abolished its slave trade in 1807, largely thanks to the efforts of an alliance of evangelicals and Quakers led by William Wilberforce. The United States Congress abolished its own slave trade the following year. Wilberforce continued fighting to end slavery altogether, and by 1830 was only three years away from victory. In the United States, Williams noted, "The Founders, however, overestimated the prospects for the gradual abolition of slavery. As so often happens in human things, powerful interests and wealth started to pervert principles. Despite the principles of the Declaration, the first Congress's prohibition of slavery in the territories and the abolition of the slave trade, the practice of and profit from slavery increased dramatically in the South after ratification of the Constitution.
"An ideology of anti-black racism at odds with American principles took hold of a good portion of America, as slavery matured in the early 1800s. The old anti-slavery principles of the Revolution that animated the Constitution were displaced in the South by a new set of principles, allegedly rooted in the latest evolutionary science. All men were not created equal, argued prominent men like John C. Calhoun. Instead, it was claimed, different races made their way to power over the course of human evolutionary history. The fact of whites enslaving blacks, under this understanding of morality and history, became a principle after long practice."
During this time, even some Americans who personally opposed the practice distanced themselves from full abolitionists, viewing them as dangerous extremists. And virtually no white people, whether for or against slavery, believed that black people were their intellectual or spiritual equals. This is the context in which all early Latter-day Saints were born and raised, and this is the context in which the Church of Jesus Christ was restored on April 6, 1830. Its founding prophet, Joseph Smith, and everyone around him took for granted the conventional wisdom that Africans were descended from Cain and Ham and that humans were divided into biologically distinct races. And most of them, consequently, also took for granted the inference that "black" people were inferior and cursed.
Next: The Church of Jesus Christ and Black People 1830-1837
Main Page: Latter-day Saint Racial History
