On a muggy fourth of July evening, members of the Genesis Group file into a Church of Jesus Christ of Latter-day Saints (LDS) meeting house on the outskirts of Salt Lake City. Under the supervision of the all-white LDS hierarchy, but led by a cadre of black Mormon men, the Genesis Group gathers monthly for social and educational events that are intended to help black Mormons integrate into their local wards and teach them about their rights and duties in the Church’s worship life.¹ At this particular meeting, the members of this increasingly multiracial community—made up of the few hundred African American Mormons living in the Salt Lake area, a growing number of African converts who have immigrated to Utah, and several dozen white LDS families who have adopted black children—have come to hear a history lesson, a story that has as much to do with shaping their present as it does with defining their past.²

On this night, Jane Manning James has come to give her testimony, to speak about how she came to join the LDS Church, and about her unique status as “Auntie Jane,” the best-known black Mormon in the late nineteenth-century Salt Lake Valley. Yet to members of this twenty-first-century Mormon community, fanning themselves with church programs to supplement the church building’s struggling air-conditioning, Jane is much more than their “auntie.” The African American woman making her way to the pulpit clothed in a colorful, multilayered prairie dress and a sunbonnet is their matriarch. Since 1978 when the LDS Church lifted the ban on blacks attaining full Church membership, the improbable journey of an unwed teenage mother and daughter of a freed slave, whose conversion to Mormonism placed her on a path that ran through the center of Mormonism’s nineteenth-century history, has been celebrated on stage, in books, and in documentaries and memorialized in monuments. While she has become a popular topic in articles printed in LDS-sponsored publications, most white Mormons have never heard of Jane Manning James. Among her spiritual descendents at Genesis, however, the mere mention of her name evokes thoughts of essential pioneer Mormonism: strength of spirit and body and long-suffering faith in the face of persecution. For contemporary black Mormons, Jane Manning James serves as the symbolic link that connects them to the mythology of the persecuted Mormon pioneers—the self-described latter-day Host of Israel forced to flee the United States and to seek refuge from religious bigotry in the intermountain West—a mythology that in many ways continues to set the boundaries of Mormon identity.

Jane has been dead for 112 years. The act of presenting Jane’s spiritual testimony on this night falls to Jerri Harwell, a college professor, author, and wife of the Genesis Group’s president, Don Harwell. For the past decade, Jerri has reenacted Jane Manning James for church and civic events throughout the Salt Lake Valley. Drawing mostly from Jane’s short autobiography, Jerri recounts Jane’s experiences as a servant to the first two Mormon prophets, a member of the first wave of Mormon pioneers to settle in Utah in 1847, a mother to a large Utah family, and a faithful, tithe-paying saint until her death in 1908 at the age of 87.³

Jerri dedicates much of her reenactment to describing Jane’s time spent in the Smiths’ “Mansion House,” the seat of political and ecclesiastical power in Joseph Smith Jr.’s Nauvoo, Illinois. In early 1844, new converts Jane and eight members of the Manning family who joined the LDS Church after Jane’s own baptism, trekked by foot from their home in Connecticut to gather with the other saints in the booming city-state on the bank of the Mississippi River.

Citing almost verbatim from Jane’s 1893 “Life Sketch,” Jerri reenacts Jane’s memory of what happened after the family narrowly escaped being jailed for traveling without free papers across Illinois—a state which had some of the strictest black laws in the antebellum North.⁴ Jane recalls fondly that it was Joseph Smith and his wife Emma who initially housed the Manning family when they arrived in Nauvoo. And because Jane grew particularly close to the prophet’s family, when the rest of the Mannings found work and housing elsewhere, the Smiths offered Jane a home in “the Mansion House,” as well as a job as a washerwoman. Channeling Jane, Jerri recounts:

The next morning [Emma] brought the clothes down to the basement to wash. And among the clothes, I found Brother Joseph’s robes. I looked at them and wondered—[as] I had never seen any before—and I pondered over them and thought about them so earnestly, so sincerely that the Lord made manifest to me that they pertained to the new name that is given the saints that the world knows not of.Jane’s quasi-mystical experience with the prophet’s dirty laundry was not the only event suggesting Jane’s close relationship with the Smiths, an intimacy that grew in the few, precious months Jane spent with the family before Joseph Smith was assassinated by an anti-Mormon mob on June 27, 1844.

Sister Emma asked me one day if I would like to be adopted to them as their child. I did not answer her. She said “I can wait awhile so you can consider it.” She waited two weeks until she asked me again. And when she did, I said “no ma’am” because I . . . I didn’t understand or know what it meant!While Jane, a new convert to early-nineteenth-century Mormonism might not fully know “what it meant,” Jerri and the Genesis Group audience certainly understand the significance of this offer of spiritual adoption. In Mormon soteriology, such an adoption would mean that a lowly, black washer-girl would spend eternity with the Smiths, attaining the same spiritual blessings and level of heaven as the prophet himself. Jerri concludes this particular scene with an extended pause, allowing her audience to share, in silence, the recognition of what a missed opportunity this represented.

During the reenactment, Jerri not only conjures Jane’s words, but also Jane’s own colloquial, African American affectations, as Jerri imagines these would be. She draws her words out, dropping “g’s” and consonants along the way. These theatrical stylings serve to remind the saints present that despite the multiracial makeup of today’s Genesis Group, this is intended to be a gathering of Mormonism’s black community. Even the meeting house’s warmer-than-usual temperature is said to add to the ambience: as people found their seats before the service began, a Genesis Group member laughingly offered, “They must have turned down the air-conditioning to make it more ‘black church!’”

While efforts have gone into making this Genesis Group meeting feel and sound “black,” it is also very much Mormon. For example, the group opens the meeting with the singing of the classic LDS hymn “Where Can I Turn for Peace?” followed by the Negro spiritual “Do Lord, Remember Me.” The contrasting styles in which the two songs are performed—the former sung in a staid, on-the-beat manner, the latter shouted, clapped, and even danced out by the community—might seem to represent a cultural chasm between LDS and black church culture. Yet, the shared message in both songs, of deliverance from sorrow and persecution through faith in Heavenly Father, hints at a common ground. This intertwining of black and Mormon identities is essentially the message of Jerri’s reenactment: despite the long-held racialized theology which kept early black Mormons on the margins of the Mormon community and excluded them from official Mormon pioneer history, the fact that Jane’s life story places her at the center of nineteenth-century Mormon history means that black and Mormon are not mutually exclusive identities, and should never have been considered as such. Moreover, embedded in the act of remembering and reenacting Jane’s life story is a more implicit critique of the LDS hierarchy: the LDS Church’s history and theology makers who work in Temple Square fail to recognize black Mormons’ contribution to Mormon history, and likewise fail to recognize the important role black Mormons play in the modern church.

You can read Max’s full article here.

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[Notes from original article]:

1. Mormons are divided geographically into local communities called wards, which are overseen by lay “bishops” who belong to these communities. The Genesis Group is officially a “dependent branch [formed] to serve the needs of African-American Mormons,” and overseen by a member of the Quorum of the Seventy, the international hierarchy based in Salt Lake City.
2. The LDS Church does not publish statistics on the racial makeup of its members. Scholars have estimated that since 1978, when the LDS Church lifted its ban on blacks achieving full membership status, the number of Mormons of African descent has increased from perhaps a few hundred worldwide to a few hundred thousand. Most of this growth has taken place outside the United States, the result of expanding missionary efforts to include blacks in Africa and Brazil. According to the 2009 Pew Forum U.S. Religious Landscape Survey, only 3 percent of Mormons self-identify as black; pewforum.org/Christian/Mormon/A-Portrait-of-Mormons-in-the-US.aspx.
3. Kate B. Carter, The Story of the Negro Pioneer (Daughters of Utah Pioneers, 1965), 11; Jane E. Manning James, “My Life Sketch, as Dictated to Elizabeth J. D. Roundy” (Wilford Woodruff Papers, LDS Church History Library and Archives).
4. In his groundbreaking article on Jane Manning James, Henry Wolfinger points out that while Jane might originally have dictated her autobiography in 1893, it was clearly later revised and updated. For example, Jane calls Joseph F. Smith the Church president, a position that Smith did not assume until 1901. See Henry J. Wolfinger, “A Test of Faith: Jane Elizabeth James and the Origins of the Utah Black Community,” in Social Accommodations in Utah, ed. Clark Knowlton (University of Utah, American West Center Occasional Papers, 1975).

The first edition Book of Mormon did not disappoint. What I had not expected, however, was what had been pasted into the British Library’s Book of Mormon. I came across this letter, dated 28 June 1900:

“My dear Sir:

In reply to your letter of the 11^th inst. concerning Joseph Smith, the alleged Mormon prophet, I will say that the newspaper extract quoted therein has little or no foundation in fact. Joe Smith and his followers resided at various places in Missouri and very frequently were in armed collision with the citizens but there is no record of Smith’s having been wounded and his leg amputated. Smith was killed by a mob on May [crossed out in pencil and written “June”] 27th,1844, at Carthage, Illinois.

Yours Respectfully,

A.A. Lesueur

Secretary of State”

My curiosity was piqued, as I had never previously heard such a rumour of this manner. A handwritten note also included in the beginning of this copy of the Book of Mormon shed further information on this situation:

“From the Chardon (Ohio) Spectator July 12, 1834

‘A Mormon Battle. A Letter has been received by a Gentleman in this neighbourhood, direct from Missouri, stating that a body of well armed Mormons, led on by their great Prophet Joe Smith, lately attempted to cross the river into Jackson County. A party of the citizens of Jackson County opposed their crossing and a battle ensued in which Joe Smith was wounded in the leg, and the Mormons obliged to retreat; that Joe Smith’s limb was amputated, but he died three days after the operation”

Boston Weekly Messenger

July 24, 1834”

I am wondering if perhaps this false story has ties to the story of Joseph Smith’s near-amputation and surgery on his leg when he was a young child? Nevertheless, I find the British Library’s first edition copy fascinating not only for what it is, but what it contains inside and the obvious curiosity of an individual in possession of this copy in the early twentieth century.

We have not, however, said enough of these miserable impostors. The task of exposure (as Mr. Caswall feels) is not a pleasing one ; to repeat blasphemies, to detail profane ceremonies, is an office which needs an apology to the world, and the operation is not made less painful by the ludicrous character of those profanities. We shall, however, and we doubt not Mr. Caswall’s sympathy with us, think ourselves well paid for the degradation of this scavenging work, if one English workman is saved from the peril of this debasing delusion, or one ray of light turned upon the state of society which renders such delusions not only possible but popular. [3]

The Times motivation in approaching the LDS Church with such a perspective and printing the two 1842 articles about Nauvoo, as well as the earlier articles? Preventing the further “loss” of another soul to the Mormons.

Here are the 1842 articles in their entirety (click to view PDF):

2 September 1842

6 September 1842

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[1] “Ireland,” The Times, 6 November 1838.

[2] “A good deal of curiosity has been excited,” The Times, 14 August 1841.

[3] “The City of the Mormons; Or Three Days At Nauvoo,” The Times, 6 September 1842.

The Church History Library is such a wonderful resource, and if you haven’t yet been to it, the “Treasures of the Collection” open house would be a great introduction.

For more information, check out this article at MormonTimes:

http://www.mormontimes.com/people_news/religion/?id=13909

I should have noticed her name previously, as Ardis Parshall mentioned her in the great Sunday School lesson that she delivered late last year (don’t you wish that all Sunday School lessons could be like that?). However, for some reason it was not until this week that I realized that I have not heard anything about her, and according to my Google search, it seems that not very much has been written about her life. We know that she and her husband managed the Farnham Hotel together in Salt Lake. She was born around 1828 in Tennessee (according to census records, although the well meaning but often wrong Pioneer Women of Faith and Fortitude entry for her lists her birthplace as Ohio). She was quite a bit younger than her husband; the 1850 census lists him as 42 and she as 19 (which makes me extremely eager to learn more about their story). Although Pioneer Women lists her as dying on 26 December 1884, the 1880 census lists Elijah Abel as a widower, and so it seems that she died previous to 1880 (I think the DUP source has her date somewhat confused with Elijah’s death date).

So far, I have only done some preliminary research on Abel, so there is much that I hope to do to learn more about her life. As these census records are quite interesting, I wanted to share them here:

1850 Hamilton County, Ohio – Federal Census:

1860 Salt Lake City  – Federal Census:

1870 Salt Lake City – Federal Census:

1880 Salt Lake City – Federal Census:

Understanding more about Mary Ann Abel’s life will contribute to the historiography of race and gender in Utah and within the LDS Church, types of history that are dear to my heart. Please share any information or sources on her that you know of in the comments section below.

Several days after Geissler’s editorial, BYU held its first “Brotherhood Week” on campus. The weeklong event was dedicated to expanding cultural and racial understanding at the university, and was probably partially in reaction to boycotts against the university’s sports teams due to the LDS priesthood ban. The campus event included a panel discussion on the causes and effects of prejudice, a clothing drive co-sponsored with the NAACP, and a display of policy statements from major civil rights groups on civil rights and the organizations’ perceptions of BYU. [2] However, the reaction of several BYU students to Geissler’s editorial largely shadowed and contradicted the intended message of this campus Brotherhood Week. On 6 May 1969, the Daily Universe published a letter from Gary Olsen that was in response to Geissler. In his letter, Olsen referred to King as a “trouble-making Communist” who had frequently broken U.S. laws, instigated violence, and did not merit comparison to America’s Founding Fathers. [3] Olsen employed language of the civil rights movement as Barbara McDaniel had done the year before, but while McDaniel used such rhetoric to call fellow students to action, Olsen did so to declare that he had a dream that Communism might no longer be “disguised as a Christian crusade for civil rights.” [4]

From a second editorial published in the Daily Universe the following day, it is obvious that Olsen’s objection to Geissler’s editorial on King was not the only opposition voiced on BYU’s campus. In “Racial Bigotry: An Open Letter,” Geissler shared the backlash that she had experienced since the publication of her first editorial, which had included sixteen phone calls, several letters, accusations of Communist involvement, a threat “to burn a cross” in her living room, and the placement of a sign reading “Head Nigger” on her newspaper desk. Geissler believed that the refusal of many BYU students to acknowledge the need for improved racial equality in the United States reflected the “two-facedness of those who profess to love their fellow men while refusing to foster true brotherhood.” [5] What is evident from this second editorial is that Geissler interpreted her religious beliefs as a Latter-day Saint to mean that she was to love her fellow man without regard to race, and that she was mystified and disillusioned by the “hypocrisy” that she viewed in her fellow students. [6]

The reactions of students who wrote letters to the editor during the following week further illustrate the varying ways in which BYU students processed their religious beliefs and regional upbringing in terms of the civil rights movement. Jerry Names echoed the statements of another student the previous year on how King’s methods of civil disobedience were unacceptable and Marxist. [7] Another student patronized the negative responses Geissler had received to her editorial and accused King of hypocrisy in his methods of nonviolence. [8] However, several students supported Geissler and expressed their own religious and personal beliefs as correlating with the principle of equality. Lon Wilcox stated that King was “a man of principle” motivated by constitutional ideologies and that those at BYU who spoke disrespectfully about King were not themselves “fit to earn anyone’s respect.” [9] Don Adams expressed his opinion that black students coming to BYU may wrongfully be considered Communist, due to the ignorant stances of many of his peers on the supposed ties between Communism and civil rights. Michael Vanhille denounced the idea that King’s methods of civil disobedience were corrupt, stating instead that King and other civil rights leaders would not have to encourage disobedience to unjust laws if white people had not ignored the spirit of the nation’s founding documents. He reminded his fellow students that the “Founding Fathers broke laws a little more serious than parade ordinances to establish freedom for all Americans,” and then used an LDS scripture to rebuke those who had engaged in discriminatory contention in what was supposed to be Brotherhood Week. [10]

During the 1960s, the Daily Universe served as an important venue for students at Brigham Young University to learn about and discuss Martin Luther King, Jr. and the civil rights movement. Students were influenced by LDS policies on race and the priesthood, but the way that they interpreted those teachings in relation to civil rights differed greatly. For some students, civil rights rhetoric was considered extreme and in violation of LDS beliefs about obeying national laws. Other students viewed racial equality as having a direct correlation with the Christian principles of loving one’s neighbor and adhering to personal beliefs and standards. The differences between students and the heated debates that occurred in the pages of the Daily Universe corroborate that BYU students assimilated their knowledge of LDS teachings largely in terms of their political and regional beliefs, and also indicates that the definitive social unrest of the 1960s greatly affected the lives of students living in “Happy Valley.”
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[1] Judy Geissler, “In Memoriam: M. L. King,” Daily Universe, 30 April 1969.
[2] Ibid., “Clearance Problems, But…’Brotherhood Week’ Begins,” Daily Universe, 5 May 1969.
[3] Gary L. Olsen, Letter to the Editor, Daily Universe, 6 May 1969.
[4] Ibid.
[5] Judy Geissler, “Racial Bigotry: An Open Letter,” 7 May 1969.
[6] Ibid.
[7] Jerry Names, Letter to the Editor, Daily Universe, 12 May 1969.
[8] David Balmford, Letter to the Editor, Daily Universe, 15 May 1969.
[9] Lon Wilcox, Letter to the Editor, Daily Universe, 12 May 1969.
[10] Michael Vanhille, Letter to the Editor, Daily Universe, 12 May 1969.

(When discussing King, I think that it is important to remember that King was a major leader of civil rights, but he was not the only leader. In the US, we often think of the civil rights movement as a cohesive program in which millions of people worked together towards the exact same goals. I am ashamed to admit that it was not until college that I learned that there were many different groups (SCLC, SNCC, Black Muslims, Black Panthers, etc.) who had different perspectives on how to gain greater equality in the United States. I’ve included discussion on many groups and civil rights philosophy in my larger research project, but it is interesting to focus on such a prominent figure of King and analyze from a historical perspective was written about him in the recent past).

As may be expected from the influence of the civil rights movement in American history, news articles in the Daily Universe consistently discussed the civil rights movement and its leaders. On the day before King’s murder, the civil rights news reached the local stage as Georgia state legislator Julian Bond spoke in Provo on the motives behind enduring African-American actions towards equality. Bond was an original member and leader of the Student Nonviolent Coordinating Committee, and his comments were based in his views on what the motivations were for black men and women engaged in civil rights. [1] The Daily Universe published an article about Bond’s speech on the front page of the 4 April 1968 newspaper.

While news of Julian Bond’s visit to Utah was recorded on the paper’s title page, there is no way to know whether or not the Daily Universe would have published news of Martin Luther King, Jr.’s death as front-page news. [2] Because the school went on spring break on 5 April 1968 – the day that most newspapers first reported on King’s assassination – there was no Daily Universe published on the fifth or for several days afterwards. When the newspaper returned from hiatus on 10 April, the only mention of King’s death in the paper was a follow-up editorial based on an editorial published on the 4 April. In that first editorial, the anonymous author had stated that American soldiers killed in Vietnam made “the ultimate sacrifice.” [3] The editorial on the 10 April built upon this rhetoric and stated that King had made the ultimate sacrifice, and that it was “ironical” that “a man who preached non-violence died so violently.” [4] The author then called upon students to recognize the important nature of King’s murder, as they lived in a country “where people were murdered for their beliefs” and yet students might read the paper and complain about the weather during their vacation. [5] The editorial was both an empathetic discussion of King’s murder and a call for students to avoid complacency.

For one student, however, the editorial did not compensate for the lack of news articles on King’s death. On 16 April, student Barbara McDaniel stated her dismay at the newspaper’s second-page discussion of King’s death solely in a letter to the editor. She accused BYU’s administration of feeling as though a crisis had been averted, as they did not have to react to King’s death on campus. She also stated that the prejudice she perceived as existing at BYU meant that people at BYU were “co-conspirators with the assassin of Martin Luther King.” [6] Using civil rights rhetoric from King himself, McDaniel called upon fellow students to take accountability in civil rights inequalities and shared her own “dream” that “freedom will ring from ‘Y’ mountain.” [7]

McDaniel’s strongly worded criticism and call to action initiated further discussion on the topic of King’s death in the following days. In an editor’s note following McDaniel’s first letter, the Daily Universe’s editor tried to quell McDaniel’s accusations by stating that the newspaper had not published articles on King because after spring break, the story of his death was already “dead news” (an insensitive comment that seems to be more of an unfortunate word choice than purposeful degradation). [8] In response, McDaniel wrote again about the offense she took at the Daily Universe’s reporting (or lack of it) on King’s assassination. She cited other newspapers that published news of the event on the front page for several days, and accused the university of practicing isolationism in its unwillingness to acknowledge “an important event affecting the entire world” such as King’s death. [9] Of most interest, however, was McDaniel’s conclusion to her letter. She expressed indignation with the use of the term “dead news,” stating instead that “[a] great man’s death and a tribune to his life is never ‘dead news’ as we testify to every Sunday.” [10] For McDaniel, King’s death was a type of ultimate Christian sacrifice that was to be kept in memory and personal worship.

Viewing King as a Messianic figure would now be (and often is) accepted and discussed by members of the LDS Church, but such was not the case in 1968. While McDaniel’s personal interpretation of her religious beliefs led her to compare King and Christ, the editor opposed such a comparison. In an editor’s note following McDaniel’s letter, the editor simply said, “Your comparison is in poor taste.” [11] As a fellow member of the LDS Church, the editor saw any comparison of King’s sacrifice to Christ as blasphemous. Two days later, another BYU student expressed his own discontent with McDaniel’s expressed opinions on King. He employed another rhetoric often used in the newspaper to support the arguments of Southern students – that King was not someone to be admired, but instead an individual who had frequently disobeyed laws, which went against the LDS principle of “obeying, honoring, and sustaining the law.” [12]

As seen from the discussion of King’s death in the Daily Universe in 1968, BYU students often expressed their attitudes towards civil rights in a manner that evoked LDS teachings and principles. However, students varied greatly in how they viewed LDS teachings in relation to race relations and equality. These teachings affected the way that students processed the civil rights movement, but students often considered these racial teachings in terms of their own personal and regional paradigms. In a time when the meaning of race was frequently discussed and debated, established LDS teachings on race and the priesthood remained recognizable ideas, but it seems that the interpretations of what that meant in terms of secular and religious interaction differed from student to student.
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[1] Dave Fitzpatrick, “Julian Bond Speaks Out For ‘Change’,” Daily Universe, 4 April 1968.
[2] By this point, major civil rights events were mainly seen as front-page material, and had been since the middle part of the decade, so it can be assumed that King’s murder would have been reported on the front page.
[3] Daily Universe, “The ‘What-Kind-Of’ Sacrifice,” 4 April 1968.
[4] Daily Universe, “The Irony Of It All,” 10 April 1968.
[5] Ibid.
[6] Barbara J. McDaniel, Letter to the Editor, Daily Universe, 16 April 1968.
[7] Ibid.
[8] Daily Universe, “Editor’s Note,” 16 April 1968.
[9] Barbara J. McDaniel, Letter to the Editor, Daily Universe, 24 April 1968.
[10] Ibid.
[11] Daily Universe, “Editor’s Note,” 24 April 1968.
[12] Joseph Smith, “Twelfth Article of Faith,” 1842.

In March 1964, the Daily Universe published a series of three editorials on the Nation of Islam, which were most likely reprinted editorials from a national newspaper.[1]  The first of the three editorial was published three days after Malcolm X announced that he was leaving the Nation of Islam, and an editor’s note preceding the first editorial noted that the editorial series was being published given “recent developments in the Black Muslim movement” and “recent publicity” on Cassius Clay and the Nation of Islam.[2] Although the new series was listed under the headline of “Black Muslim Threat,” the editorials discussed the religious movement in more objective and respectful terms than might be expected of an extreme group at BYU. Of particular interest is the editorial discussing the history of the Black Muslim movement, where the author refers to the founder of the Black Muslim movement as having the “reverence and verve of a Mormon missionary” as he taught Muslim practices and beliefs door-to-door.[3]  As the editorials were likely written by a national reporter, this reference shows a consideration of Black Muslims and LDS church members as having similar religious practices and experiences to one another (and potentially reflects that the LDS church was viewed in a similar negative fashion as the Nation of Islam often was). There were no responses to the series of editorials, so one can only speculate on how BYU students responded to the suggestion of a shared experience between Black Muslims and Mormons, but the statement offers a new perspective on how BYU students were introduced to and thought about aspects of the civil rights movement. Furthermore, the publication of the editorials in the Daily Universe reflects an attempt to provide further information to BYU students on how to process the contemporary news events related to the Nation of Islam.

During 1964 and 1965, there were several mentions of the Nation of Islam and Malcolm X in the articles and news snippets of the Daily Universe. These mentions included a few articles in the sports section of the paper on the boxer Cassius Clay, including an article on 24 March 1964 that mentioned that Clay had begun to refer to himself as Muhammad Ali and that he was suspended from his title as the world heavyweight champion.[4]  On 5 February 1965, a large front-page article reported that Malcolm X had visited Selma and announced that he felt the mainstream civil rights movement would not remain nonviolent for much longer.[5]  On 22 February, the paper published an AP article on Malcolm X’s murder on the front page of the paper, as well as a lengthy article on the capture of the suspected killer of the civil rights leader on the third page.[6] An article two days later discussed the destruction of a mosque following Malcolm X’s death.[7]  It is interesting to note that the discussion of the Nation of Islam, Black Muslims, and Malcolm X in the Daily Universe was carried on solely through national news articles rather than student reporter or student letters to the editor, and that these topics were spoken about much more objectively (and sometimes in a more positive light) than mainstream civil rights occurrences.

My main goal now is to figure out for sure whether or not the set of editorials was written by a national reporter or on the BYU level, because that does affect how we interpret the comparison to an LDS missionary. In his autobiography (in collaboration with Alex Haley), Malcolm X refers to a set of editorials published in the early 1960s (before the BYU editorials were published) on the Nation of Islam that brought a lot of attention to the religious group. I am currently working on identifying that set of editorials to see if they are the same as what was published in the DU. If that is the case, then that means that the Daily Universe staff saw a present relevance in the news to the topic and accordingly published previously written material in order to educate BYU students on the topic. I will post an update when I have an answer on this issue, because it greatly affects the interpretation of “non-mainstream” civil rights reporting at BYU, as well as the exact meaning of the LDS reference.

[1] Following the beginning of printing national news from sources such as United Press International (UPI) or the Associated Press (AP), the Daily Universe usually would differentiate as to whether a news piece was from one of these news sources or was written by a BYU student reporter. However, the editorial pieces were less clearly delineated, and so we cannot be sure as to whether or not this series was written by a student reporter. The language, however, seems to point towards a national reporter as the author.

[2] Daily Universe, “I. History,” March 11, 1964.

[3] Ibid.; emphasis added.

[4] United Press International, “Suspension Of Cassius Clay’s Title Recommended For Detrimental Acts,” Daily Universe, March 24, 1964.

[5] Associated Press, “Malcolm X In Selma Predicts End To Nonviolent Civil Rights Movement,” February 5, 1965.

[6] AP, “Malcolm X Murdered While Addressing Rally,” Daily Universe, February 22, 1965; AP, “Negro Suspect Held In Malcolm X Slaying,” Daily Universe, February 22, 1965.

[7] AP, “Muslim Mosque Wrecked By Fire; [Ven]geance Team Seeks Muhammed,” Daily Universe, February 24, 1965.