#29, Christopher, yes I deal with that in one of my chapters and draw upon your great article to do so. After the Servant Code in 1852, Utah is rather late in passing its anti-miscegenation law in 1888 which prohibits marriage between whites and blacks and whites and “Mongolians”.

#30, Mark, Thanks. Good question. The bulk of my research is 19th century. I’m struck by how wide the divide was between what Mormons said on the inside and what outsiders perceived and accused Mormons of practicing. The two groups consistently talked past each other. It was a profound disconnect. I don’t know the 20th century story as well. I speculate that if ever there was a convergence it may have been in the early 20th century as Mormons begin to pass as white. Both Mormons and outsiders by then forgot the 19th century black pioneers and assumed that Mormonism was white from the beginning and would always be white. It was a perception that helped Mormons to fit in rather than stand out, especially as separate but equal dominated racial attitudes and white Americans reasserted racial supremacy.

I went back to that TimesCast, and after the reporters got over snickering about the idea that there might be any black Mormons, Ms. Saulny finally landed on “experts seem to say” there are from “500 to 2000 max.”

She’s been a reporter for the Times for over 10 years, and she’s obviously learned her craft well. A quick visit to a few congregations in New York–Brooklyn’s Midwood First Ward could, on a good day, have supplied nearly a quarter of the low end of her estimate–would have shown her how wrong her guess was. And the other (unnamed) reporter even mentioned that the church has congregations in “downtown St. Louis, Hyde Park in Chicago, and Harlem,” but that wasn’t enough to shake her from her conclusion, based on what the “experts” had told her.

Which raises a question about the “public perception regarding Mormons and race.” Has there ever been a time when that perception was in fact based on reality?

Paul, I was intrigued by Henry Turner’s 1883 claim that “all the colored young men marry white Mormon girls”. So I did some quick checking with the 1880 Census. By 1880, there were 29 married couples in Utah where the husband was either “Black” or “Mulatto”. But only seven of these couples were interracial – seven black or mulatto men had married white women. And one of these couples lived in Panguitch, so Turner was unlikely to have known about them. Of course, by three years later, a few more interracial marriages may have occurred.

Of those marriages, I’m finding it difficult to find out which white wives were Mormons. The only one I know of is Thomas Tanner, who married Susannah Hathaway. Susannah had been sealed at 14 to a man nearly 40 years her senior but she soon left him, then married Tanner, a black whitewasher in Salt Lake.

Thus in 1880 at least, only 20% of the married men of African descent in Salt Lake City had married white women. So Turner’s claim of “all” is extremely inaccurate.