Jane Elizabeth Manning James was a remarkable woman who exemplified deep faith and resilience, despite the racism and systemic exclusion she endured within the Church of Jesus Christ of Latter-day Saints. Born free in Wilton, Connecticut, in the early 19th century. As a child, she worked as a domestic servant in a prosperous white household. Though not enslaved, she still lived under the restrictions and limitations placed on Black Americans in a pre-Civil War society.
Her devout Christian upbringing as a Presbyterian laid the foundation for her spiritual journey. When Mormon missionaries preached the restored gospel in her area, Jane embraced the message and converted. Inspired by her new faith, she persuaded several members of her family to join as well. With hope and determination, Jane and eight of her relatives traveled to join the Latter-day Saints in Nauvoo, Illinois. They traveled on foot for nearly 800 miles, after being denied passage on a boat because of their race.
Jane Elizabeth was born to Isaac and Eliza Manning in Wilton, Connecticut, in the late 1810s or early 1820s. While a young girl she lived as a servant—but not a slave—in a prosperous white farmer’s home. Her adherence to Christian principles (she became a member of the Presbyterian church) helped prepare her for the message of two Mormon missionaries who traveled in the area where she lived. When Charles Wandell preached the message of the restored gospel in Connecticut, Jane embraced it and acquainted her relatives with it. As preparations were made for the Saints in the area to immigrate to Nauvoo, Jane and eight members of her family joined the larger group.
Ensign, August 1979, Jane Manning James: Black Saint, 1847 Pioneer By Linda King Newell and Valeen Tippetts Avery
https://www.churchofjesuschrist.org/study/ensign/1979/08/jane-manning-james-black-saint-1847-pioneer
Upon arriving in Nauvoo in 1843, Jane lived and worked in the household of Joseph Smith, the founding prophet of the church. She then followed Brigham Young with other saints to Utah and was among the first to arrive. She is praised for her faithfulness by church leaders, and they even want to relate their “own pioneer forefathers” to her as far as being faithful pioneers.
Among those first Saints to arrive in Utah was Jane Manning James—the daughter of a freed slave, a convert to the restored Church, and a most remarkable disciple who faced difficult challenges. Sister James remained a faithful Latter-day Saint until her death in 1908. …
Sister James, like so many other Latter-day Saints, not only built Zion with blood, sweat, and tears but also sought the Lord’s blessings through living gospel principles as best she could…
My own pioneer forefathers and mothers were among those faithful pioneers who pulled handcarts, rode wagons, and walked to Utah. They, like Sister Jane Manning James, had deep faith in every one of their footsteps as they made their own trek.
M. Russell Ballard, LDS Apostle, The Trek Continues!, General Conference, October 2017
https://www.churchofjesuschrist.org/study/general-conference/2017/10/the-trek-continues?lang=eng
The comparisons end there. Though she contributed significantly to the early church and remained a devout member her entire life, Jane was never allowed to receive the same blessings that white members received.
Pleading With Deaf Leadership
Jane requested temple endowments and sealings multiple times throughout her life, but was denied due to the church’s racial restrictions. She petitioned the First Presidency at least five times to be allowed to enter the temple and be endowed. She was consistently refused due to being a black woman. Her persistence eventually led to an arrangement where James was given a limited-use temple recommend, allowing her to enter the temple to participate in baptisms for the dead by proxy. She was never allowed to be endowed and finally, though unsatisfactorily, was sealed to Joseph Smith, but only as a servant! The church highlights that she has been endowed now, by proxy, but only once the ban was lifted in 1979.
Brigham Young directed that the Endowment House be opened to African American Saints on Friday, September 3, 1875. Jane (Elizabeth Manning) and Frank Perkins went with several other African American Mormons—Samuel and Amanda Chambers, Susan and Ned Leggroan, Annis Bell Lucas Evans, and Frank’s daughter Mary Ann Perkins James. At Young’s direction, the rituals they performed were recorded “to be entered in a Book by themselves; the book to be headed ‘Record of Baptisms for the Dead of the (Seed of Cain’) or (of the People of African Descent).” Jane Perkins was baptized for only one person, a friend from Connecticut named Susan Brown.
By the 1880s, Jane James had started what would become a multi-decade campaign to receive her endowment and be sealed in the temple, privileges that she was denied because she was black. James’s most persistent request was that she be sealed to Joseph Smith as a child pursuant to an offer she said had been made to her by Smith through his wife Emma when James had lived with the Smith family in Nauvoo. James had declined the offer at the time, but she desperately wanted to change her answer now. As James told the story to President John Taylor in 1884, “Sister Emma [Smith] came to me & asked me how I would like to be adopted to them as a Child[.] I did not comprehend her & she came again[.] I was so green I did not give her a decided answer & Joseph died & [I] remain as I am[. I]f I could be adopted to him as a child my Soul would be satisfied.” In addition to requesting sealing to Joseph Smith as a child, James requested permission to receive her endowment and to be sealed in marriage to Q. Walker Lewis, one of only a few black Mormon men to have held the priesthood in the nineteenth century. She also requested endowments for her dead relatives and requested adoption sealing for Isaac James and her brother Isaac Manning. James visited church leaders to talk with them in person; she dictated letters to them; and she had friends write letters on her behalf. … None of her requests were granted during her lifetime…
Nevertheless, Jane James placed great importance on temple rituals. In 1888, she traveled to Logan, Utah to do baptisms for several of her dead female relatives. And in 1894, she went to the Salt Lake temple to be baptized by proxy for her dead niece. She also continued to request permission to receive her endowment and to be sealed as a child to Joseph Smith.
On May 18, 1894, church leaders finally bowed to the pressure Jane James had applied and allowed her to be sealed to Joseph Smith. However, they did not allow her to be adopted as a daughter in his family. Instead, they created a ceremony to seal her to Smith as a “servitor” in eternity. James was not allowed to be present at the ceremony, which was performed in the Salt Lake temple; instead, Zina D. H. Young and Joseph F. Smith served as proxies for Jane James and Joseph Smith. Both Jane James and the Quorum of the Twelve Apostles seem to have found this ritual innovation unsatisfactory. Notes from the Quorum of the Twelve Apostles’ meetings indicate that Jane James continued to request adoption sealing, suggesting her dissatisfaction; and the ceremony was never performed again, suggestion that church leaders were also dissatisfied.
Century of Black Mormons Exhibit: Jane Elizabeth Manning James Biography
https://exhibits.lib.utah.edu/s/century-of-black-mormons/page/james-jane-elizabeth-manning
Here are three of the letters (please comment below if you know of any others):
December 27, 1884
Pres John Taylor
Dear Brother,I called at your house last Thursday to have some conversation with you concerning my future salvation. I did not explain my feelings or wishes to you. I realize my race & color & can’t expect my endowments as others who are white. My race was handed down through the flood & God promised Abraham that in his seed all the nations of the earth should be blessed & as this is the fullness of all dispensations. Is there no blessing for me?
I with my Father’s family came from Connecticut 42 years the 14th of last Oct. I am the only one of my Father’s family that kept the faith. You know my history & according to the best of my ability I have lived to all the requirements of the Gospel. When we reached Nauvoo we were 9 in the family & had traveled 9 hundred miles on foot. Brother Joseph Smith took us in & we stayed with him & his family until a few days of his death.
Sister Emma came to me & asked me how I would like to be adopted to them as a child. I did not comprehend her & she came again. I was so green I did not give her a decided answer & Joseph died & I remain as I am. If I could be adopted to him as a child my soul would be satisfied. I had been in the Church one year when we left the East that was 42 years the 14 of last Oct.
Brother Taylor, I hope you will pardon me for intruding on you so much. I hope & pray you will be able to lay my case before Brother (George Q.) Cannon & Brother Joseph F. Smith & God will in mercy grant my request in being adopted to Brother Joseph as a child.
I remain your Sister in the Gospel of Christ,
Jane Manning James, Letter to John Taylor, December 27, 1884 (minor spelling and grammar adjustments for readability)
Jane E James
https://bhroberts.org/records/G1QSKb-EXVNmc/jane_manning_james_tells_taylor_that_emma_invited_her_to_be_adopted_as_a_child
Three married couples—Jane Elizabeth Manning James (Perkins) and her second husband Franklin Perkins; Samuel Davidson. Chambers and his wife, Amanda Leggroan Chambers; and Amanda’s brother Edward (Ned) Leggroan and his wife, Susan Gray Read Leggroan—were participants in the “temple pro tempore” baptismal service. Annis Bell Lucas Evans and Franklin Perkins’s daughter Mary Ann Perkins James, accompanied them. The group performed forty-six baptisms with the help of white officiators. Samuel H. B. Smith baptized the proxies, and John Cottam performed the confirmations. Abinadi Pratt and Oluf F. Due acted as witnesses. These four white men were regular participants and officiators in the Endowment House in this period. John D. T. McAllister recorded the proceedings. He later became president of the St. George, Utah, and Manti, Utah, temples and worked closely with LDS Church presidents to standardize the endowment and set policy. It seems unlikely this group of African American mormons could have attended the Endowment House together without the patronage of a church leader, and McAllister may have been that leader. He and some of the other officiators were closely associated with President Young and may have received specific instructions on how to record the baptismal data that day.
Tonya S. Reiter, “Black Saviors on Mount Zion: Proxy baptisms and Latter-day Saints of African Descent” in The Ancient Order of Things: Essays on the Mormon Temple, ed. Christian Larsen (Salt Lake City, UT: Signature Books, 2019), 133–34, 136
https://bhroberts.org/records/0JitvC-pic9Cb/reiter_states_that_eight_black_saints_participated_in_baptisms_for_the_dead_in_1875
She was given a patriarchal blessing in October 1889. She didn’t stop there and continued to request church leadership for her own temple endowment and sealing as well as for her deceased family members.
February 7, 1890
Dear Brother (Joseph F. Smith),
Please excuse me taking the liberty of writing to you, but be a Brother. I am anxious for my welfare for the future and I hope to be one bye and bye, bearing the same name has yourself I was requested to write to you. Hoping you will please show kindness to me, by answering my questions, thereby satisfying my mind.
First, Brother James has left me 21 years. And a Coloured Brother, Brother Lewis wished me to be sealed to Him. He has been dead 35 or 36 years. Can I be sealed to him? Parley P. Pratt ordained Him an Elder. When or (how?) can I ever be sealed to Him?
Second, can I obtain my endowments for my dead. Also I had the privilege of being baptized for my dead, in October last.
Third, can I also be adopted in Brother Joseph Smiths the prophets family. I think you are somewhat acquainted with me. I lived in the prophets family with Emma and others, about a year, and Emma said Joseph told her to tell me I could be adopted in their family. She asked me if I should like to. I did not understand the law of adoption then, but understanding it now, can that be accomplished and when?
I have heard you attend to the prophets business in those matters, and so have written to you for information.
Hoping soon to hear from you in these matters.
I remain Your Sister in the Gospel,
Jane Elizabeth James, Letter to Joseph F. Smith, Feb 7, 1890 (minor spelling and grammar adjustments for readability)
Jane E James, Elizabeth
I am Couloured
https://catalog.churchofjesuschrist.org/assets/f22ada32-3117-458b-a390-125f38af1d49/0/0
https://bhroberts.org/records/dAzxtc-zyxuuc
August 31, 1903
President Joseph F. Smith,
I take this opportunity of writing to ask you if I can get my endowments and also finish the work I have begun for my dead. Dear Brother, I would like to see and talk with you about it. Will you please write to me and tell me how soon–when and where. I shall come and I will be there. By doing so, you will be conferring a great favour.
Your sister in the gospel,
Jane E JamesI have enclosed a stamped envelope for reply
Jane E. James letter to Joseph F. Smith, Aug. 31, 1903 (minor spelling and grammar adjustments for readability)
https://content.churchofjesuschrist.org/chpress/bc/PDF/Documents%20from%20catalog/Jane-E-James-to-Joseph-F-Smith-31-Aug-1903-CHL.pdf#churchofjesuschrist
https://bhroberts.org/records/0cg94F-0umeAD/jane_manning_james_asks_j_f_smith_for_her_endowment
Sealed into Slavery
The First Presidency later “decided she might be adopted into the family of Joseph Smith as a servant, which was done, a special ceremony having been prepared for the purpose.” Long after Joseph Smith’s death, the church leadership devised a unique ritual to address her many unfulfilled requests. Rather than allowing her full access to temple blessings, she was sealed by proxy to Joseph Smith—not as a wife, child, sister, or equal, but as an eternal “Servitor.”
I had several meetings with H. B. Clawson Concerning some of our Affairs in Calafornia. We had Meeting with several individuals among the rest Black Jane wanted to know if I would not let her have her Endowments in the Temple. This I Could not do as it was against the Law of God. As Cain killed Abel All the seed of Cain would have to wait for Redemption untill all the seed that Abel would have had that may Come through other men Can be redeemed.
Wilford Woodruff journal, October 16, 1894, Church History Library
https://catalog.churchofjesuschrist.org/assets/d28265c1-ccc6-4ae4-9459-faa685df6424/0/114
The ceremony took place on May 18, 1894, with Joseph F. Smith as proxy for Joseph Smith, and Bathsheba W. Smith as proxy for James (who was still alive, but not allowed in the temple for the ordinance). In the ceremony, James was “attached as a Servitor for eternity” to Joseph Smith. The ordinance record from May 18, 1894, went as follows:
Jane Elizabeth Manning James (a Negro) Do you wish to be attached as a Servitor for eternity to the prophet Joseph Smith and in this capacity be connected with his family and be obedient to him in all things in the Lord as a faithful Servitor? (Yes)
President Joseph F. Smith acting for and in behalf of the Prophet Joseph Smith: Do you wish to receive Jane James as a Servitor to yourself and family? (Yes)
By the authority given me of the Lord I pronounce you, Jane James, a Servitor to the Prophet Joseph Smith (President Joseph F. Smith acting for and and in his behalf) and to his household for all eternity, through your faithfulness in the new and everlasting covenant, in the name of the Father and of the Son and of the Holy Ghost. Amen.
Footnotes:
- Jane Elizabeth Manning (1822-1908) lived with the Joseph Smith family in Nauvoo and was the first known black woman to enter the Salt Lake Valley. She married Isaac James, who later left her and her eight children.
- Because blacks could not receive temple ordinances, this sealing of Man-ning as a servant was a compromise. Manning claimed that Emma Smith, Joseph Smith’s wife, had promised her years earlier that she would be adopted and sealed to the Smith family. In 1895, Church leaders revoked Manning’s sealing, but it was restored in 1902 with Bathsheba Smith acting as proxy.
Notes:
Book of Temple Ordinances, May 18, 1894; pp. 33-34; citing Adoption Record A:26 as quoted in Anderson, Devery S.; The Development of LDS Temple Worship, 1846-2000: A Documentary History
- The official record of this ceremony is Adoption Record, Book A, 26, LDS Church History Library. This source is restricted and therefore not available to most researchers. I have examined photographs of this document. At least three other sources provide transcriptions of this record: David J. Buerger, “Confidential Research Files, 1950-1974” (Salt Lake City), folder 5, 4, David J. Buerger Papers, Special Collections and Archives, Marriott Library, University of Utah; Anderson, Development of LDS Temple Worship, 97-98; and Connell, “Chronology Pertaining to Blacks and the LDS Church | Jane M. James Sealed as Eternal Servant to Joseph Smith | Event View,” http://www.xtimeline.com/evt/view. aspx?id=66094. Unfortunately, each of these transcriptions differs from the original and from the others. While most variations are cosmetic, encompassing details like punctuation and spelling, one is crucial: none of the available transcriptions names Zina D. H. Young as the proxy for Jane James. The original document clearly designates Young as Jane’s proxy. “Chronology Pertaining to Blacks” names Bathsheba W. Smith as Jane’s proxy, Anderson claims that “in 1895, Church leaders revoked Manning’s sealing”, that the sealing “was restored in 1902”; and that the 1902 ceremony was performed “with Bathsheba Smith acting as proxy” for Jane. Anderson, Development of LDS Temple Worship, 97n51. Anderson cites no source to support these claims and has since withdrawn them. Devery Anderson, personal communication with the author, March 6, 2017. Oddly, this ceremony was performed just about a month and a half after President Wilford Woodruff announced that he had received a revelation on adoption, clarifying the ritual. After Woodruff’s revelation, Saints were not to be adopted to people other than their parents. Instead, Woodruff proclaimed at the April general conference that year. “We want the Latter-day Saints from this time to trace their genealogies as far as they can, and to be sealed to their fathers and mothers. Have children sealed to their parents, and run their chain through as far as you can get it.” To be in compliance with Woodruff’s revelation, Jane should have been sealed to her parents-but instead she was attached to Joseph Smith as a servant. Quotation in Irving. “The Law of Adoption,” 312. Jonathan Stapley argues that “it is no coincidence that Manning’s extraordinary sealing occurred mere weeks after Woodruff’s” announcement. Stapley places Jane’s sealing ceremony in the context of an understanding of sealing as creating the “family of God” and Brigham Young’s abiding belief that “black Mormon women and men were not to be integrated into the material family of God.” Stapley, The Power of Godliness, 21-22.
- According to the minutes of a 1902 meeting of the Council of the Twelve Apostles, “President Woodruff, Cannon, and Smith decided that she might be adopted into the family of Joseph Smith as a servant, which was done.” Minutes of a meeting of the Council of the Twelve Apostles, 2 January 1902, as given in “Excerpts from the Weekly Council Meetings of the Quorum of Twelve Apostles, Dealing with the Rights of Negroes in the Church, 1849-1940, George Albert Smith Papers, University of Utah, reprinted in Wolfinger, “A Test of Faith, 151. This, then, was still adoption, but of a different sort. The term “adoption” was the one Latter-day Saints used in official records of sealings of children to nonbiological parents, but, Stapley wrote, “In common parlance and in official discourse [in Utah)… Church leaders and lay members tended to refer to all child-to-parent sealings as adoptions, regardless of biology.” Stapley, “Adoptive Sealing Ritual in Mormonism,” 64. These terminological slippages suggested, again, that the church leadership thought of this ritual as a sealing. For the 1902 meeting, see “Minutes of a Meeting of the Council of the Twelve Apostles, 2 January 1902, reprinted in Wolfinger, “A Test of Faith, 151. See also George Q, Cannon, The Journals of George Q. Cannon, 1849-1901, ebook (Salt Lake City: Church Historian’s Press, 2018), entry for August 22, 1895, which deals with Jane’s request for endowments, rather than sealings. I am grateful to Ardis E. Parshall for alerting me to this source and Matthew J. Grow for his help with it.
https://www.amazon.com/Development-LDS-Temple-Worship-1846-2000/dp/1560852119?tag=circubstu-20
https://bhroberts.org/records/0JitvC-0WsJoH
This ritual stands alone in church history. It reflects the complex and often troubling ways the church half-heartedly attempted to include Black members like Jane while simultaneously excluding them and never granting them full status or blessings. While white members were sealed into eternal family units and offered roles as queens and priests in the afterlife, Jane was given the role of an eternal housemaid.
Despite these indignities, Jane remained faithful. She bore witness of her testimony, raised a family, and remained engaged in her faith community in Salt Lake City. She petitioned church leaders repeatedly for her endowments, always respectfully and with deep sincerity.
Posthumously Endowed
Finally, in 1979, over seventy years after her death, the church performed her endowment and sealing ordinances by proxy, posthumously granting her what she had sought in life. The reason they could finally do this is that the new church leadership lifted the ban on black members from holding the priesthood and entering the temple. The Church’s official history today acknowledges that “although she did not receive the temple endowment or family sealings during her lifetime, these ordinances were performed in her behalf in 1979.” This recognition comes after a lifetime of exclusion and a symbolic act of subservience rather than sisterhood.
Between 1884 and 1904, Jane periodically contacted Church leaders—John Taylor, Wilford Woodruff, Zina D. H. Young, and Joseph F. Smith—and sought permission to receive her temple endowment and to be sealed. At that time, Black Latter-day Saint men and women were not allowed to participate in most temple ordinances. In 1888, stake president Angus M. Cannon authorized Jane to perform baptisms for her deceased kindred. Church leaders eventually allowed her to be sealed by proxy into the Joseph Smith family as a servant in 1894, a unique occurrence. Although she did not receive the temple endowment or family sealings during her lifetime, these ordinances were performed in her behalf in 1979.
LDS Website: Church HIstory Topics: Jane Elizabeth Manning James
https://www.churchofjesuschrist.org/study/history/topics/jane-elizabeth-manning-james
Jane Manning James remains a powerful symbol of faith, devotion, and endurance. Her life raises difficult but necessary questions about race, hierarchy, and inclusion in Mormon history. Even as she was marginalized in life and ritualized in service after death, her voice and legacy continue to inspire those who seek to tell the full story of Mormonism—one that includes not just prophets and pioneers, but the faithful servant who never stopped asking to be counted among the Saints.
Black sisters in the church are rightly incensed by this still today. One, Alice Faulkner Burch, exclaims, “An eternal servant. A slave. A relationship that in the eternal law of God doesn’t exist and that is even today a spit in the face to all black women.”
One particular woman in church history – Jane Elizabeth Manning James […] – stands as an example of the hardship and sadness caused by the priesthood ban in the lives of black women.
With immense hunger to enter the Salt Lake Temple which she saw constructed, Jane wrote at least five letters begging the presidents of the church for her temple blessings.
To President John Taylor, she wrote: “You know my history and according to the best of my ability I have lived to all the requirements of the Gospel.”
Also to President Taylor, she cried: “God promised Abraham that in his seed all the nations of the earth should be blessed. As this is the fullness of all dispensations, is there no blessing for me?”
To President Joseph F. Smith, she begged: “I am anxious for my welfare for the future.”
Jane’s question of “… is there no blessing for me?” shakes as an implicit appeal to God to keep His promise to Abraham and a plea to God’s prophets to bring it into her life.
She proposed various options – including being sealed as a child to Joseph & Emma Smith per an offer they had made, being sealed to Elder Q. Walker Lewis (a black member), and doing the baptisms for her deceased family. Repeatedly she was denied – wholly based not on her personal worthiness but on the color of her skin . . . only because she was NOT white.
Unfortunately, neither righteousness, taking the name of Jesus upon her by baptism, nor her great faith in the Lord qualified Jane to enter the holy temple for herself.
In May 1894, while Jane was still alive, with Joseph F. Smith as proxy for Joseph Smith and Bathsheba Smith as proxy for Jane, Jane was sealed to Joseph & Emma Smith. NOT as one of their children as they had offered and Jane requested. Not as one of Joseph’s wives. But as their eternal servant. From the Salt Lake Temple Adoption Record, Book A, pg 26: “Jane was attached as a Servitor for eternity to the prophet Joseph Smith and in this capacity be connected with his family and be obedient to him in all things in the Lord as a faithful Servitor.”
An eternal servant. A slave. A relationship that in the eternal law of God doesn’t exist and that is even today a spit in the face to all black women.
In 1979, a year after the priesthood restriction was lifted and 71 years after her death, Jane Elizabeth Manning James was anointed and endowed by proxy. Jane finally achieved her heart’s long-sought-after greatest desire.
Jane’s faith kept her anchored to a belief that God is just, even if social conditions are not.
Black Women in the LDS Church and the Role of the Genesis Group, Alice Faulkner Burch
https://web.archive.org/web/20160810213825/http://www.mormonwomenshistoryinitiative.org/mwhit-breakfast-2016.html
Today, the Church of Jesus Christ of Latter-day Saints often praises itself for finally granting Jane Manning James her temple ordinances, though only posthumously, and after decades of institutional neglect. The Church History Topics page lauds her legacy and highlights the 1979 proxy endowment as evidence of spiritual inclusivity and progress. Yet, it conveniently skirts the deeply uncomfortable reality and ramifications that in her life, Jane was sealed to Joseph Smith not as family, but as an eternal servant. This unique ordinance, never offered to white members, sealed a Black woman into divine servitude. The Church celebrates the correction of a wrong while refusing to fully confront the nature of that wrong in the first place.
This whitewashed narrative becomes even more troubling when contrasted with current claims by church leadership that the Church has always been against racism and slavery. While such statements may play well in modern press releases, they ignore the long and well-documented history of racism and exclusion. The sealing of Jane Manning James as a servant for eternity—what can only be described as a theological rationalization of slavery—is another glaring contradiction to those claims. Far from standing against slavery, the early church codified a form of eternal servitude into its holiest rites and denied full access to salvation and exaltation to Black members for generations.
The priesthood and temple ban, which denied Black members like Jane the very ordinances that define Mormon salvation, was not lifted until 1978, over a century after Jane’s faithful walk to Nauvoo. Even then, no apology was offered. No reckoning with the pain caused. Just a quiet policy reversal, and decades of official silence or obfuscation that followed.
To this day, the church continues to shape its history to cast itself in a more favorable light, focusing on faith-promoting fragments, like her devotion, while discarding the full truth. For many of us who have deconstructed our faith, stories like Jane’s are not just footnotes—they are central. They demand that we ask harder questions about the nature of the church’s authority, the real cost of obedience, and the legacies of racism that still echo through church scripture, doctrines, and policies.
If you’ve walked your own road of questions and contradictions, of loyalty and loss, of faith and faithfulness, you’re not alone. Like Jane, many of us once gave everything to a church that never fully accepted us. If you’ve left or are finding a divergent path forward, consider sharing your story at wasmormon.org. Your voice matters. Your journey matters. And telling the whole truth—about our past and our present—is the first step toward any kind of meaningful redemption.
More reading:
- Mormonism’s Legacy of Slavery
- https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Jane_Manning_James
- Racist Brigham Young
- Brigham Young’s Racist Remarks on Slaves, Seed, and Priesthood Doctrines
- Mormons and the NAACP – Blacks and the Priesthood
- Apostles Discuss Reasons For Lifting the Priesthood Ban
- Elijah Able, Early Black Mormon Received Priesthood via Joseph Smith
- http://www.todayinmormonhistory.com/2014/05/120-years-ago-today-may-18-1894.html
- https://www.churchofjesuschrist.org/study/history/topics/jane-elizabeth-manning-james
- Jane E. James letter to Joseph F. Smith, Feb. 7, 1890
- Jane E. James letter to Joseph F. Smith, Aug. 31, 1903
- https://www.churchofjesuschrist.org/study/ensign/1979/08/jane-manning-james-black-saint-1847-pioneer
- https://history.churchofjesuschrist.org/content/pioneers-in-every-land/the-autobiography-of-jane-manning-james?lang=eng
- https://www.blackpast.org/african-american-history/people-african-american-history/james-jane-elizabeth-manning-1813-1908/
- http://www.blacklatterdaysaints.org/manning
- https://www.findagrave.com/memorial/10507905/jane_elizabeth-james
- https://www.sltrib.com/religion/2024/05/23/latest-mormon-land-remembering/
- https://missedinsunday.com/memes/race/jane-manning-james/
- https://www.churchofjesuschrist.org/study/general-conference/2017/10/the-trek-continues?lang=eng
- https://exhibits.lib.utah.edu/s/century-of-black-mormons/page/james-jane-elizabeth-manning
- https://www.familysearch.org/en/tree/person/sources/K2V6-8VS
- https://www.ldsliving.com/is-there-no-blessing-for-me-the-incredible-conversion-and-life-of-jane-elizabeth-manning-james/s/89388
- https://bhroberts.org/records/0JitvC-pic9Cb/reiter_states_that_eight_black_saints_participated_in_baptisms_for_the_dead_in_1875
- https://ordainwomen.org/reflections-of-a-flawed-past-visions-of-a-better-future/
- https://wheatandtares.org/2016/02/22/servant-sealing/
- https://www.reddit.com/r/exmormon/comments/vg5rbb/this_juneteenth_let_us_remember_jane_manning/
- https://catalog.churchofjesuschrist.org/assets/d28265c1-ccc6-4ae4-9459-faa685df6424/0/114