Introduction to the Series and Episode

John Dehlin [00:00:01] Hi everyone. This is Dr. John Dehlin of Mormon Stories podcast. I want to thank you for joining us today on this epic 17 part series featuring Dr. Matthew Harris and his amazing book, Second Class Black Mormons and the Struggle for Racial Equality. This series has been groundbreaking. We've never had the response so far that we've had in terms of people really valuing our in depth coverage. This groundbreaking book that's talking about the Mormon Church's priesthood and temple ban against black people and then the dynamics, the inner workings, the political machinations of how the sausage gets made in terms of lifting the priesthood ban in the aftermath. So we have some good news and bad news about this series. The good news is thanks to the generous donations of those who have been watching it so far, we've been able to, I believe, more than generously compensate Dr. Harris for his contributions. That's the good news. The bad news is, you know, because we made the promise that 100% of the donations would go to Matt, we have not received any compensation for about the $20,000 of production costs that we incurred to produce this series and that that sort of imbalance would make it so we wouldn't be able to produce series like this going forward. So. So if you value this series, if you want to see the Open Stories foundation also be compensated for its production cost for this series and if you want to see series like this with Matt and with other people continue, we kind of need you to step up and donate to cover our production costs. And it's really easy to do that. All you have to do is go to MormonStories.org donate or go to MormonStories.org and click on the donate button and you can do a one time donation, a recurring donation, and if you want to, you can type Second Class Saints or Matt Harris in the description and that will hopefully allow us to cover our production costs for this epic series. Regardless, we want to thank Dr. Matt Harris for his generosity in doing this series. We want to thank all of you who have supported us. Please go buy this book, Second Class Saints, Black Mormons and the Struggle for Racial Equality. And again, if you're wanting, if you're grateful for this series and you haven't donated and you want to see it continue, please please donate to Mormon Stories podcast. Thanks again to everyone who donated to make the series possible. Thanks to Matt and we hope you enjoy this next episode in the series. Take care. Hello everyone and welcome to another edition of Mormon Stories Podcast. I'm your host, John Dehlin. It is 6-25-2024 and today we're going to be answering the question, what happens when a Mormon apostle, or better said, a member of the LDS Church First Presidency, goes rogue? And doesn't just go rogue, he goes rogue for like a decade. And we're speaking specifically about Hubie Brown, who fought for a good solid 10 years to lift the LDS Church's priesthood and temple band against black people. He fought so hard for so long and he suffered a really, really unfortunate and sad fate at the end of his efforts. And we're going to be telling that story today. We're telling the story of courageous activist, LDS Church or Mormon Apostle and Canadian Hubie Brown. Of course we are telling the story in the context of this amazing book that's new. Go buy it. Second Class Saints, Black Mormons and the Struggle for racial equality by Dr. Matthew Harris. This is part 10 in what we hope to be a 20 part series. So you can, you can enjoy this series as part of the Mormon Stories podcast stream or you can check it out as its own podcast feedback on Spotify, on Apple Podcasts, or on a YouTube playlist by the same name as the book. I'll just remind you all that we're only able to do a limited number of these Mormon stories has put up half, half the donations to paymat for these episodes. We need your support. We've had about 50 or 60 of you step up to donate to this series. 100% of your donations go to Matt. If you want to see this series be completed, Please go to donorbox.org matharris and become a one time or a monthly donor to this series. And again, 100% of your donations go to Matt. And it's just for the completion of this amazing series because this book, like no book that I'm aware of, kind of helps us understand the dynamics of LDS Church leadership and what maybe does and doesn't help affect change, how it works, how the sausage gets made. And it's just a really important contribution to Mormon history. So with that, Dr. Matt Harris, welcome back to Mormon Stories podcast. How are you doing today?

Matt Harris [00:05:16] I'm doing great, John. It's a beautiful summer day in Colorado. How was it in Salt Lake?

John Dehlin [00:05:22] Where is Pueblo?

Matt Harris [00:05:24] Southern Colorado? It's so an hour south of the US Air Force Academy.

John Dehlin [00:05:29] It's a pretty nice, pretty nice town.

Matt Harris [00:05:32] Yeah, it's, it's a working class town. It's a mill town, a still town. And which makes me right at home since I grew up in a paper towel, paper mill town in central Maine. So mill folk, they're my people.

John Dehlin [00:05:44] Nice. All right. All right. Well, we covered chap half of Chapter five in our last episode. And, you know, we talked about BYU and the federal government's push to force BYU to allow black athletes and their attempts to try and force BYU to allow black faculty. We also talked about extensive university protests where other universities were protesting against byu, even to the point of threatening to remove BYU from the WAC or the Western Athletic Conference, and how the combination of federal threats and, you know, university protests forced BYU to eventually allow a handful of black athletes starting in 1970. That's what the half of chapter five of your book that we covered yesterday. Today we're going to talk about the things we've already addressed. So where do you want to begin, Matt?

Pressure on BYU Over Black Athletes in 1969

Matt Harris [00:06:52] Well, that was a good overview from what we talked about in the previous episode. And just to set the scene. So this would be the summer of 1969. This is during the midst of a federal investigation where the university has been put on notice by federal authorities that they had to increase their black student enrollment. And also they had to recruit black faculty lest the federal government strip them of money for the GI Bill. Their students would be prohibited from using the GI Bill, their faculty would be denied science grants, and ultimately they would lose accreditation. Which is a nice way of saying the federal government was poised to shut BYU down. It created a lot of consternation among board members, many of whom are members of the the Quorum of the Twelve Apostles in the First Presidency. And they had never been told from outside agencies like the government what to do, how to run their own school. And so there was a predictable backlash against that. And the board, they were divided in terms of how to respond to the federal government. And some of the board members wanted to cut off all federal funds, thinking that if they did that the federal government wouldn't have any authority over them, which was an erroneous assumption because case law would ultimately rule against that. And the other more pragmatic board members recognized that the federal government meant business and that they had to fall into line and adhere to the suggestions or not suggestions, the policies that the federal government wanted them to follow in order to keep their doors open. And so ultimately, Ernest Wilkinson, the BYU president, he writes a memo. He lays it all out. We've been lying to the federal authorities. We've been telling them, we don't discriminate. You and I both know that we do. And Wilkinson said, this is in the fall of 1969. Wilkinson said in November, In November, coming up, we're going to have a vote and they're going to kick us out of the Western Athletic Conference. Even the University of Utah president, James Fletcher, a good Latter Day Saint John, even he will vote to remove us. And against that backdrop, they were building a new basketball facility called the Marriott center, funded by J. Willard Marriott, Mormon millionaire. And so they were worried they'd be without a conference unless they changed policies. And so they convinced some of the hardliners, Gordon Hinckley and some others, convinced Harold Lee, who was the most powerful man in the quorum of the 12 at the time. They convinced Lee and other holdouts that they had to start recruiting black student athletes and give them scholarships lest the government penalize the institution and indirectly the church. So that's what they do. And in the midst of all of this bad publicity generated by the athletic protests that began in 1968 and is still going strong in the fall of 1969, behind the scenes is an 89 year old counselor, Hubie Brown. We've been talking about him. He had been trying to lift the ban as early as 1961, and he had been, it got to the point 1963, where he leaked private deliberations that the Brethren had been having to a New York Times reporter named Wally Turner. And finally, by 1969, during the crescendo of these athletic protests, and also against the backdrop of the Western Athletic poised to kick BYU out of the conference, Brown teamed up with McKay's sons to pressure the aging prophet to lift the ban. This is all going on at the same time. And they meet August of 1969.

John Dehlin [00:10:43] I have a favor.

Matt Harris [00:10:44] Yeah.

John Dehlin [00:10:44] Since today's episode's going to focus on Hubie Brown, I know that we've introduced Hubie Brown in the past and even talked about his efforts in the early 1960s to try and lift the band. Can, can we just remind our audience or those who are just joining us because of the title of this episode, can we give a tiny bit of background sketch again about Hubie Brown, just really briefly?

Matt Harris [00:11:09] Yes.

John Dehlin [00:11:10] And just a one minute reminder of all his early efforts to try and lift the ban that give a good framework for his renewed efforts in late in the long.

Matt Harris [00:11:20] Yeah, yeah, no, thanks for that reminder. That's important. So Hubie Brown is. He was born in 1883 in the Salt Lake territory. So this is before it became a state. And he moved when he was, I think, 14 to Western Canada, a little place called Spring Coulee just outside of Karsten. And so he spent his formative years in Canada identified as a Canadian as opposed to an American. And when he was young, he had a special patron or a special blessing or special promise, I should say that was given to his ward when Heber J. Grant, the church president, visited. And the president prophesied that one among them would be an apostle one day. And Hugh Brown was told by his bishop and his mother that that was his destiny. He was talking about you, Brown. Brown spent most of his adult life feeling like he didn't measure up. Because each time there was an opening in the quorum of the 12. Beginning as early as 1931, Brown was nominated for an opening in the Quorum but didn't get it. Reuben. Or 1933, Reuben Clark got it. And there were several other times, openings where he was passed over. And I mentioned in the previous episode that he was appointed by President Grant. When Brown was a state president in Salt Lake, he was appointed to a liquor commission. After Prohibition was repealed, he was accused of taking bribes. And it wasn't true. There's no evidence for that. But yet it cast a. A bad. Cast a cloud over his reputation. And they couldn't call him into the 12 because people thought that he took bribes. And he was a Democrat.

Guest [00:12:59] He.

Matt Harris [00:12:59] When he came over in the 1920s to the United States, he joined the Democratic Party, and he became active in Democratic Party politics and all that that entails. He was. He dove in headfirst. And so he embraced the New Deal, he embraced the civil Rights acts, he embraced racial equality. And when he was called into the quorum of the 12 in 1958 at the age of 78, his reputation preceded him. They knew he was a liberal. They knew that he supported civil rights. And President McKay did not have the support of the 12 to appoint him into the 12. Most of the 12 opposed Brown's appointment, but President McKay, who often had a fierce streak, an independent streak, appointed him anyway, much to the consternation of hardliners like Joseph Fielding Smith. So they knew what they were getting when he was ordained to the 12. That this is a guy that supported racial equality, didn't. Didn't support the priesthood and temple ban. What they didn't know is that he would be a crusader. Most general authorities in the LDS Church are not crusaders. They have strong views. They may often present those views behind closed doors, but typically you try to avoid public disagreements with your fellow general authorities because they want to present this unified front. And the church doesn't claim that they don't have disagreements because that would be remiss. But they do try to present a unified front, at least when it comes to doctrine and policy. So Brown threw his colleagues a curveball. This liberal Canadian who's now in a church hierarchy dominated by conservative Republicans from the Intermountain West. And almost immediately he starts to lobby for the priesthood. He starts at 1961, when the church is poised to move into Nigeria. He wants to ordain Nigerians to the Aaronic priesthood with the idea that start there first and then you can ordain them to the higher priesthood or Melchizedek priesthood. And throughout the 1960s, he is just pestering his colleagues in church leadership to ordain them to the priesthood. And as I noted a moment ago, he even reached out to the New York Times to disclose private deliberations that the Brethren had been having about lifting the ban. And that drew him a stern rebuke from the church president, because you're not supposed to take these private discussions and then publicize them. And he's doing this to put pressure on the church, which, I mean, I can't imagine an apostle today doing this talking to a major newspaper outlet like the New York Times. So that's what Brown did. And throughout the 1960s, he is badgering the president over the priesthood ban and also over right wing politics. Brown is really, really bothered by the fact that right wing extremism is beginning to percolate in the church. And it's really instigated by two major figures in Mormonism. One would be Ezra Taft Benson, a member of the Quorum of the Twelve Apostles, a former cabinet secretary in Dwight Eisenhower's presidency. And then Elder Benson's good friend Cleon Skousen, who used to work for the FBI in the 1930s. And then he became employed by BYU teaching religion for a number of years. And so Brown's pushing back on this extremism. He's telling McKay, We've got to squelch these guys. They're talking about conspiracy theories. They're bad mouthing government leaders. They're badmouthing Democrats, saying that Democrats are communists. They're badmouthing civil rights leaders like Dr. King and the NAACP and poor President McKay. He's like being torn like this. He's being torn from the left by his counselor, and he's being torn from the right by Elder Benson, with whom McKay was very close. And so against that backdrop, by the 1960s, Brown had fallen out of favor with President McKay. And they had. These are two headstrong men. They had butted heads over numerous occasions. And Brown knew That if he overstepped his bounds, there was a possibility that he would be shut out from the presidency. And the reason why he knew it is because he had seen two other counselors go through this with President McKay. J. Reuben Clark died a brokenhearted man in 1961 when President McKay, for reasons I won't go into, decided to shut Reuben Clark out of decision making in the last year of his life, the last two years of his life. So Reuben Clark was bitter about that and despondent. Henry Moyle, another counselor, was shut out of President McKay's inner circle. He too was a counselor. And he had fallen under a cloud with President McKay when he had overextended the church's finances. Moyle was a millionaire. He had no problem investing in whatever he wanted to invest in with his private money. And he adopted the same principles with the church funds and some of the brethren, including David O. McKay and also Harold Lee, who are far more conservative when it came to investing. They thought that Moyle was overextending the church's credit and that could ultimately lead the church to bankruptcy. So they were worried about that. And so McKay or Moyle fell out of favor with the president. And now here you have Brown By 1968, just a handful of years after Clark and Moyle, what they had gone through with the president, he too is following a similar path and he's brokenhearted about it. And so in 1969, in August of 1969, Hugh Brown has lunch meeting with several high profile Latter Day Saints. I wish I had a tape recorder. I wish I was a fly on the wall and to hear exactly what they talked about. I have an idea because I got references and letters and diary entries, but I don't have the full transcript because it was just a meeting and a lunch among friends. But Hugh Brown was at that meeting at the Hotel Utah.

Secret Church Meeting with Ban Critics

John Dehlin [00:19:01] Tell us, I was blown away by this. Tell us who was in attendance.

Matt Harris [00:19:05] Yeah, Hugh Brown was there. Sterling McMurran is there. This is the guy that had been pestering the Brethren for years to lift the ban, who had been speaking to the naacp, calling the church's race teachings, quote, crude moral nonsense and having people. McMurran was a government official in the Kennedy and Johnson administration, so he had clout. And Lowell Bennion was there, who had been recently fired a handful of years earlier from the church education system for speaking out against the band. And then finally, oh, Marion Hanks was there, who had been. Who was opposed to the ban but didn't speak out publicly. But certainly Made his views known privately. And then finally, Obert Tanner was there. O.C. tanner, your listeners in Utah will know Tanner Jewelry. O.C. tanner was not just a businessman, an entrepreneur, but he also taught philosophy at the University of Utah for years with Sterling McMurran. So they were very close. And he was also close friends with Gordon hinckley. This is O.C. tanner. And so I just want to pause

John Dehlin [00:20:15] and just say, like these were all. I mean, We've covered Sterling McMurran in past episodes. He was literally an apostate by all definitions. And he was known to no longer be a believer in the church's truth claims. So that's fascinating. And he was giving these NCAA speeches that were causing great distress to the church. I think it's probably pretty clear that Obert Tanner wasn't a literal believer in the Mormon Church's truth claims by the late 60s. Is that fair to say?

Matt Harris [00:20:47] Oh, it's more than fair to say. He had retired from the church probably decade and a half earlier than that. John.

John Dehlin [00:20:54] And then Lowell Benyan, again, like you said, had been fired for a lot of the apostles. Not liking his stance on the band. So I'm just trying to imagine today a member of the LDS Church First Presidency meeting privately with like three of the most outspoken apostate slash critics of the church. It's kind of a mind blowing setting in September of 1969. You just can't imagine Dallin H. Oaks or Henry B. Eyring, you know, one of the members of the first presidency meeting today in 2024 with three or four of the top church critics slash apostates. It's a mind blowing meeting, isn't it?

O.C. Tanner and His Role in the Debate

Matt Harris [00:21:40] Well, it is. There's. I think that there's a lot of truth to that, but I think its context is important here, which is that O.C. tanner, anyone who knew O.C. tanner and Sterling McMurran and Lil Bennion, but we'll leave Lil Bennion away out of it because he was an active practicing believer, albeit unorthodox. But McMurran and O.C. tanner were so well respected by a number of the Brethren for two reasons. Number one, they knew the Brethren, some of the Brethren personally. And the Brethren, like Gordon Hinckley, was close friends with O.C. tanner in spite of their religious differences. Hinckley always respected OC Tanner for his integrity. And McMurran, even though he drove the Brethren crazy with his open denunciations of Mormon racial theology, they knew that his integrity was impeccable, that he would always try to do the Right thing. If the church needed to be criticized, he would criticize it. If the church needed to be defended, he would defend it. And just because he didn't believe in the Church's truth claims, does not believe. He doesn't believe in the Church. He is a cultural Mormon. His identity is tied up in the church and it's hard for non believer or for believers to understand. But McMurran always considered himself a Mormon to the day he died and a non believing Mormon, an unorthodox Mormon, but he was a Mormon nonetheless. And so he would criticize the church and he would also defend the church. And just to give your listeners a sense of how some of the brother, and I say some because Harold Lee and Joseph fielding Smith hated McMurran. But some of the brethren, including President McKay, with whom he was close friends, when the Church needed a representative to sort of give an intellectual overview of a church's theology, they dispatched McMurran in 1959, the Pittsburgh Seminary in Pittsburgh, Pennsylvania, they were doing some series on different American religions and they wanted to showcase Mormonism. So they wrote President McKay a letter, the dean of the seminary, and he said, hey, we want to have one of your general authorities come and give us an overview of the Church's teachings and its theology and its history of all the people that David O. McKay could have sent. It, could have been a general authority, could have been a BYU person. He sends McMurran. And what's strange about that is, you know, a few months later, so McMurran's bragging up, I have the transcript, I've read it. He's extolling all of the virtues of Mormon theology, at least the ones that he agrees with. Doesn't talk about, you know, well, he does talk about polygamy, but he doesn't really disparage it. He just, this is what happened. This is what the Church taught and this is why they taught it. So it wasn't a disparaging moment at all. It was really a pretty lucid overview of Mormon history and theology. But he gets back from Pittsburgh and just, you know, six months later, he's speaking to the naacp, criticizing the church. So, you know, it was like a teeter totter with McMurran, depending on the issue. And O.C. tanner was the same way. And so some of the liberal members of the hierarchy, Hugh Brown and others, Adam Bennion, they recognized the goodness of O.C. tanner in McMurran. And they also recognized that the Church needed to play nice with the Church's intellectuals. Because if you Treat them with respect. They could do far more good for the church vis a vis public relations than harm. And so that's why Marion Hanks, a general authority, Hugh Brown, a general authority, and Lowell Bennion too, that's why they would meet with these two unorthodox members is because they knew their hearts were pure. And so at this meeting In August of 1969, they're plotting strategy. And this is the first time where Hugh Brown will give a manuscript to some of the members of the meeting who had never seen the manuscript before. And we've talked a little bit about this already, but it's a manuscript that was written by a guy named Stephen Taggart who was a student of Sterling McMurran's at the University of Utah in philosophy back in the day. And the manuscript was eye opening for that time. It was written in the late 1960s and it was. There was a concerted effort to put David O. McKay's private conversation with David with Sterling McMurran that they had in the spring of 1954 in which McKay had summarized the Bennion Report to McMurran. And he said that the church's race, teachings, they are policy, not doctrine. So this is in the spring of 54, McMurran wanted the president to share that in General Conference. And the President said, now, Sterling, you know, I can't do that.

John Dehlin [00:26:33] And can I just repeat this just so I make sure I get it? So. So there's all the Larry Nelson controversy in the late 1940s that we covered in a previous episode where Lowry Nelson's you know, challenging the Brethren on the priesthood ban. This culminates in the early 50s with the Brethren having a secret committee led by Apostle Adam Bennion where he gets support of Lowell Bennion and they draft what's called the Bennion Report, basically substantiating everything Larry Nelson said, which is that there was no real theological, doctrinal, scriptural basis for the priesthood band that was, I don't know, unchristlike and harmful, potentially harmful to the Church. And it's in that issuing of the Bennion Report that David, that, that who is it that admits to Sterling McMurran that they also don't see the priesthood ban as doctrinal? Was that David O. McKay?

Matt Harris [00:27:41] Yeah, President McKay is the one that learns that from the Bennion Report.

John Dehlin [00:27:45] And was he an apostle at the time or was he president of the church?

Matt Harris [00:27:48] President.

John Dehlin [00:27:49] So he as President of the church, David O. McKay in 54 discloses to his friend Sterling McMurran that he in 54 doesn't see the priesthood ban as doctrinal, even though wasn't he one of the signers of the 1949 First Presidency Affirmation of the priesthood ban as doctrinal, calling it doctrine.

Matt Harris [00:28:13] That's correct.

John Dehlin [00:28:14] Okay, I just want to make sure I got all that.

Matt Harris [00:28:17] You got it all. Obviously, David O. McKay is in a tough situation because the 49 statement declares the Church's race teachings as doctrine. But then a few years later, he's learning from this private committee that it's really not doctrine, it's just a practice or a policy.

John Dehlin [00:28:34] Yeah. And so David, okay, admits that to Sterling in confidence. And so Sterling McBurn sitting on this admission that David O. McKay, the president of the Church, doesn't believe the priesthood and temple ban is doctrine. And so he sits for the next 10 or 15 years figuring out what to do with this secret because David Obaquet won't, won't publicly disclose this. And so at some point, when did he get the idea to work with Steven Taggart? When did that idea. And how was the, was the plan that McMurran would tell Taggart about his conversation with McKay and then it would be Taggart who would leak this information instead of McMurran? Is that plan hatched years before? 69.

Matt Harris [00:29:24] Yeah. Not years before, but 68. Okay, 1968. Taggart. So let's review who Taggart is. He's a student of McMurran's at the University of Utah, and he graduated in the late 60s, and then he went to do a PhD in sociology at Cornell University in Ithaca, New York. It's at Ithaca where he writes a manuscript script that would later be published as Mormonism and the Negro. And so he sent the manuscript to McMurran and Lowell Bennion, both of whom he knew were liberal on the priesthood issue. And they read the manuscript and the manuscript was, it was, for McMurran, it was a breath of fresh air because what, what Taggart said was that the priesthood ban was just put in place to appease Missourians when the Mormons had moved in. It really, it wasn't doctrine. There was no, you know, nothing divine behind it. It was just a simple policy to let the pro slaveholding Missourians know that, hey, look, we don't like black people either. We're going to keep them out of our priesthood ranks. You should know that. So we're not going to pose a threat to your slave interests. And now let me just pause for a minute. Scholars do not accept this today, but in the late 60s, that was the prevailing notion of the day. And it was an idea that was first broached by Fawn Brody in her book, in 1946, her controversial book, no Man Knows My History, talking about Joseph Smith. And so Taggart had just sort of developed that point further that Fawn Brody had made. And when McMurran read the manuscript from his former student and Bennion, they thought, man, we can get the word out that this is a policy and not a doctrine. And some of your listeners who may not be familiar with church doctrine are probably wondering, you know, why does that matter? Who cares? Policy, doctrine, whatever, the ban's the ban still in effect. Well, the reason why it matters is because if you can characterize it a policy, then it can be changed by simple presidential fiat. The President can say, hey, it's a policy. We're going to change it. If it's a doctrine, it requires a revelation. And as I've noted in previous episodes, revelation is a process, not an event. And it requires, by virtue of Mormon scripture, it requires unanimity among the highest levels of church leadership. So revelation means that the entire quorum of the 12 in the first presidency, the top 15 of the church, the three counselors in the first presidency and the 12 apostles, they have to be unified. And so if you can downgrade it to a policy, you don't have to go through the revelatory process. So that's the strategy these guys are working through. And I want to just put a pin in this for a quick second, that even though McKay believed that it was a policy, he still told McMurran that it will require a revelation to change it. And I'm sure that was disheartening to McMurran because obviously you're swimming upstream because of the hardliners. They're not going to agree to this. But that's why McKay didn't, didn't simply change the policy in 1954 is because he needed to get buy in from the Quorum and he wasn't going to get that buy in. So McMurran had been sitting on this

The Taggart Manuscript on the Priesthood Ban

John Dehlin [00:32:40] for years for our viewers benefit here. Matt, you were able to share with me. Archive.org has a full copy of Taggart's Mormonism's Negro Policy, Social and Historical Origins. And you actually have to check it out. And you can only check it out for an hour at a time, but there it is. I was able to buy a copy of this at Benchmark Books. It's supposed to arrive at my house by, by Friday. But really quickly, Matt, this is like 100 pages, right?

Matt Harris [00:33:11] And it's basically article. Yeah.

John Dehlin [00:33:14] And it's basically Taggart's attempt at summarizing the history with the churches, with the priesthood and temple ban, and basically arguing that it's policy, not doctrine, right?

Matt Harris [00:33:27] That's correct. Now, keep in mind, it wasn't called a temple ban in those days. You know, we've always known the band to be a temple band, too, but colloquially it was just called the priesthood ban. People back in those days didn't realize that it also affected temple worship. So. So this is the manuscript. It's a policy, not a doctrine. It was just put in place to appease those pro slavery Missourians. It was just a public relations piece to help the church get along with this slaveholding state. That's all it was. That's what Taggart says. And McMurran recognizes this book, could be explosive. It could really help him his agenda. And Hugh Brown will realize that, too. And McMurran by 1968, recognizing that President McKay is getting up there in age. He's in his early 90s at that point, that, that it's time to get that secret out that McKay had confided to McMurran in 1954. It's time to get the secret out. And McMurran, he wrote some of his friends in 1968. This is when Taggart. This was just a manuscript. The book that you showed John wouldn't be published until 1970 two years later.

Guest [00:34:35] Yeah.

Matt Harris [00:34:36] And in 1968, when he, when McMurran read the manuscript, he wrote Lowell Banion and a couple of others. And he said, you know, I've got this great idea. Let's disclose the conversation that President McKay had with me in 54. Let's, let's do that right here in this book. This young student, he has cachet. His father was a former president of Utah State University. His father knows many of the brethren, the general authorities. This young Taggart kid went on a mission. He's got a good family name. I'm a heretic. People won't take it seriously. They'll say that I'm making it up if I say it. So let's, let's reveal it in the Taggart book.

John Dehlin [00:35:17] It's a little bit of a weird decision, you know, and I face this a lot because I have had conversations over the years. And on the one hand, you always want to maintain confidentiality, but on the other hand, it's. I always say it's silence is the killer in the sense that Sometimes things are perpetuated because they're not talked about openly, because they're kept in secrecy. And so I could see the conflict that Surly McMurran had. He didn't want to probably betray his confidences with David O. McKay, his friendship, but at the same time, he wanted it to get out. And isn't there an ethical. Isn't there an ethical dilemma here of, Number one, Sterling McMurran betraying David O. McKay's confidence, and then, secondly, not just doing it himself, but like, doing it through secretly passing it on to a scholar? Isn't there kind of an ethical dilemma there? A little bit.

Matt Harris [00:36:16] I think there would have been, but McMurran reached out to the McKay sons. He wrote them all the same letter. Dear Llewellyn, dear David Lawrence, and I can't remember the third McKay. So he wrote them all the same letter saying, hey, look, this is what I want to do. He told them about Taggart in the manuscript and told them about the conversation that he had with their father in 1954. I want your permission to publish this in Taggart's book. My conversation with your father. Are you okay with this?

John Dehlin [00:36:47] And he's not asking for David O. McKay's permission because.

Matt Harris [00:36:51] You got that? No, I have. I always wondered that. I don't have any evidence. So this is 1968. David O's gonna stay around the globe and for two more years.

John Dehlin [00:37:04] But he's not in great shape. Your book argues, right?

Matt Harris [00:37:07] No, he's in terrible shape.

John Dehlin [00:37:08] Yeah.

Matt Harris [00:37:09] And he does have some moments of lucidity, but he's really. A lot of people will. General authorities in particular, their accounts, their diaries, letters. I've seen. They talk about seeing him at the Hotel Utah when he's in his 90s. And they would frequently write about him. The president is not well. And, you know, they're saying stuff like that, so. So that's probably why McMurran didn't reach out to President McKay directly, is because, you know, he just. He wasn't well. And so I don't think he was trying to slight his. His good friend the President. It was just. He just didn't trust his mental acumen. So he reached out to the three sons and wanted their blessing, and they gave it. Llewellyn wrote back. He said, I'm writing on behalf of my two brothers. We all agree this should be out. Father has told us the same thing over the years. But David Lawrence, David O's son, he said something interesting. He said, yeah, Father taught us that the ban was a Policy, not a doctrine. But father also said that he never had a revelation on it, which is kind of interesting. David O. McKay would, would tell his son that he never had a revelation on the ban or to lift it, which presupposes the revelation was an event as opposed to a process. And, you know, Maybe, maybe President McKay told his son, or what he meant was maybe he meant that, that, you know, he never felt inspired to start the conversation with the 12. Or maybe it was just, you know, practical politics that he knew he wouldn't succeed and just a way to get his son off his back. But anyway, so they agree. And McMurran has the acceptance that he feels that he needs to be above board with all of this. And. Oh, oh, oh, I, I'm misspeaking for a moment. McMuran does go into the president. He doesn't write him a letter. He goes in to the Hotel Utah with McKay Sons. And this is after that the sons had given permission, but they did go to the President and they said, McMuran said, hey, look, do you remember that conversation we had back in 54? And, and the sons are there listening and David O. Says, yes, I remember it very well. And do you remember you telling me that it was a policy, not a doctrine? And McKay said, he was always a direct speaker. He said, that's exactly what I said. And so the boys are happy that the dad remembered the conversation. And it was also consistent with the things that he had told his three sons over the years about the band. So anyway, just a couple correct myself on that. I had forgotten about that exchange between the McMurran, McMurran and the McKay Sons meeting with the president. So in August of 69, they share the Taggart manuscript at that Hotel Utah meeting with these church liberals, two of whom were general authorities. And Brown had already been acquainted with the Taggart manuscript because McMurran had shared a copy of it with them. And you can imagine how Brown felt when he got a hold of the Taggart manuscript, which is, oh, my goodness, this is now further ammunition I can use to get this ban lifted because it's just a policy, something I've been believing all along, but now we have a scholarly treatment on the matter. And so they used the manuscript and they set up a meeting In September of 69, early September, McMurran or not McMurran, excuse me, Hugh Brown and the McKay sons set up a meeting at the Hotel Utah with David O. McKay. And at that point in September, word gets out among at least some church leaders that something sinister was about to take place. And in the late, in 1967, 68, David O. McKay called an additional counselor into the first presidency, a guy named Alvin R. Dyer. And it was to help with the church. It was also because McKay didn't trust Brown. And so that was another source of issue. They called in an additional counselor without consulting Tanner and Brown, the. The already existing counselors. So there was some bitterness with that. The 12 didn't even like Dyer anyway, so Dyer got word that the McKay sons and Brown were going to meet with the President and he insisted that he come along. And what do you say? You know, well, now you can't come. Secret meeting. You're not invited. You know, he's a council in the First Presidency, so they allow him to come. And when they're there, they share the Taggart manuscript with the President. And he had never heard of the manuscript before, and Dyer had never heard of the manuscript before either. So Dyer gets a hold of the manuscript and, and I want to just share with your listeners for just a moment about the conversations that they have. I'm going to read just a little part from my book that talks about this critical moment in LDS Church history. And Lawrence, David O. McKay's son, he asked his father, what proof do we have that Negroes are descendants of Cain? Lawrence reasoned that Taggart's article brought, quote, the whole Negro question regarding the right to hold the priesthood into focus. And he asked, quote, if this truly was a practice and not a doctrine, as Sterling McMurran had inferred, then why was this not time to drop this practice? Close quote. Dyer panicked. He hadn't heard of the Taggart manuscript and demanded to see a copy. Lawrence handed it over and after hastily thumbing through it, Dyer abruptly proclaimed, it has many erroneous statements and concepts in it. Most troubling to Dyer was Taggart's insistence the ban wasn't doctrinal and therefore could be lifted at the President's discretion. Dyer responded by claiming that the ban, quote, could be changed only as the Lord would see fit through his servant, the Prophet. Dyer then went on to lecture the McKay sons about the curse of Cain in the pre existence. It must have been humiliating. This is me talking. It must have been humiliating being lectured by Dyer about a teaching the McKay's had heard their entire life. Nevertheless, Dyer feared that the Taggart manuscript had pried open a door he wished to slam shut. The President was obviously frail and certainly vulnerable. Dyer feared that the Sons and Brown would manipulate him into reversing the ban. He insisted on a revelation because that meant the entire quorum of the 12 would have to support it. And Dyer clearly knew that, that Brown and the McKay's did not have the support of the hardliners. So Dyer, at that meeting, he asked for a copy of the manuscript and he says, I'm going to go home and make a rebuttal of it. Now he hasn't even read it yet. You know, this is not the product of an open mind, but he already had prejudged it as being, you know, erroneous, full of bad concepts, just because he heard the word policy as opposed to doctrine.

John Dehlin [00:44:10] Can I, can I ask you a question about that?

Matt Harris [00:44:12] Yeah.

John Dehlin [00:44:12] So I, I was googling about this and I stumbled on Lester Bush's dialogue article review of Taggart's manuscript. And I didn't, I just skimmed it, but it looked like Lester Bush was being quite critical of Taggart's manuscript. And so I was going to ask you how solid was Taggart's manuscript? Did it have a lot of problems? Obviously Dyer is a, is a biased reviewer, but what is your, you know, and by the way, in intellectual Mormon history circles, Lester Bush is the guy that's always mentioned as the true historian, kind of heroic historian around the priesthood and temple ban because of his 1973 dialogue article. But I've never heard anyone mention Taggart, and it sounds like Taggart was, but based on your book, was likely more influential not just to the first presidency, but, but possibly to Kimball than, than Lester Bush was. So in some sense, Taggart's the unsung hero here.

Matt Harris [00:45:19] No, I wouldn't, I wouldn't say that.

John Dehlin [00:45:20] Uninformed reading. So.

Matt Harris [00:45:22] Yeah, no, no, I don't, I don't, I wouldn't say that he has more influence on President Kimball. I, I don't think that's true at all. Okay, let me just briefly, since we're going to talk about Lester Bush in another episode, he deserves a lot more treatment than we can give him today. But, but since you bring him up and compare, I think let's take a second and do that. Lester Bush is a medical doctor who lived in Maryland and he was like a lot of Latter Day Saints in the 60s. He was concerned about the ban, thought about it and decided he wanted to research it. And I'll, I'll tell this story more. So I'm going to be very brief here, but I'll go into some detail later because he really is a critical part of LDS Church history with the race issue. But anyway, Lester Bush is a medical Doctor works for the government and researches the race issue on his own. Comes across Taggart's manuscript, and Lester Bush writes his own critique of it that's published in dialogue in 1969. Lester, rest his soul. He just passed away last year. A great man, great supporter of my work, great critic of my work in terms of his critical analysis of pushing back on some statements I would make. We would have phone calls and lengthy emails, and he was just wonderful. That's what every scholar could hope for, is to have gentle encouragement and gentle criticisms and just all of that. He was wonderful. My work is better because he read it. So. So Lester critiqued it. And a couple things he said was that this was superficially researched. Lester said, and he's not wrong. It was. It's. It's a. It's the product of a graduate student. So it was superficially researched. But the biggest issue that Lester took aim at was this whole idea that the band began with Joseph Smith and that it was just a result of, you know, this policy in Missouri. And Lester's like, that's not true. The band began with Brigham Young.

Scholarly Challenges to the Ban's Doctrinal Basis

John Dehlin [00:47:16] So that's what Taggart claimed.

Matt Harris [00:47:18] Yes, that's the fundamental difference.

John Dehlin [00:47:20] It did start with Joseph Smith, but that it wasn't doctrinal. Is that right?

Matt Harris [00:47:24] Yeah. So Lester would have agreed that it wasn't doctrinal. I mean, there was no hold up there. The issue was the ban began in 1852. I think Lester had it wrong. I think he said 1847. But scholars today, Paul Reeve and others and myself included, put the ban at 1852. And Lester, I think if he were alive today and heard the evidence he would agree with was 52, not 47. But anyway, Lester argues that it was. It was a Brigham Young thing, not a Joseph Smith thing. And Lester was 1000% right on that. The evidence is overwhelming that the prophet had ordained black men to the priesthood. Taggart doesn't know any of this, and he's not. He hasn't been in the archives. You know, if you write church history, you gotta go where the sources are. And so his. His book is. Is as alarming as it was for the day, because the way that McMurran and Brown used wasn't a significant piece of historical research. And it's, you know, just a. It was a super officially written piece from a graduate student living in Ithaca, New York. That's really what it is. So Lester just absolutely tore into it. And for Lester, being a medical doctor, he was a dogged archival researcher. He knew where the Documents were. And so he really was in a position to critique the book because he had the sources. All right, so that's where I hope that answers your question.

John Dehlin [00:48:44] Yeah, that makes sense. But Dyer probably wasn't concerned about those issues when Dyer was saying there were errors he probably missed.

Matt Harris [00:48:52] Well, Dyer would have been concerned about two things when he's talking about errors. I think the two biggest errors that Dyer was concerned about was calling it a policy when the 49 first presidency statement called it a doctrine, and every other leader referred to it as the Negro doctrine. So that's how Dyer looked at it. And this graduate student is calling it a policy. So there's your first error. And then, of course, the church had built up its narrative that the ban had always begun with Joseph Smith. And I think that we had said in a previous podcast, we were talking about Elijah Abel, that some of the brethren reluctantly agreed that some, not all, but some, had reluctantly agreed that Elijah Abel, this light skinned black man, was ordained to the priesthood under Joseph Smith's tenure. They said that that was a mistake. Joseph F. Smith said it was a mistake. And they sought to undo the. It was a mistake. And my great uncle had overturned the ordination. This is what Joseph F. Smith said, I think, in 1904, after Elijah Abel had passed. There's no evidence for any of this stuff. And the whole idea, as I note in my book, that why this is a reason or a problem in the first place is because they're trying to create a coherent narrative that the ban had always existed. And it's hard to make that claim if there are so many exceptions to the rule. And when Joseph F. Smith said that Elijah Abel, yeah, he held the priesthood, but the prophet, my great uncle, made a mistake and took away his ordination. There's no evidence for that. And Joseph F. Smith, there was no evidence that he knew about Joseph Ball, Q. Walker Lewis, William McCary. If there's some doubt if he held the priesthood, he may have, maybe he didn't, who knows? But there's no evidence that Joseph Smith knew about those black men except for Elijah Abel. So anyway, they're trying to, to give this, you know, idea that the ban had always existed with Joseph smith. Even in 1966, it becomes public, at least enough for Harold B. Lee to give a devotional address at byu. And this is an address. He didn't have to talk about this, but he brings it up at this address. He mentions Elijah Abel and he said it was a mistake. Yes, he was ordained, but shouldn't have been. And so Obviously, he brought it up because people, students, faculty, they're talking about the ordination of a black man in the early church. And if they're talking about a black man being ordained, of course the fear is, well, if they ordained him back, then why aren't we ordained? Or why don't we ordain people of black African ancestry to the priesthood today? And so they wanted to squelch that idea that it was acceptable. All right, so that's what's going on here. And Taggart is giving credence to this idea that the prophet, the founding prophet, had established the ban, but that it was a policy. And I don't know. I wish I could have interviewed Taggart. I would have asked him a simple question. Taggart died in 1970 of cancer. Didn't even finish his doctoral degree. It's kind of a. It's a sad story.

John Dehlin [00:51:52] He's so young to die.

Matt Harris [00:51:54] Yeah. Left a widow behind. And it's his widow that got the book published. It wasn't Taggart. The widow's the one that brought it to the University of Utah Press and. And saw that it got published. But. But I would have asked him, if I had a chance to interview him. I would have asked him, by the way.

John Dehlin [00:52:11] By the way, I just have to. Just because we care about this sort of stuff.

Guest [00:52:16] The.

John Dehlin [00:52:16] The book actually has Pamela R. Taggart with the Copyright 1970, all rights reserved. And that's just. That's just pretty cool, I think, anyway.

Matt Harris [00:52:26] Yeah. No, that is cool.

John Dehlin [00:52:27] Yeah.

Matt Harris [00:52:27] Yeah. I. I've always been curious about his. His wife. I. I suspect she probably remarried because she was a young person. Probably. I don't think they had children when. When he passed. I mean, they were really a young couple. And he would have been born in the 40s, Steven Taggart, and probably Pamela, too. I suspect she's still alive, but I don't know. Anyway, so I would. I would ask Taggart, you know, did you have an agenda by calling it a policy? Did you hope that this would influence the Brethren to lift the ban? Or Was this just McMurran's agenda? And I don't know what Taggart would have said. I would have been curious. You know, some people write with agendas, some people don't. And it's not clear to me that Taggart had an agenda, because I have his letters that he wrote to Bennion and McMurran. I suspect that he didn't like the band, but I never got the impression that this was sort of an activist work of scholarship to convince church leaders. And since you mentioned Lester Bush, when Bush puts his stuff together, he's definitely writing it for an audience in Salt Lake. And we'll talk in a later episode how they receive his work. But so Taggart, his book is. It's being used by McMurran and Hugh Brown and the McKay sons to convince the President that it's a policy, which McKay believed all along, but they were trying to use it to say it doesn't require revelation. You can do it on your own, unilaterally.

McMurrin's Challenge to Church Leadership

John Dehlin [00:53:51] But there's also an implicit if I'm wrong, not tell me if I'm wrong threat. We're going to out you as, as having known that it, you know that, that the, the ban was a policy, not doctrine for at least 14 years or more. Right. There's a threat there.

Matt Harris [00:54:11] Well, McMurra never made. Well, I suppose, but it's hard to believe that David O. Never shared his views with the 12. I mean, I don't believe that for a minute.

John Dehlin [00:54:20] No, but this, this article is going

Matt Harris [00:54:22] public and so this article is going public.

John Dehlin [00:54:25] What I'm seeing, what I'm seeing Dyer freak out about and potentially what would freak out David O. McKay is McMurran, through this article disclosing a private conversation that the President of the Mormon Church has known for 10 plus years that this ban, who, it's very embarrassing, very controversial, has known that it was policy, not doctrine, even though he had signed previously a First Presidency statement saying that he thought it was doctrine. That's, that's almost more threatening than anything else. Just this, this question about prophetic authority and leadership to me.

Matt Harris [00:55:01] Well, you know, let's be clear about something that we can't assume that David O. McKay, because he came to the understanding that it was policy in 1954, we can't assume that he believed that in 1949. The reason with the first parenthesis data, the reason why I say that is because this is why he commissions the Bennion Report to investigate this stuff. And so they write their six page report and he reads the analyses that they provide. And in my mind he's, he's swayed by this. I don't see any evidence that David O. McKay thought it was a policy before 1954. And I have plenty of his letters where he's writing to Lowell Bennion and others. He's just inheriting the church line, that it's a, it's a doctrine.

John Dehlin [00:55:47] I guess all I'm saying is 69, whether he misstated, which I wasn't totally claiming, or changed his mind and didn't know in 49 the difference between doctrine and policy. Either way, if the brethren are concerned about preserving the members belief in their prophetic authority, this has the potential to be embarrassing and damaging to members perception of prophetic authority.

Matt Harris [00:56:15] Well, possibly John, is. That's always the. Okay, that's always the possibility. And let me just say something about this. You know, most of us who write books, you know, we're lucky if the news, the news media will pick up on our work. Today I live in a great age of social media. So you and I can talk about my work and we can showcase my research in my book to thousands of people around the world. Which is. I don't take that for granted. And I'm appreciative that we have these mediums to get our work out. But in those days you didn't have a lot of mediums. You would go to conferences maybe and talk to your peers, your colleagues and share your research. But you would. But newspapers sometimes would pick up on your work and sometimes not. And in this case, when an advanced manuscript of Taggarts had begun to circulate around Salt Lake. This is before it was published, the Deseret News in the Select Tribune got a hold of it and they published the part about the policy and also about McKay's conversation with McMurran from 1954. And that was the first time where members of the quorum of the 12 learned about the Taggart manuscript other than Alvin Dyer had learned later. But that was the first time that some of them had learned about it before Dyer did. And I have a memo, for example, from Ezra Taf Benson where he writes to two of his fellow apostles in the Quorum. And I'm just gonna summarize. He said in the memo to his two colleagues. Have you seen the Salt Lake Tribune article about President McKay allegedly calling it a policy? That heretic McMurran's the one spreading these lies. So they don't agree with it at all. And as I read Elder Benson talking about this, he. He recognizes it could be threatening to the church and he's trying to. He's sharing his views with his colleagues that McMurran's behind it. We can't trust that guy because he's a heretic and which is weird.

John Dehlin [00:58:12] So the Tribune covered eventually the Taggart article. Is that what you just said they wrote?

Matt Harris [00:58:17] Yeah, it wasn't just about the Taggart one. It was about race in general.

John Dehlin [00:58:21] Okay.

Matt Harris [00:58:21] Which is what they would often do. They would have an umbrella discussion about Race. And then you would look into the article and they would talk about, you know, Taggart, McMurran and other people.

John Dehlin [00:58:31] And this is in the 69 time frame that this is in.

Matt Harris [00:58:34] 69? Yeah.

John Dehlin [00:58:35] Oh, wow. I want to see that Tribune article too. So, Julia, write that down. We got to figure out how to find that.

Matt Harris [00:58:40] Yeah, it's in my book. We can.

John Dehlin [00:58:41] We can. All right, that's interesting.

Matt Harris [00:58:44] So he gets out and Ezra Taft Benson responds after he sees the Tribune article. And he's like that heretic McMurran. I mean, he just automatically does not believe it because it's coming from McMurran, who's not a believer, which is weird because Hugh Brown trusts him, believes him, and the President does, but Elder Benson doesn't.

John Dehlin [00:59:03] Okay, so not to lose the plot. So McKay, McKay's sons with Brown, Hubie Brown and all these liberal SLC critical, they're all scheming to use this article to what ends?

Matt Harris [00:59:19] To convince the President that it's time to reverse the ban.

John Dehlin [00:59:23] The aing. The ailing president.

Matt Harris [00:59:26] The ailing president, who is now, I think, just a handful of weeks short of his 95th birthday.

John Dehlin [00:59:33] Okay, how does that go?

Matt Harris [00:59:36] Well, they succeed because after that meeting is over, in spite of Alvin Dyer proclaiming that the Taggart manuscript that he was hastily thumbing through, you know, in the moment, he hasn't even read it, you know, but he panicked. I mean, that's really what it was. He panicked because he, he saw the writing on the wall. To his credit, he saw the writing on the wall that this could lead to a unilateral decision of the President. And so at that meeting, David O. McKay could be a stubborn guy. And you see this a lot. And David O. McKay tells Brown and he tells the McKay sons, okay, I believe you. And dire panics. And at that meeting, at that meeting, they decide that they're going to ordain an African American Latter Day Saint, a guy who had been a member for almost three decades, a loyal member named Monroe Fleming. He worked at the Hotel Utah as a waiter. He would oftentimes serve missionaries when this is before they had the missionary training center in Provo. They would spend time at the Hotel Utah in learn their missionary assignments, the discussions, the language, before they were sent out around the world on their assignments. So he was always around missionaries and also general authorities. He got to know several general authorities well because they would come in and dine, he would wait on them. And he was, he was loyal to the church. People frequently asked him, you know, how do you feel about the church and the priesthood. And he would say in public, he would say the right things, that waiting for the time when God sees fit to ordain colored men to the priesthood like me. And then in private, this is a letter he writes in private to a Mormon critic, a guy named Gerald Tanner. Tanner asked him, this is in 1962. So this would have been, if I can go back in time for a quick moment, this would have been four or five years before they planned to ordain Monroe Fleming to the priesthood. So Tanner, Gerald Tanner, a critic of the church, asked Monroe Fleming if he wanted the priesthood. And Fleming writes him back. My dear brother, I wish to state that the statement that the Negro is contented as a member in the church without the priesthood is not true. I know most of the members of the Negro race in the church and know that they feel that they should have the priesthood if they live a life based upon the principles of, of the gospel. So he's saying very publicly, or at least privately I should say that he wants the priesthood and that the black people that he knows in Salt Lake with whom he associates, they also want the priesthood. So they choose Monroe Fleming because he's loyal and Spencer Kimball knows him, calls him a good friend. Thomas Monson knows him, calls him a close friend. Gordon Hinckley knows him, calls him a close friend. So three high ranking apostles call him close friends. That's how comfortable they feel with him. So President McKay realizes that he's going to ordain Monroe Fleming. And. But there's a difference here, is that whereas the previous several years he had been saying it would require revelation even though it was a policy, now he's going to change tact. He's been convinced by the McKay Sons, by Brown, his counselor, and also by Taggart that that he can do it unilaterally. He doesn't need a revelation, that is, he doesn't need buy in from the quorum. And Dyer hears this and he leaves the meeting just flustered. And he tells Harold B. Lee, who's the most dominant voice in the quorum of the 12, he is the person that many of them look to be who would become the next church president. He was the second in line after Joseph Fielding Smith. And Fielding Smith himself was a little bit younger than David O. McKay, so he wasn't going to be the church president very long. And so everybody looked to this 73 year old man, Harold Lee, who'd be the next church president when it was his time. And so they didn't want to offend Harold Lee. And so Dyer went to Lee, who was in the hospital recovering from an illness, and he told Elder Lee, he said, look, this is what Brown is up to in the McKay sons and the president. They're going to ordain Monroe Fleming to the priesthood. And what's interesting about that is it was just Monroe Fleming. It didn't. They didn't say, we're going to lift the ban everywhere, but one can imagine that you can ordain one Black man in 1969 and not others. So I interpret that to mean this was, they're going to lift the ban. And Harold Lee gets out of the hospital and he approaches members of the 12, and he said, this is not right. If you supported McKay in this endeavor, unsupport him. And the person that he goes to is. One of the people he goes to is Spencer Kimball, who had agreed to support Brown and McKay. This is. Spencer Kimball had long felt that the ban was a possible error, that it should never have existed. He was always supportive of the church teachings publicly, but in privately, you could see that he was wrestling with this issue. And so he supports Brown. And McKay. And I have an oral history in which Lee went to Kimball, and Kimball starts to sob. And after he meets with Elder Lee and recants his support for Brown, Kimball then goes to Brown and said, I had to withdraw my support from you. And he's sobbing as he's telling President Brown this. I had to withdraw my support. I. I fear Brother Lee. And by fear, what he meant was, brother Lee is going to be the church president. I don't want to offend him. And so that's what happens. It's an emotional moment for Spencer Kimball. His heart lies with Brown, but he recognized that in order to get along with somebody who would be the future church president, that they had to obey that authority. And that's what Kimball did. And so I'm going to read you something about this, that when Brown gets word that Harold Lee has put a stop to the ordination, and McKay didn't want to fight him because he was old. He just. He'd been fighting the hardliners for years, and when they gave him pressure, he's just like, I'm done. I'm out. And David Lawrence McKay, his son, writes about this in an oral history. He says, yeah, my dad did not like to make decisions in his older age, and he didn't like conflict. And so he would often withdraw when it came to important policy decisions. And that's what happens here. All right, so this is an interview that Brown had given just after this all went down when he learned that Brown or that Harold Lee and Dyer had put a stop to it. And this is part of it. This is in September of 1969. It says that this is a person who took notes of the interview interviewing President Brown, a guy named Paul Salisbury. He said Brown said that Lawrence and Llewellyn McKay had gone to their father about ordaining a Negro to the priesthood who worked at the Hotel Utah. This is Monroe Fleming. President Brown said that President McKay agreed to do it, but that some of the brethren got wind of it and put a stop to it. President Brown said he felt this was unfortunate because he said it's important that the policy be changed while President McKay is alive. If it isn't, we'll be set back several years as long as Joseph Fielding Smith and Harold B. Lee are in charge. Brown went into a deep depression because this was several years that came to this culminating point recognizing that if he was going to lift the ban, it had to be while President McKay was alive, knowing full well that if he couldn't lift the BAN While President McKay was alive, that it wouldn't be lifted with Joseph Fielding Smith or Harold B. Lee.

Hugh B. Brown's Effort to End the Ban

John Dehlin [01:07:37] Now, Matt, I want to pause you before you talk about the end with Brown, because there's a couple things I want to explore. So I don't want to stop you ahead of time, but before. Before we talk about Brown's ultimate fate, I want to just explore a couple things.

Matt Harris [01:07:51] Yeah, yeah, no, that's fine. Because this is in September. Just to give your listeners a timeline. And remember we were talking about earlier, the memo that Ernest Wilkinson wrote to the board of trustees about we can't keep lying to federal authorities. That was just about two weeks after Brown's end, around the one hole to get a black man ordained. So this is all going on at the same time. And so, of course, once again, Brown thought that if we ordain a black man to the priesthood, it's not only the right thing to do because he read Scripture that way, but it would also ease pressure from the church publicly because of the athletic protests and because of the fate that the BYU athletic teams were about to experience, they were going to get kicked out of the Western Athletic Conference. So all of this would go away if we just lifted this. This ban, but it didn't happen.

Guest [01:08:50] So.

John Dehlin [01:08:50] So let's just. I want to just explore a couple things here because this is a. This is like if there were a cinematic moment in Mormon church history. In the 20th century, this would be worthy of a movie, of a dramatization, because I'm, you know, there's all this drama, all this history, all this controversy with the New York Times and with, you know, universities, athletes protesting byu. It's all, you know, the Civil Rights movement. It's all culminating in this September 1969 moment. And, you know, now David O. McKay's sons are involved and there's this private meeting and a member of the First Presidency and Brown is involved. And, and so, but, but I'm questioning it myself because, you know, the first thing that comes to my mind is, is that in some ways I agree with Harold B. Lee and Alvin Dyer, and here's why it makes no sense to me, the decision by Brown and McKay to just skirt this whole issue by. Instead of, you know, getting the quorum together and having what happens in 78, which is the appearance of some unanimous decision by the first presidency and the quorum of the 12, which is how this ban ultimately was lifted, it makes no sense to me that the solution in 69 is for David O. McKay to just quietly and privately order, ordain a black man, and then, boom, you know, problem solved. For no other reason than that Joseph Smith did that, and that wasn't good enough. You know, so why would, number one, why would just secretly ordaining a black man really solve this problem? Especially given how high profile this controversy had been, but also as if the, the rest of the quorum of the 12, Lee and Peterson and Benson and Joseph Fielding Smith, is that as if they're all just going to, like, eat crow and then quietly make a 180 degree turn and just say, yep, well, now, now it's. The ban is no longer in effect and we could all ordain whoever we want. Like, it seems like a questionable or a dubious attempt at solving the problem, not just by Brown, but by McKay as well. It would almost. It would almost feel like they were taking advantage of an old man and his judgment by kind of trying to ram this through. I mean, I want to see Brown as a hero and I want to see David O. McKay as a partial hero as well. But the way that they're going about this just feels like. Like it's not the proper order, given how important consensus would have been and given how controversial this would have been. Imagine the New York Times saying rogue prophet with rogue First Presidency member secretly ordains a black man to the, you know, to the, to the frustration of so many other senior apostles. Like, it just seems like it was not the right way to do this by Both Brown and McKay. Am I. Do I have. Is there. Do I have anything there worth.

Matt Harris [01:12:29] You know, I don't think I disagree with anything you just said. Okay, but this is not rational. Right?

John Dehlin [01:12:37] Right.

Matt Harris [01:12:38] This is. This is why context is critical. I mean, Brown's had it. He's been trying to lift the ban for years. And it reached a crescendo with the federal investigation, the athletic protest, all the bad publicity from the news. He's had it. He's sick of it. And he's 87 years of age, and he comes to the conclusion that if the President doesn't lift the ban and it won't be lifted for a long time, so he recognizes that this is his last time to do it. And he's not really thinking about how the optics of it. I mean, I mean, and you know, you talk about something about in private, you know, let's be clear about this. How long do you think it could take for Monroe Fleming, you know, for that secret to remain right? I mean, if he were ordained to the Melchizedek priesthood, I mean, he would have been doing what Melchizedek priesthood holders do. He would have had a church calling. He possibly could have, you know, got a temple recommended and served in the temple. I mean, word would have got out pretty quick that they ordained a black man to the priesthood priesthood. And Brown certainly would have publicized it to that to the root at the rooftops. He would have probably talked to Wally Turner of the New York Times and said, hey, guess what? We just did. You should write a story about this. And so it would have gone out for sure. And so. But your. Your larger point is that for the good of the church, you know, there needed to be corn buy. And I mean, I agree with that 100. Because in the 1960s, the David O. McKay presidency was. It was tough. And the reason why it was tough is because the President had. His health had been spiraling downward for a long time. And, you know, he had a stroke. He had. His cognition was in decline, cognitive abilities. And so the people around him recognized that he would frequently miss meetings that he needed to be at because he didn't feel well. And so what happens is that there's a leadership vacuum in. Among the. Among or between the 12 in the first presidency. So when the President's not available to make decisions, the counselors then move into that vacuum, whereas the 12 thought that that was their prerogative to move into that vacuum. So what you see is N. Eldon Tanner and Hugh Brown clashing with the quorum of the 12 through much of the 1960s. And I don't mean just over right wing politics with Benson and the Banner, things like that. I mean a whole host of issues. And this happens and happens with. Happened in the 1980s when Spencer Kimball and his two counselors fell ill with Marion Romney and Eldon Tanner. So they called in Gordon Hinckley. So he was a one man show. And I think Gordon Hinckley saw some of the issues that the McKay administration had experienced with the conflict between the 12 and the first presidency. And Gordon Hinckley was a much better bridge builder. And Gordon Hinckley, who was known to be very independent, one of his close friends told me that they called him a lone wolf, which is interesting because he would make decisions without them sometimes. But Hinckley was a. Was a people person and could, you know, smooth some hard feelings with the 12 and help them to work together to get things done. But in the, in the 1960s, it was a vicious power vacuum. This has been written about.

Guest [01:15:44] I'm not.

Matt Harris [01:15:45] This is not just coming from my lips today. Greg Prince and Gary Bergera have both written about this, and I would recommend their scholarship. So let's go back to the fall again. The. Brown's depressed because the ban, his chance to lift the band after years of hard work, has just evaporated in smoke because of Harold Lee and November.

Harold B. Lee Blocks the Ordination

John Dehlin [01:16:14] Does Lee just say, you're not ordaining that man. And so it doesn't happen is that he.

Matt Harris [01:16:19] He gets the 12 to work. He gets the 12. Each member, the 12, he contacts Lee and he said, have you talked to Brown? Did you know what was going on? And some of them did and some of them didn't. And obviously Spencer Kimball knew what was going on because Spencer Kimball recanted his support. But it's not clear to me if other apostles. I got the impression from my research that not everyone knew about it. And anyway, some did, some didn't. But nonetheless, Lee had contacted each member of the 12 and, and just said, hey, look, this is not what we're going to do. This requires a revelation. This is a doctrine. And Brown is wrong. McKay's wrong. And so nobody supports McKay's effort to do this. And McKay doesn't fight back because of his poor health. And Brown's devastated. Absolutely devastated.

John Dehlin [01:17:08] Yeah.

Matt Harris [01:17:08] All right, so. So Brown is, is a headstrong dude, I'm telling you. I mean, I, I really like Hugh Brown. I. Yeah, I like him on so many levels. I Just think he's got impeccable integrity, courage. He's, he's just, he's an interesting character to write about because he's sort of a different figure in a church leadership, and he's a contrarian voice, which I find interesting.

John Dehlin [01:17:31] And, Matt, before we tell the rest of his story, should we tell the Ezra Taft Benson, Hubie Brown, BYU conflict really quick before we tell the end of the story, or did you want to fit that in a little bit later in this episode?

Matt Harris [01:17:45] The Book of Mormon Warns America one.

John Dehlin [01:17:47] Yeah, because I, as a part of Hubie Brown's story, I want to make sure that makes it in there, because it's in your.

Matt Harris [01:17:52] Yeah, let's, let's pause for a minute now, because we'll go backward just for a moment. This gives you a sense I, I've been, I've been telling you or telling your listeners about that. Brown had fallen out of favor with the President. That's one of the reasons why he brought the President's sons to the Hotel Utah because he had exhausted his political capital with the President complaining about Benson and the Birchers and others. And so he used the McKay sons, who were liberal and they were also friends. McMurran that McKay used the sons to pressure the father. So it wasn't just Brown pressuring David O. It was also the sons. And Brown had been feuding with a number of members of the 12 at that point. And his. His largest nemesis or his biggest nemesis have been Ezra Taft Benson. And we're going to go back now just for a quick moment and just to illustrate the differences between Benson and Brown. This takes place in April of 1969 or 60. Yes. 60. 68. 68. April of 68. Ezra Taft Benson gives this very controversial address at BYU called the Book of Mormon Warns America. And then a week later, President McKay is asked Hugh Brown to go to BYU to rebut Benson. And let's have a look at the video and then we can talk more about why this is significant.

John Dehlin [01:19:14] So really quickly remind us why Benson and my. The website I'm looking at says May 21, 1968, that Benson gave this talk at BYU.

Matt Harris [01:19:24] Oh, it's May. Okay. I said April, it's May. And then.

John Dehlin [01:19:27] And do you want to remind us why Benson felt like he had to give this talk at byu?

Guest [01:19:31] Yeah.

Matt Harris [01:19:31] Yeah. So. So it's called the Book of Mormon Warns America. And Benson had come under fire from Brown and Moyle, the Democratic First Presidency counselor, because of his embrace of the John Birch Society and its conspiracy theories. And I mentioned in a previous podcast that in 1961, just after Ezra Taft Benson started reading the Politician, this is Robert Welch, the head of the Birch Society. This is the most extreme anti communist organization in the country, a very fringy group. Benson had read the Politician in which Welch had articulated his views that Dwight Eisenhower and his inner circle of advisors and cabinet members were communists. I mean, what an extraordinary claim. And Benson was part of that cabinet, and yet he bought into this nonsense that many members of the inner circle were communists, and he shared that with general authorities. And they were upset, many of them, because this is just conspiratorial nonsense. And also, Elder Benson had been spreading these ideas at LDS state conferences and ward meetings that he would visit, and his son Reed Benson would as well. And also Cleon Skousen, their friend. And so in 1963, Hugh Brown and Henry Moyle had convinced David O. McKay to issue a statement condemning the politicization of LDS Church meeting houses. They didn't mention the Burch Society in the statement, but it was clear to anyone within earshot that this is who they talked about. And Skousen and Benson, when they read the statement, they were upset. And they wrote the president. They went into the President, Skousen and Benson, and they asked President McKay, you were talking about the Burch Society, weren't you? McKay said, Yep, and made it very clear that it was directed towards the Birch Society. So there was that conflict for a long time. And there were so many complaints about the Birch Society from a vocal minority of Latter Day Saints. They were tired of going to a state conference where they wanted to be spiritually nourished, and instead they're getting a bunch of political clap trap about, you know, Burt's conspiracy theories from a senior apostle. So they complained, and Benson called him in, or, excuse me, McKay called Benson in and he said, you're not to talk about the Birch Society anymore or go to their meetings. And Benson said, well, can I still talk about anti communism, the greatest scourge of our generation? McKay said, you have my permission to talk about anti Communism. Just don't quote the Birch Society. And as I've written in my Ezra Taft Benson book, the Saints didn't know the difference. Whenever Elder Benson continued talking about anti Communism, they just assumed it was the Birch Line, even though he didn't explicitly mention it. So having all of that context, John, with the church cracking down on the Birch Society, Elder Benson wanted to appeal to Sacred Scripture to booster his conspiracy claims. And so he appeals to the Book of Mormon and he argues that the Gadian robbers and secret combinations, this is all the stuff we're seeing today in the government. And that Book of Mormon prophets saw our day. They saw that there would be Dr. Kings out there who were aligned with the Kremlin. They saw that there would be leaders like Dwight Eisenhower and John Kennedy and Lyndon Johnson, all of whom were aligned with the Russians. And so all it is is just to bolster his claims. And he also, in this Book of Mormon Warren's America speech, he just absolutely savages the civil rights movement is leaders and black people, they're on welfare. Demonizes the welfare program. I mean there's any, there's a range of really offensive statements in this address. And I've interviewed several students. So this would have been May of 1969. I've interviewed several students who were there and I have their diary. 68 or 68.

John Dehlin [01:23:28] Excuse me.

Matt Harris [01:23:28] Thank you.

John Dehlin [01:23:29] Yeah.

Matt Harris [01:23:29] And I have their diaries. I don't, I'm a kind of scholar. I don't want to just hear about it, you know, 60 years after the fact. I want to know what did you think in real time? Did you have a diary? Did you record? And I have at least four people who were at that address in May of 1968. They sent me their diaries. And what did you think? And depending on their views already, I mean, a couple of them were Benson devotees. And so they wrote, oh this is great, this is prophetic. And they were praising it. And then a couple of students, I think one would identify as moderate maybe at the time and one would identify as moderate to maybe a little bit liberal. And anyway they were, they were shocked. This is racist. They're writing in their diaries. And one of the people that I, whose diary I have, she writes in her diary that after the address she went to her BYU religion class and the professor was a right wing bircher and he started to go off about how much he supported Benson and how much he didn't like Brown. I mean, this is a BYU religion class.

Guest [01:24:31] Yeah.

Matt Harris [01:24:31] Smirching a senior church officer. I mean that's amazing to me.

Ezra Taft Benson's Opposition to Civil Rights

John Dehlin [01:24:35] So let me play a little bit. I'll just play a couple minutes of this clip. But I just want to give people a sense for, you know, Benson. He's, he doesn't just attack. I mean he kind of seems to attack the two party system here and, and the civil rights movement and black people, frankly. So I'm just going to play a little bit here and then we'll play Hubie Brown's response after you give some context.

Guest [01:25:02] Yet if in that sense we never had it so good, in another sense we never had it so bad or so scared. Precisely as we have achieved our present affluence. Precisely as our government has proclaimed its readiness to spread the good things more widely still. The nation is clawed by nameless apprehensions richer than any other generation of Americans. We are also more frightened, blessed with better food, finer clothes and more expensive cars. We are also haunted by the fear that the enjoyment of these things might be taken from us by marauders who stole stock our streets and attack our homes. The paradox is of the sort suggested by the Pennsylvania Dutch. The faster I run, the behinder I get. The faster we multiply our material comforts, the greater seems the likelihood of losing them through hoodlum terror. The more our government suggests we are advancing toward utopia, the more we stumble backward toward the jungle. We are a people for whom anything seems possible except to defend ourselves against primitive evils which the rudest of societies can control. The people of the United States are fast losing one of their most precious the simple right to move as they please. To go to church meetings at night, to shop where and when they would like to take walks near their own homes. A survey conducted by the Crime Commission found that one third of a representative sample of all Americans say it is unsafe to walk alone at night in their neighborhoods. Slightly more than one third say they keep firearms in the house for protection against criminals. And 28% say they keep watchdogs for the same reason. There is not time for a full outline of this treacherous development. We have mentioned briefly the help which the Communists have received from our Supreme Court. Suffice it to say that they have penetrated every major segment of our society. As J. Edgar Hoover has testified, the news media, the schools, the churches, the unions and so forth. But their greatest desire and the most successful drive has come from their effective penetration of government. They knew the power, prestige, influence and finances that would be theirs once they got the machinery of the United States government headed in their direction. And they were right. For let the government of the United States stop helping Communism and communists all over the world. And in a short period of time the conspiracy would be in retreat and in due time would collapse. But we extend the advantage of diplomatic recognition to their puppets when they come to power. We send them billions in foreign aid. We've trained their pilots here in the United States. We ship them wheat through cultural and other exchanges. Their spies come to America. We supply them know how. We extend them credit. We buy their goods, their Propaganda goes through our mails at our expense. We've helped them in their conquests through secret agreements. Our government does all it can to keep the anti Communists from coming to power in any country. Once we have helped the Communists to take over a nation such as China and Cuba, we do all in our power to keep the anti communists from freeing their hand, freeing their land. And we even negotiate with these butchers and sign treaties with their criminals who have no respect for treaties, said President McKay. I would not deal with a nation which treats another as Russia has treated America. It is a condition which cannot be permitted to exist. But it does exist now.

John Dehlin [01:29:36] I thought I had queued up a part where he talks about race and racism and the civil rights. Is that about to come? Because I, I don't want to derail us too much.

Matt Harris [01:29:45] Boy, it's been a while since I've heard this, John. I don't know.

John Dehlin [01:29:47] There was a lot of dog whistling there. Can you at least talk about.

Matt Harris [01:29:50] Yeah.

John Dehlin [01:29:51] When he used the terms hoodlum and jungle and primitive. Is that the dog whistling that I'm hearing?

Matt Harris [01:30:00] Yeah. Oh, yeah, yeah. There's. There's a great book that's called Dog Whistle Politics, written by a legal scholar at University of California at Berkeley named Ian Haney Lopez. And Lopez talks about the various dog whistles that people like Benson would use when referring to inner cities and, you know, primitive jungle, just stuff like that. And the previous year in 1967, there was racial unrest because of poverty in inner cities, because of civil rights violations. Racism in the black community got upset, obviously, living with these horrible conditions for so long. And so there were protests in 67, and that's a response to those protests. That's what Benson's referring to. And you know, I just want to just pause for a moment. I mean, this is supposed to be a devotional assembly, and I'm certain that it was true then and true today that at these devotional assemblies you want to be uplifted. You're. You have a hard major as a student, you're studying your butt off. And this is supposed to be a respite from your week or respite from your day where you go to this devotional assembly on campus for an hour. Those of your listeners who may not be familiar with BYU culture, the entire campus shuts down during these once a week devotional addresses. The library services shut down and the students are strongly encouraged to go, and then they come back to their classes afterwards and resume their day.

Guest [01:31:34] So.

Matt Harris [01:31:34] And this is what they're hearing they're hearing just this extreme partisan politics.

John Dehlin [01:31:38] And I found the quote. Can I just play a tiny more of an excerpt?

Matt Harris [01:31:44] Sure, sure.

John Dehlin [01:31:45] Because I think. I think this is. I think this will drive the point home. I'm glad we played what we played, but I want to play just a little bit more.

Matt Harris [01:31:52] Yeah.

Guest [01:31:55] From his letter transmitting the June issue, I read the last paragraph. The Constitution surely hangs by a thread. Without God's help, this republic will fall, as certain as it was, with his help, that it was born. From the lead article, which I recommend to all, entitled Insurrection Is America Sleeping Through Civil War? I quote from the first page. America has just endured the most widespread civil uprising in a hundred years. Except for the Civil War, the largest in American history. Arrests totaled well over 20,000. Washington, D.C. and it would do us good if we could walk through Washington D.C. down 14th street, two blocks from our Mormon Chapel, 7th street in the business section. Arrests totaled well over 20,000. Washington D.C. reported more than a thousand fires set by arsonists. Baltimore between 7 and 800. Pittsburgh, 500, 200 in Chicago, and so on. The federal government was itself effectively shut down on Friday afternoon, April 4, as word of unchecked marauding mobs ranging freely in the downtown all over the world. Sophisticated people must have laughed at us uproariously. And 100 million no doubt lost any faith they ever had in us. The author, Dr. Susan L.M. huck, concludes the 25 page article with these. OK, take the gloves off. This insurrection didn't just happen. It was set up just as the assassination of Martin Luther King was set up. The Communists and their Black Power fanatics have been working to create just such a situation for years. They even told us what they were planning to do again and again. And they did it. This is only the beginning. And this time the administration used only 70,000 troops to stop them. This time our politicians, who have tied the hands of our police officers, put only 10 million or so good citizens under house arrest, employing curfews enforced by federal soldiers. This time the insurrectionists hit only 168 towns and cities. They killed only 43 people. And they said only 3,000 or so major fires. And remember, the Reds and their Black Power troops have promised us that this is only the beginning. Stokely has said that his forces plan to burn down America. They're sure going to try. How do we stop it? It's very simple. You stop communist racial agitation. You arrest the leaders for conspiracy to commit murder, arson and burglary, prove their guilt in a court of law and lock them up and you free the hands of our police so that they can prevent rioting and looting and arson by those citizens now convinced by the actions of our liberals that theft, incendiarism, and assault will be tolerated.

John Dehlin [01:35:34] So I just want to take a little bit of time to talk about this, because in the previous clip, he's like, we have cars, we have financial prosperity, and our country's doing great. And I just want to say, yeah, the white people were, but there were a lot of people that weren't safe in their neighborhoods and didn't have nice cars and didn't have nice houses. And that's the black people because of the Jim Crow laws and because of the legacy of slavery. It's like Benson doesn't give a thought at all to why these riots are happening. The riots are happening because black people have been enslaved and disfranchised for centuries, and now they're finally trying to stand up to the Jim Crow laws and all the discrimination. And instead he just wants to say, hey, we white people finally have nice cars and nice houses, and all you hoodlums from the jungle are trying to take this away from us. It's mind blowing that an apostle is giving this type of talk at byu. That's my rant. What do you want to say about that?

Matt Harris [01:36:39] Well, it is a commentary and where his sympathies lie. You know, when you. I always teach my students, you know, the Pledge of Allegiance with Colin Kaepernick, the former NFL quarterback. You know, so many people were up in arms about him not standing for the pledge. They never. They never asked why he was doing what he was doing. And same with, you know, Benson. There's rioting going on and. And he's calling government programs basically communist. He. This is. This. This speech is a response to a number of things going on. First and foremost, the riots from 1967, the. The rise of black power advocates that got louder and more pronounced after Malcolm x died in 1965. And he referenced Stokely Carmichael, who's one of the. He was given credit as one of the first black young men to talk about black power. He didn't create that term, but he's the one that popularizes it. We want black power. And so, you know, the rhetoric was incendiary by some of these black power advocates who were upset with Martin Luther King's passive resistance strategies. They didn't think it worked. They didn't think it was a effective. And so they employed a more aggressive tone in talking about burning the country if need be to make our voices heard. And so Benson. Benson's just terrified by this. And he talks about how the communists are using these black power advocates to further their purposes, which is just so insulting if you think about this. Right. Like, these young black men would only do this because of the Communists, leaving them as though they were puppets. Like they don't have a conscience or the backbone to do the thing, do what they need to do to protest on their own. They have to be told what to do from the Kremlin. I mean, or.

John Dehlin [01:38:25] Or a history of oppression that would justify civil, civil protest.

Matt Harris [01:38:33] Yeah, it's just not, you know, this is what we talk about when I noted this in my book, that the brethren, including Benson, they just have not been around black people. They don't know other than what they may read or not read about racial oppression.

John Dehlin [01:38:47] Yeah.

Matt Harris [01:38:48] And so it's easy for. For Benson to do what he's doing because he doesn't know any black people. And he's. And by the way, in that speech, he's quoting from Birch people, You know, that article that you, the author that he quoted, she's a member of the Birch Society. And so, you know, talking about the communists had also killed Martin Luther King. I mean, there's no evidence for any of this stuff. But they killed Dr. King because he wasn't radical enough in pushing for civil rights agenda. That's the tack behind it, which is just absurd in so many ways.

John Dehlin [01:39:20] So Elder Benson also try to discredit the civil rights movement and he's trying to keep. It seems like he's trying to keep black people down and he doesn't want them to achieve any sort of civil justice in America. Right.

Matt Harris [01:39:36] Well, I'm going to put on my professorial hat for a minute and I'll critique. I mean, Elder Benson's like a lot of conservatives of his generation, and they can't understand that when you're dealing with poverty in an inner city, for example, that's been neglected for so long, and you're worried about where your next meal is coming from. When Lyndon Johnson, the liberal Democratic president, proposes a whole slew of domestic programs to help black families just feed themselves, for example, just one, one example, like meals that would allow underprivileged families money that would allow underprivileged families to have meals at school, the free meal program, I mean, you know, this is. The idea would be that if you're a young kid, in this case a black kid, and you go to school hungry, how are you supposed to learn if you're hungry. And so the government vis a vis Johnson creates this program that if you qualify, the school provide free lunch for you. Benson doesn't understand this and he's never had to worry about these kinds of things. He had this privilege. And so he can't relate to people in inner cities and the issues that they're faced with. And so he demonizes Lyndon Johnson, the President, for creating these programs because he thinks that the Great Society is a precursor to communism. And you know, this is just right wing extremism. And so, John, you mentioned about the two party system in here is that Ezra Taft Benson will start to criticize both political parties, including the party that he had belonged to for so many years, the Republican Party. And the reason why he's criticizing his own party is because by 1968, the year that he gives this address, his party adopts civil rights as a platform. They had been trounced in the 1964 election because they opposed civil rights and Lyndon Johnson, the Democrats crushed them and they vowed to never lose on civil rights again. And so in 68, the party embraces civil rights. Benson can't do that. He thinks it's communist inspired. And so it's about at this time where Benson will start to flirt with a third party system called the American Independent Party and of course their anti civil rights. And Benson is away from the Republican Party for nearly a dozen years until 1980 when Ronald Reagan is elected. He comes back into the Republican Party, but it's the Independent Party, that third party that he moves to because of their opposition to civil rights, which represents Benson's views.

John Dehlin [01:42:17] Yeah. Okay, so now I've got, I've got the. So, so now we set up bringing back, Harold, sorry, Hubie Brown into this conversation because somehow Hubie Brown ends up going to BYU not too long after Benson gives that horrible talk to kind of neutralize. And do you want to just before

Benson and Brown's Conflict Within the Quorum

Matt Harris [01:42:38] I. Yeah, before we do that, let me put some context to it. So Benson gives this speech. It's. I mean, you know, it's offensive on so many levels. Not just against the civil rights movement, but against the President, United States. He made some barbs about the Supreme Court being sympathetic to communists, which is just nonsense. And so students and faculty complained to the first presidency about this. One of the people who complains is a liberal who's a friend of Hugh Brown's, guy named Gus Larsen, who teaches in the religion department. And he writes President McCain. He said, since when is it okay for church officers like Elder Benson to give these Partisan talks enough. And so they're complaining to the President and so he turns to Brown. This is one of the few times where he gives Brown this, this long rope. And he said, have at. I want you to go to Provo and I want you to rebut Elder Benson. Contact Ernest Wilkinson. Tell him this is not a request, this is an order from the church president that you're to speak the following week. And so Brown relishes this because he had been punching back on Benson's right wing extremism for several years by this point. And now he has the President's support. So he goes to BYU and he gives this address and we can. Let's. Let's watch the address. And I want to tell you about how the students in the audience respond both to Benson and to Brown's address.

John Dehlin [01:44:13] And this will be just a short clip from it. I hope I have a decent part of the talk. But this is Hubie Brown and this is within a month of Benson's talk. Is that right?

Matt Harris [01:44:22] No. About a week later.

John Dehlin [01:44:24] A week later.

Guest [01:44:24] Strived to develop a mature purity of mind and emotion and a depth of spirit which will enable you to differ with others on matters of politics without calling into question the integrity of those with whom you differ. Allow within the bounds of your definition of religious orthodoxy a variation of political belief. Do not have the temerity to dogmatize on issues where the Lord has seen fit to be silent. I have found by long experience that our two party system is sound. Beware of those who are so lacking in humility that they cannot come within the framework of one of our two great parties. Our nation has avoided chaos like that is gripping frank France today because men have been able to temper their own desires sufficiently to seek broad agreement within one of the two major parties rather than forming splinter groups around one radical idea. Our two party system has served as well and should not be lightly discarded at a time when radicals of right or left would inflame race against race. Avoid those who preach evil doctrines of racism. When our father declared that we, his children, were brothers and sisters, he did not limit this relationship on the basis of race. Strive to develop that true love of country which realizes that real patriotism must include within it a regard for the people of the rest of the globe. Patriotism has never demanded of good men hatred of another country as proof of one's love for his own. Acquire the tolerance and compassion of others and for them those of different political or race or religion which is demanded by the heavenly parentage which we all have in common. Now, I'd like to bring.

John Dehlin [01:46:51] So, like, that's a Mormonism I could get behind. You know what I'm saying? Like, when I hear Ezra Tap Benson, who's my cousin, when I hear him give a talk, I'm like, get me out of here. When I hear Hubie Brown talk, I'm like, hey, I'm still Mormon, because that guy, that guy's me. That guy is. It represents me. And it's just so sad that we learn from your book and others that, like, so often it's just who. Who outlives who is what, you know, whether it's Joseph Fielding Smith outliving Talmage and widow and others, or. Or freaking Joseph Fielding Smith and Harold B. Lee outliving Hubie Brown. Like, it's sad to see that in this gerontocracy, it's often who outlives who that determines the fate of our culture. I don't know.

Matt Harris [01:47:40] Well, in this case, John, I mean, Brown never had a shot, right. He was called into the quorum of the 12 at age 78. So he wasn't going to outlive a lot of his. His contemporaries. Yeah, but if you want to know who's going to be the church president, look at when they're called. And like, not to go off script here, but like David Bednar, for example, he was called where his rank is in the Quorum now relative to his age. And there's a. If I were a betting guy, he's going to be the church president one of these days. Well, anyways, go back to that speech.

John Dehlin [01:48:09] So Brown, how did Benson not feel completely called out, humiliated by that?

Matt Harris [01:48:16] Oh, he was. He was absolutely humiliated. And, you know, the students aren't stupid. This happened a week apart because of all the complaints. That's how quickly this happened. The president said, hey, we want you to go to Provo, call Wilkinson. You're going to speak, I mean, you know, back to back, basically. And so Brown does that and he doesn't hold back. He doesn't mention Benson by name. But these kids aren't stupid. They know he's talking about Benson. You know, think about what he said, right? That you're demonizing countries and you think you're a patriot. You're demonizing leaders, government leaders with whom you disagree and you think you're a patriot. You're preaching the. Beware of those who preach the evil doctrines of racism. He's talking about all the race stuff, demonizing civil rights. He's questioning Benson's humility. I mean, he's just going after him.

John Dehlin [01:49:06] Also, the third party reference wasn't that with Benson flirting with joining a third party ticket with white supremacist Governor George Wallace to run for president on a third party ticket.

Matt Harris [01:49:17] Right. In February of 1968, just a few months before Benson gave this devotional address, word leaks that Benson is considering running on this ticket with George Wallace, the country's biggest segregationist. And it leaked because Benson hadn't. Didn't have permission yet to run. Wallace will fly to Salt Lake to beg the President. Hey, can you. I want Elder Ezra Taft Benson to support me. He's a big name in the conservative movement. He'll help me. And McKay wisely turned it down, as I write in my book, because it had the support the American Independent Party, led by Wallace and his prospective Vice president Benson. It had the support of the American Nazi Party, the White Citizens Council, which is a huge group. The Ku Klux Klan, the Birchers. So all of these really aggressive, extremist, racist groups were supporting the presidency. What does that tell you? And the president wisely turns a table down like, no way, Are you kidding me? We're already taking fire for our race teachings. This will put it into a different stratosphere if we allow a senior leader to run with you. And so words already out that Benson's trying to run as a third party candidate. And that's why part of this address that Benson gives that we didn't hear that. But if you listen to the whole thing, he talks about it's okay to join a third party. And Brown rebuts that like, no, we've got a great, wonderful two party system now. Only fringy people do third party considerations. And the reason, as I mentioned again, that Benson's flirting with a third party is because the Republican Party is endorsing civil rights. And that's how much he hates civil rights. So he leaves the party over that issue. Yeah, and. And not all Republicans. I mean, let's be clear. There are Republicans. I've written about this. There are Republicans who don't support civil rights, but it's not because they think that Dr. King's a commie. Barry Goldwater is a great example. The senator from Arizona, he opposed civil rights at one point. He would later come around and support it. But early on, in the early 60s, he opposed civil rights for federal reasons. He thought that it would create another federal bureaucracy to oversee these rights, and he disagreed with that. So he was a states rights kind of guy and he opposed it for federal purposes. But that's far different than arguing we should oppose it because it's run by communists. And Senator Goldwater never adopted that Birch line. He thought the Birchers were nuts.

Guest [01:51:51] In fact.

John Dehlin [01:51:53] Well, just to go back to what you're saying about Brown falling, Hubie Brown falling out of favor with David O. McKay, it's clear that as late as 68 or 69, McKay is still relying on Brown to kind of buffer and oppose the extremities of Ezra Tap Benson. So it's. I think. I think McKay still finds Brown useful and an important member of the Quorum to provide balance against extremism.

Matt Harris [01:52:22] Yeah, I think that's true. And when he needed Brown, like, here's a classic example, Latter Day Saints had been complaining, or BYU students had complained, and faculty about Benson's address. Who better to go rebut Benson than Benson's nemesis, Brown? So McKay gives him that support. But what happens by the late 60s is that President McKay's cutting Brown out of a lot of decision making that he should have been involved with, but wasn't.

John Dehlin [01:52:48] Yeah.

Matt Harris [01:52:49] And McKay was just making these decisions on his own and with Alvin Dyer, the new guy, and that created a lot of resentment.

John Dehlin [01:52:59] Yeah. Okay. Well, I just wanted to play that because we. How can we not include that when we're kind of honoring Hubie Brown? Let's go ahead and fast forward now back to Brown losing his battle and attempting to get McKay to lift the band before he dies and Joseph Fielding Smith and Harold B. Lee take over.

Matt Harris [01:53:20] Yeah, yeah, let's. Let me. Let me just go back for one quick second. Just on after Brown spoke, BYU students, they wrote into the office of the First Presidency, and they said, we're confused. Whose position is right, Elder Benson's or President Brown's? And so they're recognizing that there's tension. And Brown had a form letter that his secretary would send back to these students, and it essentially said that Brown's position is the right one, not Benson's. So I've interviewed some of these. These students, and I have their journal entries, and it's. It's something else. All right, so let's go back to the fall of 1969. Brown had just been thwarted by Harold Lee. McKay backed off, agreed not to ordain Monroe Fleming to the priesthood. And I. Monroe Fleming, I wish he were alive. He dies in 83. So I never got a chance to interview him and ask him if he knew anything about any of this, which he probably didn't. But so it gets thwarted and Brown is bitter. I Don't use that word lightly. He's bitter, he's angry. And by November of 69, the same month that the WAC was supposed to vote to kick BYU out, they backed off of that because a few weeks earlier BYU had decided to start to recruit black athletes. So that counseled the vote. But in November something happened that would take it to another whole level. Stanford University in November of 1969 publicly announced that because the Mormon church is racist we will discontinue all relationships with the university and its athletic teams. And this is an astonishing announcement made by the president, guy named Kenneth Fitzerald. And when he announced this, a whole host of Latter Day Saints who had gone to Stanford, they wrote letters. One of the people who wrote letters was Henry B. Eyring in the governing for his presidency who went to Stanford, who taught at Stanford before he was called to be the president of Ricks College in the 1970s. Eyring was on the faculty at the time and he wrote a letter. Obert C. Tanner, who did graduate work in philosophy at Stanford wrote a letter to the president and they identified themselves as Latter Day Saint alumni. How could you do this? And Brown, Brown is bothered by this. And before Brown could intervene, Stanford reached out to him and before they made the announcement they wanted to make sure they had the doctrine right. And so they called Brown, Pfitzer called Brown and he said is it true that you don't ordain Negroes to the priesthood? And Brown said that's true, but that will change. And you know, he's got nothing to base this on, but this is what he tells Fitzer, it'll change. So he's trying to give him, you know, some optimism and hope. In other words, don't counsel the, do what you're going to do because it will change. But so Pfitzer then talks to the press, he said we're going to counsel all athletic relationships. I had a conversation with Hugh Brown. Brown said yes, we understand Mormon racial doctrine correctly that they don't ordain Negroes to the priesthood. But Brown says it will change. And when that goes public, Harold Lee goes through the moon. And so this would have been late November 1969. And because this goes public that a First Presidency counselor has predicted that the ban will be lifted again, again, again, again. Now the Saints just pause. The Saints don't know what's going on behind closed doors with Monroe Fleming. This is not public knowledge at all. But what is public knowledge is a high ranking church leader in Brown predicting the ban would end and so Harold Lee's really, really upset. He and Harold Lee decides on his own accord to issue a first presidency statement reaffirming church racial doctrine. And now what does that mean? He's not even a member of the first presidency, but he's dictating to the first presidency what they're going to do. And talk about gutsy. But again, people respect Harold Lee. He's a mover and a shaker. He's got a powerful authoritarian voice. They recognize him as the church president president or the future church president. Nobody wants to offend him. And so Harold Lee, he talks to guy named G. Homer Durham, who would later be called into the General Authority ranks. He was the president of Arizona State University at the time. His background's in political science. He was a professor at the University of Utah before he went into higher education administration at asu. He asked Homer Durham to write a statement about the band. He asked Neal Maxwell, who was not an apostle yet, to write a statement about the band. Neal Maxwell was an administrator at the University of Utah at the time. And then he asked Gordon Hinckley to participate. So Harold Lee, Homer Durham, Neal Maxwell would each write statements reaffirming the church's race teachings. And Gordon Hinckley, a junior apostle, would take those three statements and amalgamate them into one coherent statement. And Sherry Dew, Gordon Hinckley's biographer, it's kind of amazing she mentions this, frankly, without some of the context. She just mentions it's a statement. She doesn't have any idea the context behind the statement, because for whatever reason, but. But she said that Gordon Hinckley felt this was the most mentally exhausting task. That's what she writes, according to Hinckley's views. So he had to take these three statements and meld them together. And it was really difficult. And so they do that. And Harold Lee calls in the first presidency. David O. Is sick. He's not. He's out of it. He's not a part of this at all. But Harold Lee calls in N. Eldon Tanner and says, you're going to sign this. Here's the statement. And he calls in Brown. Now, how do you think Brown felt about this statement? He's trying to overturn the church's race doctrine. And now you have a headstrong apostle saying, you're going to reaffirm it by signing your name here. And Brown is. He. He says he's devastated. He said, I can't sign this. It doesn't have a statement of civil rights in it. And so Lee reluctantly adds a statement in which the church indicates support for civil rights. But even that concession didn't mollify Lee because when he left that meeting, I don't have the transcript of that meeting. I wish I did. But when he left that meeting, there was another general authority who didn't like the ban either. And he was waiting to meet with Harold Lee. And this is Marion Hanks. And Marion Hanks writes in his diary describes what. What Brown looked like when he left the meeting. And he said that he was red in the face and subdued, that he had just sort of like been run over by a Mack truck, that Harold Lee got the best of him. And so Brown did sign that statement, but he wept when he did. So I was on an apologetic Mormon site not long ago, and I was looking at some. This site had. They had that the First Presidency statement up. And I read the little commentary. It wasn't a big commentary, but it was basically the First Presidency. Counselor signed the statement raw. And I told one of the people who managed the site, I said, this is just not true. Brown did not support this statement. Even though you see his signature, he didn't support the statement at all. He wept as he signed it because he felt pressured to sign it. And so that was December 5, 1969, just about a couple of weeks after the Stanford debacle. And Wilkinson himself, during all of this, he was a part of this. He knew about the document that they were going to produce the first pregnancy as a response, response to the Stanford issue and also as a response to Brown. And when they were talking about the response, in creating the first parentheses statement, Ernest Wilkinson. This would have been late November of 69, just a few weeks before Brown signed it, or a week and a half before Brown signed it. Wilkinson said he was at a board meeting, and he said, quote, the board, they were as cantankerous as hell. That's the word he uses, cantankerous as hell. Because of Stanford going public with LDS racial teachings and also Brown's shenanigans. So Brown signed the statement. And On Christmas Day, December 25, 1969, just a couple of weeks after he signed it. Nobody knows about the statement yet. Let's be clear. It's not released to the public. And Brown speaks to the media yet again. Oh, my. And now Brown did not know that his private conversation with Ken Fitzer would make a Palo Alto newspaper in which he predicted the band would end. He didn't know that when it got published against his knowledge. But this time around, he knows And a guy named Lester Kinsolving who writes for the San Francisco Chronicle in Northern California. He interviewed Brown on Christmas Day. And Brown didn't hold back. He said, that ban is going to end. He was emphatic. And now Brown knows it's going to go public. And Brown knows this is a story. And sure enough, Lester Kinsolving just puts it in his band's going to end predict senior apostle. I mean, talk about not reading the tea leaves with his Quorum members. Brown didn't care. And so the Brethren had decided that they were going to release the First Presidency Statement maybe a month or two after they had signed it in early December of 69. But instead, they feared that Brown was going to leak it. Or they found, excuse me, they feared that Brown had already leaked it because they got word that Wallace Turner of the New York Times knew about the statement and was going to do a story on it and leaked the statement. I don't have any proof that Brown leaked it to Turner, but I'm certain that he did. And so when they found that the New York Times got a hold of the First Presidency Statement, they decided to rush it into print. And they published the statement in the January 1970 improvement era. That was before they. They had planned to do it. So the New York Times threatening to release it is what forced their hand. So when Harold Lee got word of the interview that Brown had with Kinsolving, he exploded in anger. He said, brown is talking too much. That's the word he used. Brown is talking too much, that he's speaking to the media, not keeping these deliberations private. And of course, Lee was really, really worried that by Brown speaking to the media, it would contradict the First Presidency statement. It would give the impression that President Brown and the rest of the brethren are at odds over the race doctrine. And indeed they were. And so there's a lot of conflict. And it all comes to a head In January of 1970, the same year, month and year in which the Improvement ERA publishes the 69 statement. That's also the month and year when David O. McKay dies.

Brown's Removal and the First Presidency Statement

John Dehlin [02:05:25] What is this story, man? This story.

Matt Harris [02:05:29] There's a lot going on. And so When David O. McKay died in January of 1970, Brown knew. Brown knew that there was trouble on the horizon. I mean, he suspected it. He knew. But he got the bad news later that month when Harold Lee informed him, you're out, you're done. No longer in the First Presidency. When President Smith is ordained the next prophet at the April 1970 General Conference, you're not going to be one of his counselors.

John Dehlin [02:05:58] Why wouldn't Joseph Feeling Smith tell him that himself?

Matt Harris [02:06:01] Because he's old and he's sleeping through half of his meetings. I don't say that lightly.

John Dehlin [02:06:06] So Joseph Feeling Smith was basically out of commission, mentally.

Matt Harris [02:06:09] He's 93 years of age. He's like David O. McKay had moments of lucidity, moments where he's just sleeping. I can't tell you how many documents I have from the early, the late 60s in which apostles and other people, not even apostles, but even government leaders who were in meetings with Joseph Feeling Smith, they all comment, he's sleeping. He's sleeping through his meetings. And anyway, my response to that is, well, maybe you need to spice up the meeting a little bit. So he's sleeping through his meetings and they comment about it. The governor of Utah. What's his name? Calvin Rollins I think is his name. Governor of Utah, talks about going to a meeting with Joseph Felix, sleeping through the meetings. Hugh Brown says, you know, the President's worn out. And so Hugh Brown, so he's been dropped from the, the First Presidency. He's bitter. And his close friend, I'd say good friend. Not close friend, but good friend.

John Dehlin [02:07:10] Who is he replaced with? Who's he replaced with?

Matt Harris [02:07:13] He's going to be replaced by Harold Lee as first counselor, Nathan Tanner as second counselor.

John Dehlin [02:07:18] Okay, this is what I referenced to when I made the reference last episode to Hubie Brown being Uchtdorfed. That I was referring to Uchtdorf being replaced in effect by Dallin H. Oaks when Russell Nelson became president.

Matt Harris [02:07:33] Yeah. So Brown is just absolutely bitter to his friend, J. Willard Marriott, who wrote him a nice letter, you know, congratulations, President Brown. I'm sure it'll. It's a good thing that you're no longer in the first presidency. And Brown writes back, yeah, I've been relieved of many irksome duties. And he, you know, he's keeping a good public face to it. The church had publicly said that he was released because of his health and all of that, but that, that's just obviously not true. It's because he was a crusading activist and the brother and got sick of it. And then just about two days after he wrote this fairly cheery, upbeat letter to Marriott, J. Willard Marriott, Brown gave an interview and, oh my goodness, you see his emotions and he's just raw. And in the interview, his daughter went. And during this interview, they asked him,

John Dehlin [02:08:22] was this like with the, with the press?

Matt Harris [02:08:25] No, this is, this is with a church history employee.

John Dehlin [02:08:30] Okay.

Matt Harris [02:08:31] Yeah. This is a private interview. This is not meant for public consumption. And so Brown took his filter out and they asked him, you know, how do you feel about Joseph feeling Smith becoming the new prophet? And I'm going to give you a quote. This has been etched in my mind. Joseph or Hugh Brown responded, no comment. Joseph Fielding smith, he is 93. He is worn out, he is done. That was a simple question. How do you feel about Joseph building Smith becoming the next prophet? No comment. He is 93. He is worn out, he is done. I mean, he's bitter. Hugh Brown's bitter. And at one point, he cusses in the interview, and he's sharp and aggressive, and his daughter says, daddy, we're on tape. And he turns to his daughter and he says, I don't give a damn. And I mean, as a historian, this is like incredible stuff in real time because you really. You see the emotion. And I want to give your listeners a sense of what all this means.

John Dehlin [02:09:34] Julie's asking if you are there audio or video recordings of this interview. Is there a transcript? How do you know about it?

Matt Harris [02:09:41] Yeah, yeah, yeah. Unfortunately, this is a restricted interview. I can't share.

John Dehlin [02:09:45] Yeah, okay. But it's transcript. You see, you've read a transcript or.

Matt Harris [02:09:50] Oh, yeah, yeah, I have the transcript. Yeah, I quote from some of it.

Guest [02:09:53] My book.

Matt Harris [02:09:54] But it's a. It's a remarkable transcript because you get him in real time. And this is a. This is a proud man. This is a man who has this incredible gift to speak. And the saints loved his speaking. I mean, I have dozens and dozens of letters where the saints would hear. Hear him speak. And they would write in, and they would say, dear President Brown, that was the most inspiring sermon I've ever heard in my life. And then they would give, you know, five or 10 reasons how it changed their life. And if you didn't know any better from reading these letters, you thought that they were referring to the same one or two talks. And then you would look closely and you would realize there's a range of talks, and that's how the saints responded to him. And so he was a beloved speaker and had this incredible position of authority as a beloved speaker. And all of a sudden, he has this precipitous fall from power, and it's disgraceful the way they treat him. And so he gets dropped. And when that happens, that's only happened maybe once in LDS Church history, in the 20th century. So obviously, Uchtdorf comes later on, and the church's public line is he's Sick, he's not doing well. But that's not it at all. Harold Lee and Joseph feeling Smith didn't want to work with him because of his activism against the priesthood ban. And he's better, really, really bitter. He's not sleeping at night. And when Joseph Fielding Smith was ordained the next church president, his daughter. His daughter paid a courtesy call because President Brown and his beloved wife Zina, they were. They were crushed. And it was. It was socially acceptable to go to the new church president and to pay a courtesy call. And dear President Smith, I just here to support you and do whatever I can to help you in your significant responsibilities as the new church president and prophet. Humans, I couldn't do that. And so the daughter. The daughter goes on her own volition. She's not asked by her parents. She goes to pay a courtesy call, and she goes to. She sees her father's old office. It's now occupied by his nemesis, Harold Lee. And Brown and Lee used to be friends and they had a falling out. So she sees Lee and she goes into Lee, and Lee feels a little. Not a little. He knows that Brown's been slighted and he's really, really deferential towards Brown's daughter. I mean, goes out of his way. He's gushing. And I'm so happy you're here, and it's so good to see you and all of this. And then she goes into President Smith, who's 93 years of age, and she writes that he was so cold and distant. I tried to break the ice with him by saying that your father, Joseph F. Smith, your father married my parents so many years ago, and my parents hold your father in the highest of esteem. And the daughter just writes, he just gave me this cold stare and didn't say a word. And so she goes back and reports what she had done to her parents. I paid President Lee and President Smith a courtesy call today. And Zina just. She's a. Just a beloved woman. She's the granddaughter Brigham Young. And Zina goes to her daughter and she says, bless you, darling. The Browns always use the word darling. Zina, did she call all of her children darling and that the girls would pick up on this, too and call their own children darling things? Kind of endearing, but she said, bless you, darling, for paying that call, your father. And I just couldn't do it. And so I'm going to share one last element about this, of how damaging this was to Brown being dropped from the first presidency. A couple of stories I want to share a few Stories, actually, one deals with. There was a lot of rancor about for years of Brown's activism that when they decided to rededicate the London temple In the early 1970s, they didn't invite Hugh Brown. They invited most members of the 12 to attend this significant rededication of this profound and iconic Mormon structure, this temple, one of the early temples in the church. And the reason why it meant so much to Brown is because he was a young missionary in Liverpool in the London area in the early 20th century. He was also a mission president in the 1930s and 40s, on two different occasions in England. So the English people and that country had special significance in Brown's life. And he felt that his not being invited to this special rededication was a direct slight and it pained him. And Brown was so bitter. There's a lot I can share, but he was so bitter about the ban and the way that he had been treated that in the fall of 1975, just before he died, his health was spiraling downward. He wasn't able to go into the church office building to perform his duties as a member of the quorum of the 12. He was at home. His daughter was near taking being his caretaker. Zina had already died at this point. And he summoned the newly called church president in at to his home. Spencer Kimmel had been called and ordained as a new church president after Harold Lee's untimely death. And when this. So Lee would have died in December of 73, and Kimball was called to be the new president that same month. Well, about a year, year and a half after that, Kimball went to Brown's home as Brown lay dying. And Brown extracted a promise from him. He said, promise me you'll lift this ban. And Kimball said that he would, but that it would take time. And by that he meant, of course, that he had to get the brethren on board, that in order for the Revelation to move forward, there would have to be unanimity. And of course, Kimball didn't have unanimity among the quorum, just as Brown knew. So the other thing I want to share with you about is I'm going to jump ahead for this is not in my book. And I want to share this with your listeners. And so Brown dies in December of 1975, and three years later, in June of 78, of course, the ban is lifted. It's a spoiler alert for your listeners. We're going to go into detail with this later, how this happens, how Kimball does it. But In June of 1978, when the ban is lifted. Brown's daughter writes in her diary and she says that Daddy would be very proud of this day. I know that he was behind it. So she's giving her father support with all of his activism. Daddy was right and Harold Lee was wrong. So she takes a jab at Harold Lee and also notices notes how the daughter had treated her father. And then finally when the ban was lifted, the three senior apostles, or two senior apostles and one junior apostle, but N. Eldon Tanner, Gordon Hinckley and James Faust, they each called Brown's grandson Edwin Firmage, who was very close to his grandfather. And they each said the same thing. Your grandfather would have loved to have seen this day. Recognizing the bitter, hard fought battles that Brown had had with the hardliners and that now June of 1978, was a vindication of all of brain Brown's pain and anguish. So that's Brown, man. He's, he's. The liberals in the church today who know about him, they love him, John, because he, he really didn't think that Mormonism could be harmed by anything really. That the truth was the truth and, and that it ought to go out and it won't harm the church, the gospel truths. But yet so many of his contemporaries, including Harold Lee and others, they didn't see it that way. And anybody who had a contrarian voice, they were to be suppressed. And one of the reasons why Brown really, really championed a journal that I know that you think highly of and I think highly of, and that's Dialogue. Brown love Dialogue, that it was formed by a couple of university students, Eugene England and a guy named Wes Johnson. Johnson actually had finished graduate school by that point, was a young professor, but Eugene England was at Stanford. And they formed Dialogue, this journal to offer a space for liberal thinkers in the church to talk about gospel issues. And Brown thought that that was wise. And so Brown, Brown would make it a point that when Dialogue came under fire from other general authorities, Harold Lee called it subversive. And Brown made it a point when it came under fire that he would always have a copy of Dialogue on his desk when general authorities came in. He wanted to lead by example and let them know it's okay to read Dialogue. They were in a meeting once with a board, meeting with Ernest Wilkinson, and Wilkinson proposed that they ban dialogue from the BYU campus. Let's not have it on campus at all, including the library. And Brown being the headstrong man that he was, he said, ernest, I propose banning you from campus. And the rest of the board members. I don't know. Some of them chuckled, I'm sure, and some of them thought, oh, we agree with Wilkinson, not Brown. But Brown just had that capacity to entertain different thoughts and his ideas. In 1968, just a handful of years before he died, he said that I'm more of a liberal now as I've ever been in my entire life. I see the virtues in liberal thinking. I see the virtues of, of helping people in impoverished situations. I see the virtues in helping immigrants come to this country and giving them a fresh start. I see the virtues in racial equality. He's saying all of these things that are anathema to his conservative colleagues in the Quorum, an anathema to the growing right wing extremism that has now begun to permeate the church. So Brown is, he's a contrarian voice. I'm writing a biography about him now. I'm hoping in this biography to introduce him to a new generation of Latter Day Saints who do not know who he was as a person.

Hugh B. Brown's Final Years and Legacy

John Dehlin [02:20:31] A couple, couple questions that may involve, that may stretch into the area of speculation or just things you don't want to talk about, of course, because I think about this stuff a lot. Is there any way to know if Brown remained a true believer in the LDS Church and his truth claims to his death? Is there any indication that, that those, that he became either more liberal in his literal beliefs around LDS Church truth claims and, or stop believing altogether? Is that something you either want to talk about or have any information on?

Matt Harris [02:21:11] Yeah. No, I do. I do. This is part of my biography and I'll tell you the reason why I've looked at these truth claims of Brown is because in the early 70s, when the book of Abraham, when there was renewed interest in the Book of Abraham, this is part of the Mormon canon, the Bible, the Book of Mormon, the Doctrine and Covenants, and the Book of Abraham, which is part of the Pearl of great price. When the Egyptian scrolls became available in the mid-1960s and Hugh Nibley and others had taken an interest in it to make sure that they were, you know, to look at them. Nibley went to the University of Chicago to study with Klaus Baer, an Egyptologist, because he wanted to be able to translate the scrolls. So there's a lot of interest in these scrolls and a lot of it was not positive. I mean, in the late 60s when these scrolls appeared into the early 70s, there were some Egyptologists who were not Latter Day Saints. They were reading them and they were saying, wait a minute, what these scrolls say and what's in the scripture here are at odds. And so it's not a translation. And the church was struggling to deal with this. And they would argue something like, you know, well, some of the scrolls that were recovered were not the ones that the prophet had translated in 1835 when he inherited them. So that was kind of an early line. Now the church has worked into a line where there weren't. It wasn't a literal translation, it was a revelation. I'm not going to weigh into those, those kinds of issues. I'll let believers or non believers think what they want. But. But the rumor was by a couple of critics in the early 70s that Brown didn't believe in the pearl of great price. He thought it wasn't authentic. I thought, wait a minute, a first presidency counselor and now apostle rejecting one of the books of scripture in the Mormon canon. That's a story. And so I looked into it and there's no truth to it that Brown was bearing his testimony to the day he died about the truth claims of the church. He did it to his family, he did it to members. So I, I'm not persuaded by any of that. However, however, Brown was bitter and part of his. He didn't accept Joseph Fielding Smith as the church president. I have not seen any evidence about that. And when he was so vocal to that interviewer, you know, saying that Smith was 93, he was worn out, he's done and, you know, do you support him? No comment. Right. He also said that the interviewer asked him, do you remain faithful to the church? He said, I've had a lot of bitter experiences that were hard to take, but I got into the boat early as a young man and I see no reason to leave the boat now. So take of that what you will, but I've seen him bear testimony and, but he was definitely battered and beat up towards the end. And just before he died, he also talked to a couple of young LDS intellectuals, one of whom we've talked about already, Gene England, the founder of Dialogue. And the other one was another important person with Dialogue named Bob Reese, who's still alive today. And Bob Reese told me something interesting, that toward the latter part of Brown's life, he called or Rhys in England, met with him and he told Rhys and England, he said that the right wing extremism is going to kill the church. He's talking about Benson, we've got to put a stop to this. And he basically told these two young intellectuals, he said, it's guys like you that need to push back on this. And of course, as these younger men. England's deceased now, but Rhys is still alive. He's in his 80s. And you know, when I talked to Rhys about this, he was very clear about, you know, that message meeting with the, this high ranking church leader and the message that he had. He was worried for the church. Brown was worried about the fate of the church because of right wing extremism and because of the priesthood ban that at that point hadn't been lifted. So he still had a testimony, he still believed, but he was bitter about how his associates had treated him in the latter part of his ministry.

John Dehlin [02:25:25] And the only, and I'm not disagreeing with you, but I'll just say I'm aware of at least one emeritus general authority who lost his faith. Enzio Busha. He became friends with Grant Palmer towards the end of his life and Grant Palmer's life, and I've had it confirmed to me through multiple sources that he no longer believed as an emeritus general authority and former presidency member of the, of the first quorum of the 70. Well, he of course never went public with his non belief and even continued to bear his testimony after he lost his belief because the, the consequences of having been a general authority, let alone an apostle and losing your faith would be enormous and potentially catastrophic. So I know there's, there's precedent of general authorities losing their faith and just not wanting to talk about it publicly, you know, so I, and, and we know that Brown signed a statement that he didn't believe right in signing that first presidency statement affirming the doctrinality, the priesthood ban. So I mean, I don't think that we can say conclusively and maybe you probably weren't what Hubie Brown's internal beliefs actually were. All we know is, is that he continued to bear his testimony until the end. But bearing your testimony is different than what you actually believe sometimes.

Matt Harris [02:26:50] Well, no, I don't disagree with that, John. There's a public and a private, right. My first book I ever did was on the founding fathers and religion. And what was really interesting is public statements that Thomas Jefferson would make about religion as he's running for the presidency in 1800. And you read these public statements and you're thinking, oh my goodness, this, this guy's a card carrying Christian. And then you read a private letter that he writes to his nephew telling him to question everything about Christianity, including the Holy Atonement, which is hocus pocus. Like wait a minute, these are two statements and odds. And I would talk to my students and I would say, which statement do you think is the more credible, the public or the private one? And of course, you know, it doesn't take a genius to figure out the private one. Something meant, not meant for public consumption. Which leads to the question, well, why did he. Why would he say something entirely different in public? Well, it's simple. He's running for the presidency. Most people are Christian in the country. This is just really born out of political expedience. And with Brown, you know, it's hard to jump into his mind about what he believes. All I can go is on the evidence that I have. And the evidence that I have is he's bitter. There's no question he's bitter. And you see it in Brown. He's bitter in the interview that he gave. And I have some other documents that supplement that. You see it in the way that his kids see him talking about daddy is bitter. And I mean, that's the word they use. This is not Matt Harris. This is their words. Talking about their father. He's bitter. And so you see that that's enough to make some truth claims. Right. When you see other people around him noticing how bitter and angry he was and you, you know, do you believe. Do you support the church leader? You know, no comment. He's worn out. He's done. I mean, I can read that fairly comfortably and argue that he does not support Joseph Fielding Smith as the church president. Smith has wronged him. That's how he feels.

John Dehlin [02:28:41] Yeah.

Matt Harris [02:28:42] And do you. Basically, why do you stay in the church? And he just says, I've been in the. This is like a boat. I've been in this boat my entire life. I'm not going to get out of the boat now.

John Dehlin [02:28:52] Yeah.

Matt Harris [02:28:52] But I've had some bitter experiences that are hard to take. So he bears his testimony, John. And I don't have any evidence. As a scholar, I have to play by the rules of evidence.

Guest [02:29:01] Yeah.

Matt Harris [02:29:02] I don't have any evidence he discarded the core truth claims about the Book of Mormon, Joseph Smith's first vision, any of that. But he definitely has a very nuanced view about church leadership.

John Dehlin [02:29:14] Do we know whether his children and grandchildren, to what extent they remained faithful versus lost their faith and or left the church?

Matt Harris [02:29:23] Yeah, I have an idea with some. Sure. Some of his offspring definitely remained loyal in the church. His children were. I'm going to say this very respectfully. His children were. They had a lot of problems. And he had six kids, one of whom got shot down during World War II. Hugh Jr. And a tragic story. They Refused Mama Brown, or I call her Mama Zina. She. There's like four Zionists, so you got to keep them all straight. But Zina Brown refused to believe that her son was gone and he had gone missing. They never recovered. The body was flying a plane and it dipped below the radar into the ocean. And when the Royal Air Force wrote this telegram to Hugh and Zionist saying that your son has not been located. We've been trying, searching, she refused to believe it. And finally Hugh came home to her one day and said, you know, know, sweetheart, he's gone. And just this really emotional moment. So Hugh Jr. Is out of the picture as a young man because he gets shot down during World War II. Then you get a son who works for the church. His name is Homer Manley Brown, named after Hugh's father, Homer, and they called him Manley. The family did. He worked for the church education system, and he seemed to be, you know, just pretty obviously focused on the church, but had a liberal bent in the church like his father did. He wasn't enamored with church leadership. He knew that the brethren had flaws and foibles and all of that, but yet was always loyal, as far as I could tell. And then the daughters had some problems. One was an alcoholic, one was. I'm saying this all very respectfully. One had mental health issues. And anyway, that's all I'm going to say about some of the family. The grandkids are. Some of them are in the church, some not. Ed Furmidge, the grandson of Hugh Brown, who was a close confidant of his grandfather. Ed Fermidge was a law professor at the University of Utah. I've interviewed him a few times before he passed about this Brown book. And Ed Fermage left the church in the late 80s, 1980s, over ordination of women and also some other issues. So he left the church in the late 80s. And then the other grandkids. It's just a mixed bag, as any family would know when you get two or three generations out. But there's a lot more I could say about it. But I'll just say that Brown and his wife Zina, in my opinion, are just absolutely remarkable people. They're just kind, they're generous, they're forgiving, they're. I read letters to their children and the affection they had for their children and also the affection the children had for the parents. And I just. I moved by reading these letters. It's just. It's a remarkable family in so many ways. In spite of some of the problems that the children had.

John Dehlin [02:32:18] All right, well, I am just, you know, I don't know how long Mormon stories is going to last, but I'm so honored to have been able to have you on Matt Harris, to spend a good two and a half hours honoring one of the true heroes, as far as I'm concerned, in all of Mormon history. Right up there with William Law, right up there with Fawn Brody. Right up there with Joanna, with Juanita Brooks. Sorry. With Juanita Brooks. There are so many BH Roberts. There's so many unsung heroes in broader Mormon culture, and Hubie Brown is certainly one of them. And so, Matt Harris, thank you so much for being willing to tell this part of a hero's story.

Matt Harris [02:33:02] Oh, it's my pleasure. I don't make any bones about it. I admire the Brown family. They're great people.

Closing Reflections on Chapter Five

John Dehlin [02:33:10] All right, and so that concludes our coverage of chapter five of this amazing book, Second Class Saints, Black Mormons and the Struggle for Racial Equality by Matthew Harris. Buy it now. Buy it for friends and family. Also, we. We only have about 60 of the tens of thousands of you who have donated to this project with Matt. Please go to donorbox.org Matt Harris, donate to this series so that we can complete it. We're now halfway through chapter five. That's halfway through 10 chapters. Is that right?

Matt Harris [02:33:44] That's. That's right, man. Wow.

John Dehlin [02:33:46] We made it. And if y' all want to see us complete the book, we've still got five. Are there still some interesting chapters to go, or have we pretty much covered the interesting stuff? Matt, I say that jokingly.

Matt Harris [02:33:56] I say that, no, we haven't even gotten to the linchpin yet, which is the priesthood revelation chapter. How that's lifted. How Kimball does it.

Guest [02:34:05] Yeah.

John Dehlin [02:34:06] So a lot of cool stuff to go. Please support this project. Thanks everyone who makes all this possible, including Julia Maven, Brooklyn Gerardo, and the open storage board, and all you donors that already donate. But, Matt, thanks for this amazing book, and we look forward to having you back again soon.

Matt Harris [02:34:24] Yeah, thanks, John. Enjoyed our talk today.

John Dehlin [02:34:27] All right, thanks, everyone. You guys take care. Be good to each other, be kind to each other, and we'll see you all again soon on another episode of Mormon Stories podcast. Take care.

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