Where Rep. Hakeem Jeffries drags Utah's new Trump-supporting Black republican

[StevieM]

30. Until 1978 African-Americans could not hold the priesthood in the LDS church.

In Mormonism, the priesthood does not simply refer to clergymen. All adult men are given the priesthood. And at 12 they are given an introductory version of it.

That means that black people were inherently inferior according to official church policy. That is what led the Carter administration to prepare to take away their tax exempt status. And it is why other colleges were refusing to play BYU in sports. Also, there was a temple being built in Brazil, which had a large black population, and where bloodlines were not so easily identified due to centuries of mixing between African, European, and Amerindian peoples.

Then came the revelation. Spencer W. Kimball ended the ban in 1978. At that point, according to Wikipedia, "missionaries no longer needed special permission to teach black people, converts were no longer asked about African heritage, and marks were no longer made on membership records indicating African heritage."

https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/1978_Revelation_on_Priesthood#:~:text=The%201978%20Revelation%20on%20Priesthood,African%20descent%20from%20the%20priesthood.