Item Detail
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17087
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1
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0
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English
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Two Perspectives : The Religious Hopes of "Worthy" African American Latter-day Saints Before the 1978 Revelation
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Black and Mormon
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Urbana
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University of Illinois Press
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50-69
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This essay "provides some insights into the minds and hopes of two Mormon African Americans whose membership spanned the years when the denial of the priesthood to blacks was in full force. Although priesthood denial applied specifically to men of African lineage, it also imposed restrictions on black women. Jane Elizabeth Manning James was an African American woman who converted to the LDS church in 1842. Len Hope Sr. was a black man who converted to Mormonism in 1919. It is hoped that the accounts of the religious trials and tribulations of these early black Saints will give readers a greater understanding of the possibilities for people of African descent within the Church of Jesus Christ of Latter-day Saints in the first decades of the twenty-first century." (taken from authors' introduction)