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Mormonism and the Negro (1960)

by John J. Stewart

The Church and the Negro (1967)

by John L. Lund
"When God allows a spirit to take on a Negroid body, do you suppose He is unaware of the fact that he will suffer a social stigma?" -- John J. Stewart

"Why are so many of the inhabitants of the earth cursed with a skin of blackness? It comes in consequence of their fathers rejecting the power of the Holy Priesthood and law of God." -- Journal of Discourses, II.272.

"When people rebel against God's commandments, either during their pre-earth life or while in mortality, they are given a dark skin so that those who are of the chosen seed will not intermarry with them." -- John L. Lund
Sadly, these guys didn't make it up. Joseph Smith made it up:
". . . a sore cursing . . . as they were white, and exceedingly fair and delightsome, that they might not be enticing unto my people the Lord God did cause a skin of blackness to come upon them." -- Book of Mormon (2 Nephi 5:21)

". . . scales of darkness shall begin to fall . . . they shall be a white and delightsome people." (In the early 1980s this was altered to read "pure and delightsome") -- Book of Mormon (2 Nephi 30:6)

NOTE: The official banning of "Negros" from the Mormon priesthood was reversed by "revelation" in 1978. Here's a fun web page about the history of Mormon racial doctrine.

(See also...)