Mormon Church Shares Blame

Status of Utah Negores Said Among Worst in Nation

Editor's Note—Many Utah Negroes feel their situation is one of the worst in the country in respect to discrimination from almost every standpoint. Often the Mormon Church is accused of providing a religious motivation for discrimination—a charge which church leaders are quick to deny. Here is a report on this complex situation.

By R. GREG NOKES

SALT LAKE CITY, Utah (AP)—"It's bad enough being a Negro anyplace, but in Utah you're told you're bearing some damned curse to boot."

The speaker is a Negro, one of only about 5,000 in this state where more than 60% of the white population are members of the Church of Jesus Christ of Latter-Day Saints (Mormon).

At least one Negro leader, Charles Nabors, feels Utah "has potentially the worst race problem in the United states." Nabors is a member of the executive board of the Utah chapter of the National Association for the Advancement of Colored People.

MANY OF THE Negroes' complaints are the same as those heard elsewhere—discrimination in employment, in housing and in public accommodations.

But the Utah Negro also feels there is some religious motivation to discrimination against him.

The Mormon Church, which has its world headquarters here, admits Negroes to its membership, but bars them from the priesthood, a status in which church members of other races, including Orientals, are freely admitted.

AS A RESULT, the church claims no more than a handful of Negroes among its approximately two million members throughout the world.

The reasons the Negro is excluded is not entirely clear. Many Mormons believe the Negro is a descendant of Cain and therefore carries the curse God put on Cain for slaying his brother Abel.

There are some references to this in Mormon literature.

However, Hugh B. Brown, 79-year-old counselor to church President David O. McKay and one of the three top officials of the church said he knows of no firm church doctrine that prevents the Negro from having rights of the priesthood.

HE SIMPLY is not in sufficient numbers in the church and is not advanced to the position where he could assume leadership," Brown said.

Just when the Negro will be ready, he said, "we have no way of knowing on earth. Any change has to come as the result of revelation from God. And revelation doesn't come on request."

The church leader said Mormons "believe the Negro is entitled to all freedoms and rights that any other American is entitled to under the Constitution."

Like most Negroes outside the Deep South, the Utah Negro feels he is most discriminated against in housing and employment. There is not a single Negro doctor or lawyer in the state and only about 10 teachers.

ADAM MICKEY Duncan, a white attorney and chairman of the Utah Advisory Committee to the U.S. Commission on Civil Rights, said that with a few exceptions, the plight of the Negro in Utah isn't any worse than in neighboring states, although he hastens to add, "it certainly isn't any better."

Duncan said he doesn't know of "a single decent apartment house in the state which will rent to a Negro. And if a real estate broker sold to a Negro in a white residential area, he would be blackballed by his profession."

A committee survey of public facilities in Salt Lake City in 1961 showed that the Negro is barred from 12 per cent of all cafes, restaurants and taverns; 72 per cent of the hotels; 49 percent of the motels and 80 per cent of the beauty shops.

Duncan said there has been no noticeable improvement since the survey was taken.

THE VAST majority of the Negroes in Utah live in the Salt Lake City and Ogden areas. Nearly all the Negroes in Salt Lake City reside in a low-rent district around the downtown "core" area, or, if they are students, near the University of Utah.

Nabors, 29, a light-skinned Negro from Cleveland, Ohio, who is working on his doctorate degree in anatomy at Utah, said he and his wife decided to move to a new home this summer away from the university area.

HIS WIFE, Joan, is a native of Tuskegee, Ala. She teaches at a nursery school and a professional school for mentally handicapped children in Salt Lake City.

In looking for a new home, Nabors said, "We were 'Jim-Crowed' at about half the places we went to."

"WE FINALLY found a place we liked in a middle-class, all-white neighborhood. The landlord was nice and didn't seem to care that we were Negroes. We gave him a month's rent and he gave us the key.

"The next day the landlord said he'd been advised by his bank that it wouldn't be a good idea to let Negroes move into the neighborhood."

Nabors and his wife eventually did move into the house.

"But before we did, we took our case to the Justice Department, our congressional delegation, the bank, our attorney, the Salt Lake Real Estate Board, the mayor, the governor, the NAACP and anyone else we thought might have some influence," he said.

A. B. Weight, executive vice-president of the Salt Lake Real Estate Board, admits there is a problem in finding housing for Negroes in the city.

He adds, however, that "It is a fundamental right in American for a person to own property . . . and to rent to whom he pleases."

In certain areas, the Negro says there has been some progress.

The Utah AFL-CIO recently passed a strong resolution on civil rights, aimed at seeking out discrimination in unions.

One of the biggest complaints of Utah integrationists is that the state has no civil rights legislation on its books, making it the only state outside the Deep South that doesn't.

INTEGRATIONISTS campaigned hard for civil rights legislation at the 1963 session of the Utah Legislature, but succeeded only in getting repeal of the state's onerous anti-miscenegation [sic] law which barred marriages between whites and Negroes and persons of other dark-skinned races.

The Mormon Church has remained aloof from the current drive for equal rights, and integrationists feel this is hurting their cause.

Duncan said, "If the church wanted civil rights legislation it could get it. A statement from (President) David O. McKay would do more good than any other single act."

Albert Fritz, head of the Utah NAACP, agrees. "The church has been silent. A positive statement would help us considerably," he says.

BROWN, HOWEVER, says such reasoning is based on a "false premise."

"The church doesn't have that much influence," he said. "It's up to the legislature, not the church. We stay out of politics."

However, at its 133d semi-annual conference here Oct. 4-6, the church made its strongest official pronouncement on civil rights in some time.

Brown told the 8,000 persons jammed into the Mormon Tabernacle that the church has "no doctrine, belief or practice intended to deny the enjoyment of full civil rights by any person regardless of race, color or creed."

He said it is "a moral evil . . . to deny any human being the right of gainful employment to full educational opportunity and to every privilege of citizenship . . ."

He urged both members and non-members to "commit themselves to the establishment of full civil equality for all of God's children."