The historical record shows that Joseph Smith did not implement or endorse any practices or policies which specifically prevented church members with black African ancestry from fully participating in priesthood offices or temple worship.

But in 1847, only three years after Joseph's death, attitudes and teachings of some church leaders began to shift away from full inclusion of blacks to partial exclusion.

Until only five years later, in 1852,

President Brigham Young first publicly articulated a priesthood restriction

on blacks in the church.

In today's episode of Church History Matters,

we probe what exists in the historical record

to learn what happened between 1847 and 1852

to precipitate this divergence in attitudes and teachings about blacks

away from Joseph Smith's more inclusive teachings and practices.

We'll then look at the context and content of Brigham Young's first public articulation

of the priesthood restriction and attempt to answer one very important question.

Was Brigham Young inspired by God to institute the priesthood

band or is this an example of an uninspired error? I'm Scott Woodward and my

co-host is Casey Griffiths and And today we dive into our third episode

in this series dealing with race and priesthood.

Now let's get into it. All right, hi Scott.

Hello Casey.

Scott, we've plowed some ground.

This is a really complicated subject,

but could you help everybody catch up on where we're at?

Yeah, we've been talking a lot about 19th century views on race in America. It was messy, but in our last episode particularly we explored two important questions.

...