It's the Maxwell Institute podcast. I'm Blair Hodges.

Jane Manning James stood out among early Latter-day Saints as one of few black converts.

She was baptized into the church as a free black woman in Connecticut and migrated to Navu with her family,

where she soon found herself working in the prophet Joseph Smith's own home.

After his death, she traveled west with the

saints and lived the rest of her life as a faithful member, although she was denied participation

in the church's most sacred practices. Through the years, Jane Manning James has been left out

of books on African American history, women's history, histories of the West, and until more recently,

she was even left out of histories of her own church,

the Church of Jesus Christ of Latter-day Saints.

Dr. Quincy Newell recently published the first scholarly biography of this remarkable Latter-day Saint.

The book is called Your Sister in the Gospel, The Life of Jane Manning-James, a 19th-century

black Mormon.

Dr. Newell joins us to talk about it in this episode.

Send questions and comments about it to me at MI Podcast at BYU.edu.

Quincy Newell, welcome to the Maxwell Institute podcast today.

Thanks so much for having me.

We're talking about a book that you just published called Your Sister in the Gospel,

The Life of Jane Manning James, a 19th century black Mormon.

And Quincy, you start this book off with this engaging sentence.

You say, Jane Elizabeth Manning James has haunted me for more than a decade.

Tell us about that haunting.

...