Harold Bingham Lee had the distinction of serving as prophet and president of The Church of Jesus Christ of Latter-day Saints for a mere eighteen months, dying suddenly and unexpectedly in December 1973. Given that President Lee's successor, Spencer W. Kimball, lifted the church's long-standing ban on black priesthood ordination in June 1978, four and a half years later, raises an intriguing—albeit speculative—question: Would President Lee have similarly acted, had he survived that long?1In attempting to answer this question, this article examines Lee's attitudes relative to Mormonism's black priesthood/temple ban.From his earliest days as a general authority—commencing with his ordination to the Quorum of the Twelve Apostles in April 1941—Lee, along with other church leaders, grappled with the church's increasingly controversial black priesthood/temple ban.2 Lee's comments vigorously defending the practice echoed those of his more senior colleagues.3 Moreover, Lee's defense of the ban continued strong and unwavering over the course of his thirty-three-year tenure as a general authority.In May 1945, as a junior apostle, Lee affirmed the doctrinal legitimacy of the ban in a radio address entitled “Youth of a Noble Birthright.”4 His comments, delivered as part of an ongoing series of twenty-four weekly radio addresses entitled “Youth and the Church,” justified the ban, citing the alleged misbehavior of black people in the preexistence. Blacks, Lee declared, were not sufficiently “valiant in the great rebellion in heaven.” As the descendants of Cain, they were cursed with the “mark of a black skin,” thus “denied the privilege of the priesthood and the fullness of the blessings of the Gospel.”5 Lee vigorously denounced interracial marriage, warning that “forces sweeping this and other nations . . . would break down all social barriers as between races and that would nullify existing laws prohibiting legal marriage between certain races.”6Lee continued: “Surely none of you who is an heir to a body of a more favored lineage would knowingly intermarry with a race that would condemn your posterity to penalties that have been placed upon the seed of Cain by the judgements of God.” He concluded, “It might not be amiss likewise to urge upon you the most serious consideration of any question of your possible intermarriage with individuals of any other race than your own.”7“Youth of a Noble Birthright” represents Lee's most explicit statement affirming the subordinate status of blacks within Mormonism. Its doctrinal assertions echoed the views of previous church leaders, in particular, Brigham Young and Brigham H. Roberts, who Lee directly quoted in his address. It further reflected the views of contemporary general authorities, most especially Joseph Fielding Smith, considered the church's foremost doctrinal authority.8Lee's address, however, generated a mixed response from J. Reuben Clark whom Lee looked to as a mentor and considered a close friend. “President Clark thought I was just a little severe in my treatment of the negroes and the curse placed upon them,” Lee confessed in his diary. But as he further noted, Clark “agreed entirely with my doctrine” most especially his discussion of black-white racial intermarriage. Senior apostle Stephen L. Richards also weighed in, taking issue with aspects of Lee's discussion of the preexistent behavior of black people.9Lee revised his essay in response to these suggestions. It was subsequently published for a churchwide audience, initially in the “Church News” section of the LDS Church-owned Deseret News,10 and then as a pamphlet. In the latter form it appeared as one in a series of twenty-four pamphlets—all drawn from the original radio addresses and published under the collective title—“Youth and the Church.”11Later that same year, Lee consolidated all twenty-four addresses into a single book, likewise entitled Youth and the Church.12 In the preface he explained, “The matters discussed are on subjects of vital concern to every soul in the never-ending contest between truth and error, righteousness and wickedness.”13Some four years later, the church elevated its priesthood/temple ban to the status of official doctrine through a First Presidency statement issued in August 1949, signed by church president George Albert Smith and his two counselors, J. Reuben Clark and David O. McKay.14 The statement represented a crucial turning point in that up to that time, the ban was merely a practice and/or policy. As fixed doctrine, general authorities, including Lee, could better defend the ban against critics both within and outside of the church.Among the most notable of these critics was liberal Mormon theologian Sterling M. McMurrin, Harold B. Lee's second cousin.15 McMurrin, as a distinguished professor of philosophy at the University of Utah developed a reputation for his unorthodox beliefs, most notably as an outspoken critic of the black priesthood denial.16 Alarmed church officials led by Lee and Joseph Fielding Smith sought to excommunicate McMurrin. Ultimately, however, President McKay, with whom McMurrin enjoyed a close congenial relationship brought an end to this effort.17Undaunted, Lee continued to vigorously defend the ban itself, while concurrently assailing the burgeoning Civil Rights movement—rapidly gaining momentum during the late 1950s into the 1960s. Lee warned about its adverse impact on the church and its members. As a member of the Brigham Young University Board of Trustees, he favored barring blacks from the school. In 1960 he berated then BYU President Ernest L. Wilkinson for allowing the admission of blacks to the Mormon institution, warning him of the potential consequences. “If a granddaughter of mine should ever go to the BYU and become engaged to a colored boy,” Lee scolded Wilkinson, “I would hold you responsible.”18Lee, moreover, expressed strong reservations about allowing blacks into the church; such views manifested during the early 1960s, prompted by efforts to send missionaries to Nigeria. McKay dispatched LaMar S. Williams, an employee of the Church Missionary Department, to Nigeria to determine the feasibility of proselytizing in the predominantly black nation. By this time, a grassroots Latter-day Saint movement consisting of some five thousand black Nigerians had organized, on their own, nearly one hundred congregations, whose members petitioned to be baptized.19 In response, McKay sent apostle N. Eldon Tanner to Nigeria to formally dedicate that nation “for missionary work to be conducted as directed by the Lord through his Prophet.”20Lee took the lead in opposing the Nigerian missionary effort, expressing his strongly held views in a November 1965 meeting of the First Presidency and the Quorum of the Twelve. Specifically, he pointed to LaMar Williams's difficulty in securing a permanent visa from the Nigerian government. Lee suggested that this long delay was “evidence that the Lord is not ready to have this work done.” Moreover, Lee questioned Williams's basic motives, asserting that on a previous occasion Williams advocated that “Negroes should receive at least the Aaronic Priesthood” to ensure missionary success.21 Lee feared that opening the mission would eventually lead to giving blacks the priesthood.22Lee's call to suspend all church activity in Nigeria received strong support from several of his fellow apostles. Mark E. Peterson urged that “Brother Williams be called home, and kept home, and proceed no further with this program” adding “it would do to us great harm.”23 Likewise supporting the suspension of all such activity were Ezra Taft Benson and Gordon B. Hinckley.24Lee continued steadfast in defending the ban. This put him at direct odds with First Presidency counselor Hugh B. Brown, a vigorous proponent of lifting the ban. Not only did Brown favor church missionary efforts in Nigeria, but in 1963 he urged McKay to lift the ban itself. Brown publicly expressed his desire in a New York Times article wherein he boldly proclaimed: “Believing as we do in divine revelation through the President of the church, we all await his decision.”25Although Brown's audacious action failed, he secured approval from his fellow general authorities for the issuing of a public statement in support of civil rights.26 In sum, the 1963 statement represented “the official Church position” on civil rights and was “personally approved by President McKay.”27But at the same time, the civil rights statement generated division within the church hierarchy. Ezra Taft Benson, in particular, declared himself an ardent foe of civil rights,28 preaching his extreme anti-civil rights views to both LDS and non-Mormon audiences. He asserted that the Civil Rights movement had been “fomented almost entirely by the Communists.”29 Benson's outspoken views revealed “sharp and bitter differences” within the Twelve. Lee took issue with Benson's extremist views, his voice carrying particular weight, in that by this time Lee was the second most senior apostle, outranked only by Joseph Fielding Smith.30While Lee remained skeptical of the Civil Rights movement itself, he felt that Benson had gone too far in calling it a Communist-inspired conspiracy. Lee publicly took issue with Benson on several occasions. In a May 1965 BYU devotional, Lee, clearly alluding to Benson, cautioned his student audience to “beware of that clever advocate, even in high places in the government, who deals in cunning half-truths, or endeavors to win his purposes by twisting the facts and so seeks for decisions based on upon half-falsehoods.” Lee continued, “So often men of authority in the Church seek to buttress their position by making it appear that they speak for the highest Church authorities.”31 On another occasion, at the April 1966 general conference, Lee denounced Benson for sowing “seeds of hatred, suspicion, and contention [as] destructive of the purposes of life and unbecoming to the children of God.”32 In sum, Lee vigorously disagreed with Benson's assertion that the Civil Rights movement was part and parcel of a sinister Communist conspiracy to take over America.33At the same time, Lee continued to strongly defend the ban despite increasing attacks from critics, both within and outside of the Mormon community. Among the most prominent church members to assail the ban was longtime critic Sterling McMurrin, along with Stewart Udall, the U.S. secretary of the Interior. Udall lambasted the ban in the summer 1967 issue of Dialogue: A Journal of Mormon Thought.34 From outside the Mormon community, protests condemning the church's anti-black policy were directed against Brigham Young University, staged by black athletes from various colleges and universities who boycotted the church school.35Despite unfavorable news coverage generated by such protests, Lee steadfastly affirmed the ban as “doctrinally fixed.”36 In a July 1964 address delivered to a gathering of seminary and institute faculty at BYU, he dismissed as “utterly silly” the following question posed by critics of the ban: “How long is it going to be before the Church changes its policy with respect to the Negro?” Mockingly, he retorted, the question should be: “How long is it going to be before the Lord (not the Church) changes His (not its) policy?” “When there is anything different from that which the Lord has told us already, He will reveal it to his prophet and no one else.”37Further justifying the ban, Lee brushed aside evidence that Elijah Abel, a black Latter-day Saint had been “ordained a seventy in the days of Joseph Smith.” Lee mistakenly claimed that Abel's ordination was unauthorized, asserting that “when found out it was declared null and void by the Prophet [Joseph Smith] himself.”38 Lee, moreover, chastised those Latter-day Saints who cited Abel's ordination as historical precedent for lifting the ban. Such individuals he proclaimed “were on the road to apostasy . . . and will apostatize as surely as God lives.”39 According to a thirdhand account, Lee expressed his firm commitment to upholding the ban to his daughter Maureen: “My daddy said that as long as he's alive, [blacks] will never hold the priesthood.”40Lee's hardline position was further underscored with the republication of his 1945 essay “Youth of a Noble Birthright” in the “Church News” supplement to the Deseret News in late March and early April 1960.41 Through its republication, Lee reaffirmed his doctrinal arguments justifying the ban. In a less scholarly manner, he also defended the ban in an October 1961 conference address delivered in Geneva, Switzerland, dismissing those who questioned the ban as “smart boys” and/or “enemies” of the church.42Lee's unwavering commitment to the ban brought him into direct conflict with Hugh B. Brown. In late 1969, Brown vigorously renewed his decade-long crusade to rid the church of the increasingly controversial ban; boldly asserting that it “had no justification as far as the scriptures are concerned.”43Accordingly, Brown lobbied for approval from the Quorum of the Twelve to abolish the ban, gaining support from a majority of that body in November 1969. Conspicuously absent from those deliberations were Lee and First Presidency counselor Alvin R. Dyer who, like Lee, was an ardent supporter of the ban. Both men were away from Utah on church assignment. Also missing was David O. McKay who was gravely ill, and also an ailing Joseph Fielding Smith.However, Lee, upon returning to Utah days later, moved quickly to nullify Brown's initiative, persuading a majority of the Quorum of the Twelve, along with First Presidency counselor N. Eldon Tanner to withdraw their support abolishing the ban. Lee then oversaw the drafting of a policy statement clearing up the confusion caused by Brown's audacious action. He “spent several days documenting his own thinking on this weighty subject.”44 Following that: “[Lee] then asked G. Homer Durham and Neal A. Maxwell, prominent educators, to do likewise. Placing their texts with his own, [Lee] delivered the three approaches to Elder Gordon B. Hinckley and asked him to formulate out of their combined thinking the most satisfactory statement that could be read by critics of the Church as well as the Church members, to make the Church position clear.”45The “Official Church Statement” reaffirmed black priesthood denial as fixed doctrine. Dated December 15, 1969, this document was signed by just two members of the First Presidency—Hugh B. Brown and N. Eldon Tanner.46 An ailing David O. McKay did not sign it, dying just one month later on January 18, 1970. Curiously, two other members of the church First Presidency also failed to sign the document, namely, Joseph Fielding Smith and Alvin R. Dyer.Brown signed the document under extreme pressure from Lee. The assertive Lee had, by this time, emerged as the dominant figure within the church hierarchy given the frail health of the two general authorities senior to him, McKay and Smith.47While the official statement underscored the ban's doctrinal legitimacy, Brown insisted upon having the final word, doing so in a December 25 Salt Lake Tribune article where he boldly proclaimed that the priesthood ban “will change in the not-too-distant future.”48 This so infuriated the short-tempered Lee that in private he berated Brown for “talking too much.”49 Worse still, Lee oversaw Brown's official demotion following the installation of Joseph Fielding Smith as church president in January 1970. Brown was dropped as first counselor, with his place assumed by Harold B. Lee who shouldered the primary responsibility for the day-to-day running of church affairs over the following two and a half years.In October 1971, Lee—his unwavering support of the ban notwithstanding—allowed formation of the Genesis Group, a black Latter-day Saint group designed to provide support to the estimated two hundred black LDS members living in the Salt Lake valley. Primary impetus for the establishment of this black auxiliary came from three African American Latter-day Saints, Ruffin Bridgeforth, Darius Gray, and Eugene Orr. The Genesis Group, in the words of Lee himself, allowed “our black members, locally to . . . be more fully fellowshipped.”50Less than one year later, in July 1972, Lee formally assumed the office of church president following the death of Joseph Fielding Smith. Subsequently, he was repeatedly questioned by the media concerning the ban. Lee told a Newsweek magazine reporter that “the policy can change only through revelation.”51 To the New York Times Lee simply quoted the church's official 1969 statement that “sometime in God's eternal plan the Negro will be granted the Priesthood.” And to Los Angeles Times reporter Dan L. Thrapp, he tartly stated: “For those who don't believe in modern revelation there is no adequate explanation. Those who do understand revelation stand by and wait until the Lord speaks.”52Some two months later in September 1972, however, President Lee appeared less intransigent in responding to a reporter from the Provo Herald stating that it is “only a matter of time before the Negro gets full status in the Church.”53Meanwhile, two published scholarly works raised serious questions concerning the ban's historical and doctrinal legitimacy. The first, published in 1969, was Stephen L. Taggart's Mormonism's Negro Policy: Its Social and Historical Origins.54 Taggart assailed the ban as “a historical anachronism—an unfortunate and embarrassing survival of a once-expedient institutional practice,” in other words, not a doctrine but rather a policy that could be abolished by “simple administrative fiat.”55 The second, Lester E. Bush's “Mormonism's Negro Doctrine: An Historical Overview” appeared in the spring 1973 issue of Dialogue: A Journal of Mormon Thought.56 Bush asserted that the ban resulted from socioeconomic prejudices endemic in American society at large, further stating that the practice was implemented by Brigham Young following the death of Joseph Smith. Most important, he rejected officially sanctioned arguments that the ban was based on essential church doctrine.57Bush, in producing “Mormonism's Negro Doctrine,” sought to convince church leaders to ultimately rescind the ban, akin to Stephen Taggart who through his earlier Mormonism's Negro Policy had prompted Hugh B. Brown's unsuccessful effort to lift the ban some four years earlier. Bush hoped to persuade church leaders with his overwhelming evidence that the ban was not based on essential Mormon doctrine, combined with his well-documented argument that Brigham Young and not Joseph Smith was the author of the ban.58But that did not happen. Instead, Bush found himself under attack by ranking members of the church hierarchy. Prior to the publication of Bush's Dialogue article, President Lee carefully read the “Compilation” upon which it was based, but remained unconvinced by Bush's evidence. Instead, Lee angrily stated, “unfortunately this study quoted from the minutes of the Quorum of the Twelve that had gotten into the papers of [Apostle Adam S. Bennion who was] unwise enough to let it go to [the] BYU library.”59 Apostles Bruce R. McConkie and Mark E. Peterson, ardent defenders of the ban, condemned both the article and its author. McConkie inarticulately dismissed Bush's article as “crap” whereas Peterson sought to have Bush formally excommunicated.60Church leaders, moreover, vigorously reaffirmed the ban's doctrinal legitimacy, with Lee leading the way. He authorized the republication of his 1945 essay “Youth of a Noble Birthright” detailing his theological rationale affirming the ban. The essay reproduced exactly as written eighteen years earlier, was included in a 1973 volume entitled Decisions for Successful Living.61Later that same year, President Lee, found himself confronted with the “Negro question” on a very personal level–a young Latter-day Saint woman, Rula Jorgensen Sargent had married Carlos Sargent, an African American nonmember. Her mother, Margaret Jorgensen, had written Lee a long, anguished letter seeking his counsel. Making this situation unique, Jorgensen was the daughter of Hugh B. Brown, whose family Lee knew and interacted with on a first name basis.In her letter, Jorgensen frankly acknowledged her family's extreme dismay upon first learning of Rula's involvement with Sargent and vigorously urged her to end the relationship. But Rula persisted, and as Margaret and the rest of the family got to know Sargent, they were won over by his earnest demeanor and high moral character. Although not LDS, Sargent was deeply spiritual and a religious seeker, attracted to Mormonism after investigating a number of other denominations. Rula's grandfather Hugh B. Brown upon learning of their engagement reportedly asked Margaret, “Can he [Carlos] make her [Rula] happy?” When his daughter replied in the affirmative, Brown simply stated, “Give Rula my love, tell her as long as they love each other they will work things out.” Thus, the young couple married with the blessings and approval of the entire family.62However, Margaret, along with the rest of the family, was perplexed by their new son-in-law's reluctance to become a Latter-day Saint despite his belief in its basic tenets. Informing Lee of this fact, she bluntly stated: “Carlos is eager to join the Church but he is deeply disturbed, bewildered, and depressed because as he tells his wife, ‘I'm cursed—I'm of the seed of Cain—I have the Devil in me, Therefore I am not worthy to be a member of the Church of Jesus Christ.’” She further informed Lee that her son-in-law was “not rationalizing” adding that “He has no bad habits to give up—he is simply overcome by a feeling of inferiority. To him, he has been dealt the ultimate blow—being rejected by the Lord, himself!”63Lee, in responding to what he termed the “very serious problem” of Rula Sargent's mixed-race marriage, frankly asked Jorgensen, “I am not sure just what you had in mind in writing me.” Lee assumed she wanted to know, “whether or not the negro race would in the eternities receive the priesthood, and that if so, it would only be the Aaronic priesthood.” Actually, Jorgensen asked no such question, nor implied it. Lee completely sidestepped Jorgensen's central concern, the stark fact of her son-in-law's anguish that as a black man he was cursed and thus unworthy to be a Latter-day Saint. Instead, Lee proceeded to lecture her concerning the priesthood ban, itself: “Now, Margaret, this is something that the Lord has not made known to anyone. The early Brethren have said that if those who were presently denied the Priesthood were to be true and faithful as Church members, the time would come when they would receive the blessings of the Priesthood. Until that time comes, we have no answer. But . . . the Priesthood is not given to those who are restricted for reasons that are known only to the Lord.”64Lee's letter to Jorgensen was most revealing both for what it said and what it chose to omit. It stated Lee's strong affirmation of the divine legitimacy of the priesthood ban itself, a position he had consistently and strong supported throughout his long tenure as a general authority. Second, it betrayed the LDS leader's disdain for interracial marriage, particularly as it involved black-white racial intermixture. Both strongly held beliefs were at the core of Lee's “Youth of a Noble Birthright.” And finally, in contrast to the theories he presented in the past, Lee acknowledged he did not know the reasons undergirding the restriction.Just three months later, on December 26, 1973, President Lee died suddenly and unexpectedly at the relatively youthful age of seventy-four. In conclusion, this article returns to the central question posed at its opening: Would President Harold B. Lee, himself, have lifted the church's black ban had he lived longer? Lee was clearly not inclined to lift the ban, given his absolute conviction concerning its doctrinal legitimacy. Indeed, throughout his tenure, he had repeatedly affirmed the ban as essential doctrine both in his sermons and various public statements, and most dramatically in blocking the efforts of fellow general authority Hugh B. Brown to repeal the ban during the late 1960s. Although Lee acknowledged the possibility of a future revelation, he doubled down on the doctrinal legitimacy of the priesthood/temple ban, both publicly and privately.Ultimately, it would take a very different church prophet-president, with a very different temperament, and who harbored reservations concerning the ban's doctrinal legitimacy to move forward—a leader akin to Hugh B. Brown, or as it turned out, President Spencer W. Kimball.