Really...the Great Lakes area. How long did the LDS Church stay there. Three/four years until they amasses hundreds of followers. Then the LDS Church moved to Ohio, Missouri, and Illinois for the next 17 years where tens of thousands joined.....all white.
Somehow they neglected to pick up any people of color during the time they were converting hundreds of thousands of white folks from Scandinavia, England, Scotland.....oh yeah.... I have a g-g-grandfather that converted to the LDS Chuch in South Africa.....but none of the “darkies” were allowed.
Come one now. Revisionist history is not going to help your case.
My objection in dragging out the less than desirable behavior of the LDS Church is that it is being used to smear Mitt Romney, who certainly should not be tarred. His family's commitment to civil rights dates back to his father. Should we attack Mike Huckabee and Fred Thompson because of the segregation in Southern Baptist and Church of Christ congregations before the 1960s and frequent advocacy of white supremacy and, before that of slavery, among its members and even its clergy? IIRC, McCain's ancestors were slaveowners. Giuliani's father was a convicted felon and a low level gangster.
Properly speaking, revisionist history falls into two varieties: neo-Nazis and other anti-Semites who deny the Holocaust, specifically, the mass murder of Jews in concentration camps, happened and Marxists and other leftists who blame America and European civilization for all the woes of the world. Both varieties are nonsense. Defending Mitt Romney, whom I do not support, against warrantless smears, is not revisionist history, but standing for fairness and truth.
BTW, Ohio and Illinois are Great Lakes states. The Mormon communities in Kirtland, Ohio, and Nauvoo, Illinois, were in areas settled mainly by New Englanders and Pennsylvanians. As an amateur genealogist, I can affirm that those relatives of mine who converted to the LDS Church were Ohioans and Indianans who emigrated to those states from New York and Pennsylvania. Those of my forbears who first arrived in Virginia and North Carolina never affiliated with the Mormons.
Somehow they neglected to pick up any people of color during the time they were converting hundreds of thousands of white folks from Scandinavia, England, Scotland.....oh yeah.... I have a g-g-grandfather that converted to the LDS Chuch in South Africa.....but none of the “darkies” were allowed.
Here is an article in the September 1997 Friend magazine about a black members in Nauvoo in the early 1840's. See also an article in the August 1979 Ensign magazine about the same family.
When they reached Nauvoo, Orson Spencer directed them to the home of the Prophet. Joseph and Emma Smith welcomed them, inviting the Mannings to stay at the Mansion House until they found homes. Eventually all the members of the Manning family found jobs except Jane. The Prophet and his wife urged her to stay with them.Jane died in 1908. President Joseph F. Smith and other General Authorities spoke at her funeral, praising her unwavering faith and commitment to the gospel.
Here is an article from the June 1977 Ensign magazine identifying a group of converts from Mississippi travelled to Utah in 1848.
The Mississippians helped the settlement put down roots; then a party left for Mississippi On 26 August 1847. John Brown was among them, traveling with Brigham Young to Winter Quarters and arriving in Mississippi in December. Ready to cross the plains for the fifth time, he led the remainder of the Mississippi Mormons toward St. Louis on 10 March 1848. The thirteen families—fifty-six white persons and thirty-four black—arrived in the Salt Lake Valley in October 1848; there were now about two hundred white Southerners in the valley and thirty-seven blacks.
Here is an article in the May 1994 Liahona magazine about growth of the Church in Africa in the 1960's.
Although the Church was established in South Africa in 1853, more than a century passed before work officially began among blacks in Africa. In 1960, when Glen G. Fisher was released as mission president in South Africa, the First Presidency asked him to investigate some religious groups in Nigeria that had taken the name of the Church. Brother Fisher found them devoted to the restored gospel and recommended that missionaries be sent to them. For the next six years, Church leaders tried to secure permission for missionary work in Nigeria, but to no avail. The effort was abandoned in 1966, when visas could not be obtained. Despite the setbacks in formal missionary work, unbaptized converts in Africa received Church literature and inspired direction. Often these devout people went to great lengths to communicate with the Church and share their newfound knowledge and conviction with their neighbors.