Your Sister in the Gospel: The Life of Jane Manning James, a Nineteenth-Century Black Mormon
Quincy D. Newell
Abstract
In this biography of Jane Elizabeth Manning James, Quincy D. Newell traces the life of a free African American woman who converted to Mormonism in the early 1840s and remained a member of the Church of Jesus Christ of Latter-day Saints (the LDS, or Mormon, Church) for the rest of her life. James worked as a servant for LDS founder Joseph Smith and his successor Brigham Young. She traveled to the Salt Lake Valley with the church and lived there until her death in 1908. In the last decades of her life, James persistently requested permission to perform the temple rituals that would ensure that s ... More
In this biography of Jane Elizabeth Manning James, Quincy D. Newell traces the life of a free African American woman who converted to Mormonism in the early 1840s and remained a member of the Church of Jesus Christ of Latter-day Saints (the LDS, or Mormon, Church) for the rest of her life. James worked as a servant for LDS founder Joseph Smith and his successor Brigham Young. She traveled to the Salt Lake Valley with the church and lived there until her death in 1908. In the last decades of her life, James persistently requested permission to perform the temple rituals that would ensure that she reached the highest degree of glory after death, but church leaders denied her requests because she was black. Nevertheless, they created a ritual just for her: a master–servant sealing that allowed her to be a servant in Joseph Smith’s household for eternity. James’s life provides a different angle on the development of the LDS Church than the experiences of white, male Mormons, whose perspective dominates the narrative of Mormon history. Her story is an important addition to the history of African American religion, American women’s history, the history of the American West, and the history of the LDS Church.
Keywords:
race,
gender,
Mormonism,
Church of Jesus Christ of Latter-day Saints,
LDS Church,
black Mormons,
African Americans,
women,
biography,
ritual
Bibliographic Information
| Print publication date: 2019 |
Print ISBN-13: 9780199338665 |
| Published to Oxford Scholarship Online: March 2019 |
DOI:10.1093/oso/9780199338665.001.0001 |
