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“Not Only to the Gentiles, but Also to the African”: Samuel Chambers and Scripture
Published online by Cambridge University Press: 02 October 2023
Abstract
Around a hundred Black people joined the Church of Jesus Christ of Latter-day Saints (the LDS Church) in the nineteenth century. From 1873 to 1876, a clerk created one of the most extensive records of an early Black Latter-day Saint when he wrote down Samuel Chambers's religious testimonies given in deacons quorum meetings. Though these records have been known to the academic community for decades, this article represents the first scholarly analysis of them. We argue that Chambers used LDS scriptural language and the authority of his own experience to clear a place rhetorically for himself in the deacons quorum and for Black people in the LDS Church more broadly. Chambers implicitly illustrated his fitness for holding the LDS priesthood and participating in LDS temple rituals, aspects of LDS practice from which Chambers was excluded because he was Black. This article adds depth and richness to our understanding of late nineteenth- and early twentieth-century African American Mormon experience and provides a case study in some of the ways written scripture and spoken language intersect and function for members of a religious community with varying levels of literacy among members.
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- Copyright © The Author(s), 2023. Published by Cambridge University Press on behalf of American Society of Church History
References
1 Salt Lake Stake, Salt Lake Stake Aaronic Priesthood Minutes and Records, vol. 2: 1873–1877, Church of Jesus Christ of Latter-day Saints Church History Library, Salt Lake City, Utah, 102. Hereafter cited as Deacons Quorum Minutes. As oral speech, the testimonies recorded in this source were neither spelled nor explicitly punctuated. T. C. Jones, the deacons quorum clerk during this time period, employed some idiosyncratic spellings and inconsistent punctuation. Since our focus is on the remarks delivered orally, rather than on the written record of those remarks, we have silently corrected the spelling and punctuation of this source throughout this essay.
2 [Hartley, William G.], “Saint Without Priesthood,” Dialogue: A Journal of Mormon Thought 12, no. 2 (Summer 1979): 14Google Scholar. Although William G. Hartley was not credited, he authored the introduction and compiled and edited the testimonies in this publication.
3 The number of Black people who joined the LDS Church in the nineteenth century is uncertain, and future research may show that this estimate is too low. This estimate is based on W. Paul Reeve, general editor and project manager, Century of Black Mormons (online database), https://exhibits.lib.utah.edu/s/century-of-black-mormons/page/when, accessed July 6, 2021; and W. Paul Reeve, personal communication, June 3, 2021.
4 See Doctrine and Covenants 20:38–61, 72:7–9, and particularly 107:23–100. Today, the LDS office of deacon is typically occupied by boys between the ages of twelve and fourteen, but as historian William G. Hartley has demonstrated, that was not always the case. In the church's early years, the Aaronic priesthood—of which deacon is one office—was conferred on very few men under the age of eighteen. By the 1870s, however, a need for the work that deacons and other Aaronic priesthood holders could do, along with a sense that ordination could help rein in teenage boys’ misbehavior, led church leaders to “handpick . . . young men to be ordained deacons in the ward or at stake deacons meetings,” to serve alongside older men. During the period in which T. C. Jones recorded the minutes of the Salt Lake Stake deacons quorum, then, the group consisted of older men alongside a small but growing number of boys. Church of Jesus Christ of Latter-day Saints, “Deacon,” Gospel Topics (website), https://www.churchofjesuschrist.org/study/manual/gospel-topics/deacon?lang=eng, accessed February 6, 2020; [Hartley], “Saint Without Priesthood,” 13; William G. Hartley, “From Men to Boys: Aaronic Priesthood Offices, 1829–1996,” Journal of Mormon History 22, no. 1 (Spring 1996): 85, 104.
5 Hartley, “From Men to Boys,” 105.
6 [Hartley], “Saint Without Priesthood,” 13; Eighth Ward, Liberty Stake, Eight Ward General Minutes, 1856–1976, vol. 5: 1856–1875, Church of Jesus Christ of Latter-day Saints Church History Library, Salt Lake City, Utah, 215.
7 Johnson, Janiece, “Becoming a People of the Books: Toward an Understanding of Early Mormon Converts and the New Word of the Lord,” Journal of Book of Mormon Studies 27 (2018): 32CrossRefGoogle Scholar.
8 Bakhtin, Mikhail M., The Dialogic Imagination: Four Essays, ed. by Holquist, Michael, trans. by Emerson, Caryl and Holquist, Michael (Austin: University of Texas Press, 1981), 276–277Google Scholar.
9 To our knowledge, these testimonies were first published in [Hartley], “Saint Without Priesthood.”
10 See, for example, William G. Hartley, “Samuel D. and Amanda Chambers,” New Era (June 1974): 47–50; [Hartley], “Saint Without Priesthood”; Jessie L. Embry, Black Saints in a White Church: Contemporary African American Mormons (Salt Lake City, Utah: Signature Books, 1994), 41–42; Russell W. Stevenson, For the Cause of Righteousness: A Global History of Blacks and Mormonism, 1830–2013 (Salt Lake City, Utah: Greg Kofford Books, 2014), 29–30. Even very recent publications are hard-pressed to find anything beyond a somewhat passive acceptance in Chambers's biography and testimonies: Tonya Reiter frames Chambers's experience in terms of his economic success and his central role in the establishment of a Black community in the Mill Creek area, but also writes that “throughout his life, Samuel was a strict and observant Latter-day Saint. . . . [He] never held the priesthood but expressed his satisfaction with his place in the Church. Both in his day-to-day work as a farmer and in his religious life, Samuel enjoyed the respect of his neighbors and churchmen and fit well in their white world. . . . He seemed satisfied with the life he found in Utah among the Mormons.” See Reiter, “Life on the Hill: The Black Farming Families of Mill Creek,” Journal of Mormon History 44, no. 4 (October 2018): 83–84.
11 Wimbush, Vincent L., “Introduction: Scripturalizing: Analytical Wedge for a Critical History of the Human,” in Scripturalizing the Human: The Written as Political, ed. Wimbush, Vincent L. (New York: Routledge, 2015), 3CrossRefGoogle Scholar.
12 Ibid., 13.
13 Perry, Seth, Bible Culture and Authority in the Early United States (Princeton, NJ: Princeton University Press, 2018), 31–39Google Scholar.
14 On the concept of scripture, see especially Smith, Wilfred Cantwell, What is Scripture?: A Comparative Approach (Minneapolis, MN: Fortress Press, 1993)Google Scholar; Wimbush, Vincent L., ed., Theorizing Scriptures: New Critical Orientations to a Cultural Phenomenon (New Brunswick, NJ: Rutgers University Press, 2008)Google Scholar; and Wimbush, Vincent L., ed., African Americans and the Bible: Sacred Texts and Social Textures (Eugene, OR: Wipf and Stock, 2012)Google Scholar.
15 Sources disagree about the exact location of Chambers's birth and childhood. A brief profile of Samuel and Amanda Chambers gave his birthplace as “Pickens County, Alabama” and said that he grew up in Noxubee County, Mississippi (just to the east of Pickens County, Alabama). “Worthy Couple Married 66 Years,” Deseret News (Salt Lake City, Utah), May 10, 1924. An account by the son of the man who baptized Chambers said he was born and grew up in Kemper County, Mississippi. Daniel H. Thomas, “Preston Thomas, His Life and Travels,” 10, in Preston Thomas, “Diaries, 1847–1877,” L. Tom Perry Special Collections, Howard B. Lee Library, Brigham Young University, Provo, Utah. Chambers's obituary gives his birthplace as “Perkins County, Alabama” (almost certainly a misspelling of Pickens County) and does not mention Mississippi at all. “Salt Lake Man Dies at Age of 98,” Deseret News, November 9, 1929. Chambers shows up twice in the 1870 census, and once each in 1880, 1900, 1910, and 1920. Census records give Chambers's birthplace variously as Mississippi (1870, First Ward, Salt Lake City; and 1880) and Alabama (1870, Little Cottonwood Canyon; 1900; 1910; 1920). United States Census, 1870, Little Cottonwood Canyon, Salt Lake County, Utah, page 1, line 38; United States Census, 1870, First Ward, Salt Lake County, Utah, page 1, line 14; United States Census, 1880, Mill Creek Precinct, Salt Lake County, Utah, page 4, line 13; United States Census, 1900, Mill Creek Precinct, Salt Lake County, Utah, page 21, line 23; United States Census, 1910, Precinct 3, Salt Lake County, Utah, page 4, line 94; United States Census, 1920, Third Precinct, Salt Lake County, Utah, page 5A, line 44. All census data were accessed through FamilySearch, https://www.familysearch.org/search/. The 1890 census records for Utah were destroyed in a fire in 1921. See Census History Staff, “Availability of 1890 Census,” US Census Bureau, https://www.census.gov/history/www/genealogy/decennial_census_records/availability_of_1890_census.html, accessed March 22, 2021.
16 Minnie Lee Prince Haynes, interview by William G. Hartley, August 22 and December 1, 1972, typescript, Church of Jesus Christ of Latter-day Saints Church History Library, Salt Lake City, Utah, 11.
17 Lincoln, C. Eric and Mamiya, Lawrence H., The Black Church in the African American Experience (Durham, NC: Duke University Press, 1990), 24–25Google Scholar; Raboteau, Albert J., Slave Religion: The “Invisible Institution” in the Antebellum South (New York: Oxford University Press, 1978), 137–138, 200Google Scholar.
18 Raboteau, Slave Religion, 212–213.
19 Ibid., 177–178; Lincoln and Mamiya, The Black Church, 25–26.
20 Raboteau, Slave Religion, 241. The evidence for Chambers's literacy is mixed: decennial US census forms included questions about whether the people enumerated could read and write, and in most census reports, Chambers was listed as able to do both. However, the response to this question was not consistent over time, raising questions about the reliability of the census on this issue. In 1870, Chambers appeared in the census of “Little Cottonwood Canon [sic]” on 18 September 1870, marked as unable to read or write. United States Census, 1870, Little Cottonwood Canyon, Salt Lake County, Utah, 1. He also appeared in the census of First Ward of Salt Lake City on August 3, 1870, marked as able to both read and write. United States Census, 1870, First Ward, Salt Lake County, Utah, 1. The 1880, 1900, and 1920 censuses show Chambers as able to both read and write; the 1910 census shows him as unable to read or write. United States Census, 1880, Mill Creek Precinct, Salt Lake County, Utah, 4; United States Census, 1900, Mill Creek Precinct, Salt Lake County, Utah, 21; United States Census, 1910, Precinct 3, Salt Lake County, Utah, 4; United States Census, 1920, Third Precinct, Salt Lake County, Utah, 5A. Chambers's granddaughter-in-law, who took care of him in his last years of life, told an interviewer that Chambers could read print but could not write. Haynes interview, 26.
21 Haynes interview, 27.
22 Sandy Dwayne Martin, “Baptists: African American,” in Charles H. Lippy and Peter W. Williams, eds., Encyclopedia of Religion in America (Washington, DC: CQ Press, 2010), 224. For a description of LDS baptismal practices in the 1840s, see Quincy D. Newell, Your Sister in the Gospel: The Life of Jane Manning James, a Nineteenth-Century Black Mormon (New York: Oxford University Press, 2019), 21–22.
23 Most Latter-day Saint missionaries used the Bible as a foundation of common belief to introduce individuals to the Book of Mormon and other LDS scripture. Parley Pratt, A Voice of Warning, offers a good example. First published in 1837, this was a primary proselytizing pamphlet for more than a century. Pratt prolifically cited the Bible while he only alluded to or paraphrased LDS scripture without specific citation until the final pages when the Book of Mormon explicitly appeared in his argument as the response to and fulfillment of earlier biblical queries and prophecies. Pratt, A Voice of Warning . . . , 13th ed. (Salt Lake City: George Q. Cannon & Sons Company, 1891).
24 Deacons Quorum Minutes, 101.
25 Steven C. Harper, “Infallible Proofs, Both Human and Divine: The Persuasiveness of Mormonism for Early Converts,” Religion and American Culture 10, no. 1 (Winter 2000): 112.
26 Deacons Quorum Minutes, 71.
27 Ibid., 102.
28 Haynes interview, 4, 21.
29 [Hartley], “Saint Without Priesthood,” 13.
30 Reiter, “Life on the Hill,” 72.
31 Ida H. White, interview by Ruby Morgan, circa 1975, digitized recording from audiocassette, Church of Jesus Christ of Latter-day Saints Church History Library, Salt Lake City, Utah, 4:10–16 and 4:27–28. See also Vidella Vance, “Samuel Chambers – 1870,” in Kate B. Carter, The Story of the Negro Pioneer (Salt Lake City, UT: Daughters of Utah Pioneers, 1965), 51–52.
32 The development of the priesthood and temple restrictions in the LDS Church has been discussed at great length in the scholarly literature. For a sampling, see Matthew L. Harris and Newell G. Bringhurst, The Mormon Church and Blacks: A Documentary History (Urbana: University of Illinois Press, 2015), 1–55; Armand L. Mauss, All Abraham's Children: Changing Mormon Conceptions of Race and Lineage (Urbana: University of Illinois Press, 2003), 212–230; Embry, Black Saints in a White Church, 22–24; Stevenson, For the Cause of Righteousness, 3–35; and W. Paul Reeve, Religion of a Different Color: Race and the Mormon Struggle for Whiteness (New York: Oxford University Press, 2015), 106–170, 188–214. For the extension of the priesthood to nearly all male members other than those of African descent, see Hartley, “From Men to Boys,” 80–136.
33 W. Paul Reeve, “Elijah Able,” Century of Black Mormons (website), https://exhibits.lib.utah.edu/s/century-of-black-mormons/page/able-elijah#?#_ftnref10&c=0&m=6&s=0&cv=3&xywh=-30%2C2%2C861%2C324, accessed April 9, 2021.
34 Before the Latter-day Saints completed any temples in the Rocky Mountain West, they used a building known as the Endowment House to perform temple rituals. Church president Brigham Young directed that the Endowment House be opened for Black Latter-day Saints to perform baptisms for the dead on September 3, 1875. Eight Black men and women, including Samuel Chambers and his wife Amanda, took part in the baptisms that day, which were recorded in a separate book. Young directed that the book be “headed ‘Record of Baptisms for the Dead of the (Seed of Cain’) or (of the People of African Descent).” Jane James, who was part of the group that day, also performed baptisms for the dead in the Salt Lake and Logan Temples after they were completed, and it may be that Chambers also had opportunities to perform this ritual in one or more of the temples that Latter-day Saints built in Utah over the decades that followed his trip to the Endowment House. The record of the baptisms performed by Chambers and others is Church of Jesus Christ of Latter-day Saints, Endowment House, “Colored Brethren and Sisters, Endowment House, Salt Lake City, Utah, Sept. 3, 1875” (Genealogical Society of Utah, 1961), image 23, microfilm 255498, Family History Library, Salt Lake City. For more on this event, see Newell, Your Sister in the Gospel, 97–100.
35 Deacons Quorum Minutes, 2.
36 W. E. B. DuBois, The Souls of Black Folk (New York: Penguin Books, 1989 [1903]), 5.
37 Henry Louis Gates, The Signifying Monkey: A Theory of Afro-American Literary Criticism (New York: Oxford University Press, 1988), xxii, xxiv.
38 Ibid., 22.
39 We calculated the average attendance based on the figures Jones provided in the Deacons Quorum Minutes.
40 Church of Jesus Christ of Latter-day Saints, “Thomas Cornforth Jones,” Church History Biographical Database (website), https://history.churchofjesuschrist.org/chd/individual/thomas-cornforth-jones-1825?lang=eng&timelineTabs=allTabs, accessed May 14, 2021.
41 “Deaths,” Deseret News, September 24, 1887; and Deacons Quorum Minutes, 23.
42 Deacons Quorum Minutes, 36.
43 William Bright and Peter Daniels, The World's Writing Systems (Oxford, England: Oxford University Press, 1996), 811.
44 Deacons Quorum Minutes, 15.
45 In this task we were ably assisted by Brontë Reay, Elizabeth Broderick, Abby Clayton, Kelli Mattson, and Garrett Maxwell, research assistants to Janiece Johnson. We thank the Neal A. Maxwell Institute for Religious Scholarship at Brigham Young University for supporting their employment.
46 Royal Skousen, “Book of Mormon Editions (1830–1981),” Encyclopedia of Mormonism, https://eom.byu.edu/index.php/Book_of_Mormon_Editions_(1830–1981 ), accessed May 6, 2021; Robert J. Woodford, “Doctrine and Covenants Editions,” Encyclopedia of Mormonism, https://eom.byu.edu/index.php/Doctrine_and_Covenants_Editions, accessed May 6, 2021.
47 Latter-day Saints used the King James Version of the Bible nearly exclusively in the nineteenth century and most of the twentieth. Philip Barlow, Mormons and the Bible, 2nd ed. (New York: Oxford University Press, 2013), 162–198. Most Latter-day Saints called the Book of Mormon scripture before uniting with Joseph Smith's church. The organizational documents of the church assume the Book of Mormon as canon alongside the Bible, and intertextuality from both the Book of Mormon and the Bible appear in members’ speech patterns, like Chambers. Johnson, “Becoming a People of the Books,” 1–5.
48 The Joseph Smith Papers, “The Pearl of Great Price,” https://www.josephsmithpapers.org/site/the-pearl-of-great-price, accessed March 26, 2021.
49 Kenneth W. Baldridge, “Pearl of Great Price: Contents and Publication,” Encyclopedia of Mormonism, https://eom.byu.edu/index.php/Pearl_of_Great_Price, accessed March 26, 2021.
50 Deacons Quorum Minutes, 55. Elijah Able served three missions of varying lengths for the LDS Church as a member of the Third Quorum of the Seventy, to which he was ordained in 1836. W. Paul Reeve, “Elijah Able,” Century of Black Mormons, https://exhibits.lib.utah.edu/s/century-of-black-mormons/page/able-elijah#?c=&m=&s=&cv=&xywh=-1169%2C-64%2C3814%2C1442, accessed February 23, 2022.
51 Deacons Quorum Minutes, 206.
52 Brigham Young, “Latter-Day Saint Families—Preaching the Gospel—Building Up the Kingdom,” January 2, 1870, Journal of Discourses (Liverpool: Horace S. Eldredge, 1871), 13:91–92.
53 For a few representative examples see Brigham Young, “Latter-day Saint Families. . .,” January 2, 1870, and “The Secret of Happiness. . .,” June 21, 1874; John Taylor, “Revelation. . .,” April 7, 1872, and “What the Gospel Teaches. . .,” February 1, 1874; Orson Pratt, “Order. . .,” April 8, 1871, and “Youthful Experiences. . .,” August 20, 1876; and George Q. Cannon, “The Times of Our Savior. . .,” March 23, 1873, all in Journal of Discourses, vols. 13–17 (Liverpool: Horace S. Eldredge/Albert Carrington/Joseph F. Smith, 1871–1877).
54 Deacons Quorum Minutes, 2.
55 Ibid., 55.
56 Johnson, “Becoming a People of the Books,” 34–35.
57 Deacons Quorum Minutes, 163.
58 Ibid., 7.
59 Ibid., 20.
60 Ibid., 55–56.
61 Ibid., 7.
62 Ibid., 22.
63 Ibid., 7.
64 Ibid., 16.
65 Ibid., 22.
66 Ibid., 22.
67 Ibid., 22–23.
68 Ibid., 201.
69 As Latter-day Saints read and heard the Book of Mormon, they developed a relationship with the text like they already had with the biblical text. Spoken-word parallels to the text would be recognized by those who had likewise developed their own relationship with the text. Johnson, “Becoming a People of the Books,” 41–42.
70 Bakhtin, The Dialogic Imagination, 276.
71 Deacons Quorum Minutes, 167.
72 Ibid., 56.
73 Ibid., 199.
74 Ibid., 205.
75 Ibid., 56.
76 John Taylor, “The United Order—How Unity is to be Attained,” August 31, 1875, Journal of Discourses (Liverpool: Joseph F. Smith, 1877), 8:78–88.
77 George Q. Cannon, “Universality and Eternity in the Gospel,” January 12, 1873, Journal of Discourses (Liverpool: Albert Carrington, 1875), 15:291–302.
78 Deacons Quorum Minutes, 194.
79 Ibid., 22, 137, 163.
80 Ibid., 3, 7, 20.
81 Ibid., 3.
82 Ibid., 190.
83 Ibid., 102.
84 Ibid., 77.
85 Ibid., 167.
86 Ibid., 2.
87 Ibid., 150.
88 Ibid., 163.
89 Ibid., 2, 7.
90 Ibid., 104.
91 Haynes interview, 1; “Salt Lake Man Dies at Age of 98,” Deseret News, November 9, 1929.
92 “Worthy Couple Married 66 Years,” Deseret News, May 10, 1924. Hartley states that Chambers donated $200 in cash toward the building project, but does not cite the source of this information. See Hartley, “Samuel D. and Amanda Chambers,” 4.
93 Deacons Quorum Minutes, 205.
94 Ibid., 7.
95 Ibid., 56.
96 Ibid., 101–102.
97 Ibid., 113.
98 Ibid., 28.
99 Brigham Young, “Present Revelation Needed to Lead the Church,” August 31, 1875, Journal of Discourses (Liverpool: Joseph F. Smith, 1877), 18:70–77.
100 See Mathias Cowley's testimony on 14 August 1876, Deacons Quorum Minutes, 191.
101 Deacons Quorum Minutes, 7.
102 Ibid., 187.
103 Ibid., 12.
104 Scholars generally agree that Elijah Able, Q. Walker Lewis, and Joseph T. Ball were ordained to the LDS priesthood. Some commentators have suggested that other Black men, including William (or Warner) McCary, Enoch Lovejoy Lewis, and Black Pete, may also have been ordained. Harris and Bringhurst, eds., The Mormon Church and Blacks, 19; and Reeve, Religion of a Different Color, 128. On Able, see Reeve, Religion of a Different Color, 109, 195–199; Newell G. Bringhurst, Saints, Slaves, and Blacks: The Changing Place of Black People within Mormonism (Westport, CT: Greenwood Press, 1981), 37–38; Newell G. Bringhurst, “Elijah Abel and the Changing Status of Blacks within Mormonism,” Dialogue: A Journal of Mormon Thought 12 (Summer 1979): 22–36; and Russell W. Stevenson, “‘A Negro Preacher’: The Worlds of Elijah Ables,” Journal of Mormon History 39 (Spring 2013): 165–254. On Lewis, see Connell O'Donovan, “The Mormon Priesthood Ban and Elder Q. Walker Lewis: ‘An Example for His More Whiter Brethren to Follow,’” The John Whitmer Historical Association Journal 26 (2006): 48–100; and Reeve, Religion of a Different Color, 106, 132. On Ball, who passed as White, see Jeffrey D. Mahas, “Ball, Joseph T.,” Century of Black Mormons (website), https://exhibits.lib.utah.edu/s/century-of-black-mormons/page/ball-joseph-t#?c=0&m=0&s=0&cv=0&xywh=-4431%2C-215%2C11370%2C4288, accessed May 19, 2021. On McCary, see Angela Pulley Hudson, Real Native Genius: How an Ex-Slave and a White Mormon Became Famous Indians (Chapel Hill: University of North Carolina Press, 2015); Reeve, Religion of a Different Color, 128, 132; and Connell O'Donovan, “Brigham Young, African Americans, and Plural Marriage: Schism and the Beginnings of Black Priesthood and Temple Denial,” in Newell G. Bringhurst and Craig L. Foster, eds., The Persistence of Polygamy: From Joseph Smith's Martyrdom to the First Manifesto, 1844–1890 (Independence, Missouri: John Whitmer Books, 2013), 48–86. On Black Pete, see Reeve, Religion of a Different Color, 112–117; and Matt McBride, “Peter,” Century of Black Mormons (website), https://exhibits.lib.utah.edu/s/century-of-black-mormons/page/peter#?c=0&m=0&s=0&cv=0&xywh=-4494%2C-230%2C12183%2C4595, accessed May 19, 2021.
105 Deacons Quorum Minutes, 101–102.
106 Bakhtin, The Dialogic Imagination, 280.
107 Wimbush, “Introduction: Scripturalizing,” 11.