Joseph Smith's views on Black people

Smith taught that Black people were under the curse of Ham, and the curse of Cain. In another book of the Pearl of Great Price the descendants of Cain are described as dark-skinned. The biblical account of the Hamitic curse origins states that Ham discovered his father Noah drunk and naked in his tent. Because of this, Noah cursed Ham's son, Canaan to be "servants of servants". Although the scriptures do not mention Ham's skin color, some doctrines associated the curse with Black people and used it to justify slavery. ==Temple and priesthood ordinances==

Smith was present at the priesthood ordination of Elijah Abel, a man of partial African descent, to the offices of both elder and seventy, and allowed for the ordination of a couple of other Black men into the priesthood of the early church. Smith's successor, Brigham Young, would later adopt the policy of prohibiting Black people from receiving the priesthood after Smith's death. Brodie also wrote that Smith developed the theory that Black skin was a sign of neutral behavior during a pre-existent war in heaven. The official pronouncements of the church's First Presidency in 1949 and 1969 also attributed the origin of the priesthood ban to Joseph Smith, stating that the reason "antedates man's mortal existence." Several other scholars, such as Armand Mauss and Lester E. Bush, have since contested this theory, though, citing that a priesthood ban was never, in fact, implemented in Joseph Smith's time and that Smith allowed for the ordination of several Black men to the priesthood and even positions of authority within the church. Mauss and Bush detailed various problems with the theory that the Book of Abraham justified a priesthood restriction on Black people, pointing out that the effort to link Pharaoh and the Egyptian people with "black skin" and the antediluvian people of Canaan was "especially strained" and the lack of specificity in the account made such beliefs somewhat ungrounded. Outside of the Church of Jesus Christ of Latter-day Saints, most other Latter-day Saint churches remained open to the ordination of Black men and young men into the priesthood. ==Segregation and Black–White marriages==

Smith argued that Black and White people would be better off if they were "separate but legally equal", at times advocating for segregation and stating, "Had I anything to do with the negro, I would confine them by strict law to their own species, and put them on a national equalization." Smith opposed Black–White interracial marriages, even fining people in two instances in Nauvoo. ==Views on Black enslavement==

Initially, Smith expressed opposition to slavery, but after the church was formally organized in 1830, Smith and other authors of the church's official newspaper, The Evening and Morning Star, avoided any discussion of the controversial topic. The major reason behind this decision was the mounting contention between the Mormon settlers, who were primarily abolitionists, and the non-Mormon Missourians, who usually supported slavery. Church leaders like Smith often attempted to avoid the topic and took a public position of neutrality during the Missouri years. In this text, Smith stated that "wars ... will shortly come to pass, beginning at the rebellion of South Carolina [and] ... poured out on all nations." He said, "it shall come to pass, after many days, slaves shall rise up against their masters, who shall be marshaled and disciplined for war." In April 1836, Smith published an essay sympathetic to the pro-slavery cause, arguing against a possible "race war", providing cautious justification of slavery based on the biblical Curse of Ham, and stating that Northerners had no "more right to say that the South shall not hold slaves, than the South have to say that the North shall." The manifesto continued: "It manifests a desire on the part of their society, to inflict on our society an injury that they know would be to us entirely insupportable, and one of the surest means of driving us from the country; for it would require none of the supernatural gifts that they pretend to, to see that the introduction of such a caste among us would corrupt our blacks, and instigate them to bloodshed." On February 7, 1844, Smith would write that "Our common country presents to all men the same advantages, the facilities, the same prospects, the same honors, and the same rewards; and without hypocrisy, the Constitution, when it says, 'We, the people of the United States, ... do ordain and establish this Constitution for the United States of America,' meant just what it said without reference to color or condition, ad infinitum." ==See also==