Although the Reorganized church had ordained black men to the priesthood since the days of founding president Joseph Smith III, they had their fair share of members who held anti-black views. (Doctrine and Covenants 116:1-4 [RLDS version]) William T. Blue, a respected African American RLDS pastor in Florida, complained that the church wasn’t doing enough to combat racism, both in the larger society and in the church itself. “It appears to me,” he wrote, “that the church has shown a reluctance to face this problem especially on the local congregational and district level.” (William T. Blue, Sr., “A Negro Pastor Looks at Brotherhood,” Stride [April 1961]: 3) Nor were RLDS members progressive in how they read scripture. A fair number of RLDS members, like their Mormon cousins, had racialized black people by associating their skin color with a divine curse. (See, for example, Lester O. Tankersley, “Segregation as God’s will,” June 6, 1965, reel 591, William D. Russell Correspondence, CCLA) (Matthew L. Harris, “A Tale of Two Religions: RLDS and LDS Responses to the Civil Rights Movement,” The John Whitmer Historical Association Journal 43, no. 1 [Spring/Summer 2023]: 129)
