In this post, I explore the moral and historical agency of Black women associated with the Church of Jesus Christ of Latter-day Saints from 1820-1920 who lived under the constraint of slavery. This range of dates will allow me to look not only at their experiences while enslaved, but also at their lives after being freed from slavery. This will provide an opportunity to see the women act as moral agents with their largest constraint removed, and seeing what choices they make will provide more context for their choices made while they were enslaved.
For the purposes of my research, I used two definitions of agency:
A historical agent is one who either rebels against or acts in keeping with existing political, religious, and/or social systems. A moral agent is one who is able to make choices that have lasting significance with an understanding of right and wrong in the face of varying cultural constraints.
These definitions come from the academic work of Dr. Catherine Brekus and church speeches from Elder D. Todd Christofferson and Daniel H. Ludlow.
The Church’s History with Race
The church’s history with race could be a post unto itself, so I will only provide a brief overview of four major events for the timeline I’m working in.
In 1833, we have the first ordination of a Black man to the priesthood by the president and founder of the church, Joseph Smith. The priesthood is defined by the church as the power of God on earth, able to be exercised by righteous men above the age of 12 in the church.
By 1836, Joseph Smith began including “the curse [of Cain]” in church teachings. This references the story told in Genesis 4 of Cain murdering Abel and God placing a mark, interpreted at the time as black skin, upon Cain to show that he has been cursed.
In 1844, the church moved west under the direction of its second president, Brigham Young, to flee persecution. Young neither legalized nor outlawed slavery in the Utah territory, and in 1848, there were “60 to 70 black slaves belonging to twelve Mormon masters.”
Finally, in 1862, slavery was repealed through federal statute. Though slavery was now illegal in Utah, antiblack rhetoric still persisted in church policy until 1972.
Agents: Three Life Stories
Nancy Smith was baptized into the church in 1857. Often, slave baptism dates are listed on the same day as their enslaver, which makes it hard to determine if they actually wanted to be part of the church or were coerced. In Nancy’s case, though, her enslaver, William Dennis, was baptized in 1849, then his wife Talitha in 1855, then finally Nancy in 1857. These time disparities indicated to me that Nancy was able to decide if/when she wanted to join the church. I believe this shows Nancy’s moral agency as she was able to gradually learn about the church and the lasting significance of associating with it and living under its teachings before determining whether it was right to be baptized.
Additionally, there are records of Nancy paying tithing of four eggs the year after her baptism and one chicken several months later. This action certainly fits under the definition of a historical agent as one who supports the systems under which they’re living as she’s literally financially supporting the church through her tithes. The church also teaches that God will pour out blessings upon those who pay tithes, so Nancy would have been aware that she was ensuring lasting blessings in paying her tithing.
After being emancipated, Nancy continued to live close to her former enslavers. By 1870, William had left Talitha to pursue a career in mining, but she and Nancy would remain neighbors for the rest of Nancy’s life. We don’t have records of Nancy attending church after her emancipation, but Talitha attended regularly until she moved following Nancy’s death. Later in life, one of Talitha’s daughters expressed her eagerness to see Nancy again in heaven. Latter-day Saints believe that heaven is split into three levels according to a person’s righteousness during their life. As the Dennis children remained faithful to the church during their lives, a belief that Nancy would be with them in heaven heavily implies that she, too, remained faithful and awaited the eternal blessings that would be hers in the afterlife.
There is no record of Bridget “Biddy” Mason being baptized into the church at any point, but her enslavers were in 1844. Biddy appears to have denied baptism while her master and his family received it. This choice is in line with popular scholarly definitions of historical agency as resistance. Biddy had two children when the Smiths were baptized, and refusing to be baptized could have resulted in serious repercussions for Biddy or her children. We know from later events that Biddy was a religious woman. Her choice to resist baptism in the Church of Jesus Christ of Latter-day Saints would have thus been a moral choice to maintain her own beliefs or potentially a stand against being enslaved.
In 1851, the Smiths moved to California. Just a year before their move, the state had become a free one, but this was not enough for Robert to free Biddy and his other slaves upon moving there. For three years, Robert maintained ownership of his slaves until he decided to move to Texas, which was still a slave state. Upon learning this, Biddy reached out to free Black men she knew in hopes of finding a way to prevent the slaves still under Robert’s dominion from being forcibly moved and legally recognized again as slaves. When Smith put his move into action late in 1854, a writ was drawn up against him, and Biddy, her children, and others of the Smiths’ slaves were put into the protective custody of the state. At this point, “Biddy [herself] served Smith an order to appear in court” where she would sue her master “for freedom for herself and her extended family of 13 women and children.” The case was a short one, and on January 21, 1856, Biddy Mason became a free woman.
Biddy’s choice to fight for her freedom is a classic example of historical agency as resistance. It is also a testament to Biddy’s moral values of freedom and courage. Had she lost her case, no doubt Robert Smith would have retaliated for the rest of her life. Instead, Biddy lived out the rest of her life as one of the wealthiest Black people in Los Angeles, using her money to help found the first AME church in LA and benefit the Black community around her.
Biddy’s choice to sue for her freedom and make her own life may have meant a departure from the Church of Jesus Christ of Latter-day Saints, but for the people in a city that celebrates “Biddy Mason Day,” there can be no greater example of a woman whose historical and moral agency had major lasting significance.
Marinda Redd Bankhead was born into slavery to John and Elizabeth Redd in 1831. “Redd family tradition holds that” she was the daughter of one of the other Redd slaves, Chaney. DNA evidence has verified that John Redd was the father of Chaney’s sister Venus’s son Luke, and because he and Marinda were both “classified as ‘yellow’—indicating they were known to be, or at least looked, biracial,” it is commonly assumed Redd was also Marinda’s father.
In 1843, the Redd family met LDS missionaries, and John, Elizabeth, Chaney, and Venus were baptized. Similar to Nancy Smith, though, Marinda waited almost a decade after being exposed to the church before being baptized herself. Being given time to learn more of the church’s teachings and see them in action, Marinda was able to identify an aligned morality and make her own commitment to the church.
There were only 8 years between Marinda’s baptism and her emancipation. The Redd family suffered several deaths during this time, including Elizabeth’s and John’s. When John Redd died in 1858, he left Marinda “equal shares of land, animals, grain, and household goods with the rest of his heirs at law.” This inheritance also “declared her to be emancipated.” Upon emancipation, Marinda found herself able to fully stretch the legs of her agency.
Records of Marinda’s activity in the church in the 1860s do not exist, but there is documentation to shed light on why this may have been. In 1863 and 1867, Marinda gave birth to two sons out of wedlock with two different white men. Twice in the year her second son was born, the local bishop “preached against ‘whoredoms’ and race mixing,” once specifically saying that “if Marinda Redd was found pregnant again death should be her portion and the same with all who whore with her.” It follows that Marinda would not attend a congregation that actively preached against her.
From a church standpoint, Marinda’s actions were not in line with the morality she had accepted when being baptized. There may have been a greater moral value guiding Marinda, though. It is likely that the deaths in the Redd family in the 1850s deeply affected her as familial relationships in the Redd household appear to have been somewhat flexible. At both Elizabeth’s and John’s funerals, a Redd family member observed Venus and Chaney acting as “the chief mourners… and… consider[ing] themselves full-fledged family members.” John’s lack of distinction between the inheritances for his confirmed biological children and his slaves likely further blurred the lines of familial relationships between white and black members of the household. Marinda may have grieved the family she lost and set her sights on creating one of her own. Since she was seemingly accustomed to a color-blind model of family, she may have wanted to follow a similar template. Because miscegenation was illegal in Utah, she may have placed her moral value of family above that of legal and spiritual obedience in order to fill in the gap the dissolution of the Redd household left.
Marinda’s life turned around once more in 1870, though. She married Alex Bankhead, and they established a home in Spanish Fork, Utah. We have no more documentation of Marinda’s life from this point until 1899, when she was interviewed for a local newspaper. By that point, she and her husband were considered “devout and strict Mormons.” Neighbors remembered her fondly as “Aunt Rindy,” a woman who was “a wonderful cook” and always “attending parties and visiting with friends.” Though Marinda had endured periods of being weakened by the church and its teachings, she ultimately found a community in her church and remained an active and strong member until her death in 1907.
The period of silence between her marriage and the newspaper interview strengthens the idea of her strong value of family. Finding the security of a home life, Marinda stepped back into the religious beliefs she embraced while living with the Redds. The eternal blessings that came with having a family were the guiding force of Marinda’s life, even if it meant perceived historical and moral rebellion. Once she found her family, however, she used her agency to build a life with them within the beliefs and social structures of the church.
Conclusion and Further Research
All three of the women I researched lived under the constraints of slavery and racism. They all experienced prolonged exposure to the Church of Jesus Christ of Latter-day Saints and endured the trek to Utah. Despite their similarities, though, these women were motivated by different values and show that there was no right or wrong way to react to their constraints. All three of the women whose lives I researched were illiterate for the duration of their lives, so we must rely on records left by others to learn about them, but in all three cases, we see clear choices made by them. Whether they stayed with or left the church, they understood that their choices would bring about lasting significance and acted in ways that appear to have left them fulfilled.
While doing my research, it was important to keep in mind that interpreting historical records requires a researcher to exert their own moral agency. My interpretations of these women’s stories are colored by my own activity in the Church of Jesus Christ of Latter-day Saints and my exposure to other women, black and white, associated with the church from 1820-1920. These interpretations are not the only way of telling these women’s stories, and I hope that my own research prompts others to further explore the stories of Black women associated with the church in the first century of its history and to use their own moral colorings to shed more light on the ways in which these women exercised agency.