About Second-Class Saints
Second-Class Saints is an eighteen-part series on the history of the LDS Church’s priesthood and temple ban on Black members, with historian Matthew L. Harris. His 2024 book Second-Class Saints: Black Mormons and the Struggle for Racial Equality (Oxford University Press) drew on unprecedented access to church leaders’ papers to document how the church created, defended, and finally abandoned the ban.
The series walks through that history in depth: the ban’s origins under Brigham Young, the “one drop” rule, the internal debates among apostles, the pressure of the civil rights era, Hugh B. Brown’s attempts to lift the ban, the 1978 revelation, and the church’s ongoing reckoning with its racial past. It is meant to be heard in order, but every episode stands on its own.
Second-Class Saints is produced by Mormon Stories Podcast and the Open Stories Foundation. Every episode is also published in the main Mormon Stories feed.
Books
Second-Class Saints: Black Mormons and the Struggle for Racial Equality, Matthew L. Harris. Oxford University Press, 2024
Ways to listen
Apple Podcasts Spotify YouTube RSS
Support
The series is funded by listeners. Donate to the series
Host
John Dehlin
Founder and host of Mormon Stories Podcast since 2005. Ph.D. in clinical and counseling psychology. Executive director of the Open Stories Foundation.
Historian and guest expert
Matthew L. Harris
Professor of History at Colorado State University Pueblo. Author of Second-Class Saints, Black Mormons and the Struggle for Racial Equality (Oxford University Press, 2024), and co-editor of The Mormon Church and Blacks, A Documentary History.