Civil Rights Movement

After the American Civil War of the 1860s, newly emancipated African Americans saw unprecedented changes to the law that secured their citizenship, equal protection of rights, and the right for Black men to vote. These gains were soon eclipsed by intense backlash in certain parts of the United States against the notion of racial equality. Segregation laws often called “Jim Crow laws,” passed by White majorities throughout the country, effectively disenfranchised Black Americans from legal rights, equal protection, voting, and participation in government. Black Americans challenged discrimination and segregation from the start, but not until the Second World War ended did the tide begin to change.

Civil rights activists organized to challenge the constitutionality of segregation laws both at ground level and in state and federal courts. In 1955, Rosa Parks helped initiate a bus boycott in Montgomery, Alabama, when she refused to give up her seat to a White man. A local reverend, Martin Luther King Jr., supported the boycott and together with other organizers arranged alternative transportation for over a year until the city desegregated the bus system. Over the next decade, King became one of the leading figures of the civil rights movement. Key victories of the movement included the Brown v. Board of Education decision by the Supreme Court in 1954 that ordered the desegregation of schools, the Civil Rights Act of 1964, the Voting Rights Act of 1965, and the 1967 Loving v. Virginia decision that ended laws prohibiting interracial marriage.

Some Latter-day Saints joined in civil rights efforts. G. Homer Durham, president of Arizona State University, welcomed Martin Luther King to the school in 1964 and thanked him for modeling Jesus Christ’s Sermon on the Mount. Later that year, Durham wrote for the Church’s Improvement Era magazine encouraging readers to appreciate the historical context for the Civil Rights Act, which had recently passed into law. George Romney, governor of Michigan and a presidential candidate, joined civil rights causes and directly challenged racial discrimination in his state.

Other Latter-day Saints, some within Church leadership, felt that proposed civil rights legislation overcorrected the problem of segregation. However, addressing public pressure on the Church regarding its stance, President Hugh B. Brown shared a statement in 1963 that affirmed the Church’s support of every person’s constitutional rights. Because the Church at the time restricted men of Black African descent from ordination to the priesthood and men and women of Black African descent from full participation in the temple, public pressure continued. In 1969, the First Presidency issued a statement that reiterated their belief in the constitutional right to civil equality. “We hope that members of the Church everywhere will do their part as citizens to see that these rights are held inviolate,” the statement affirmed. “Each citizen must have equal opportunities and protection under the law with reference to civil rights.”

The civil rights movement was not limited to the United States. Other freedom movements across the world gained momentum in the late 20th century. After major civil rights victories in the 1960s, women’s rights and Chicano movements secured more legal protections for women and Latino/Latina farmworkers. Nations that had previously been colonized by European powers resisted the political status quo. An important theater for decolonization was in South Africa, where the apartheid system had segregated and disenfranchised Black South Africans and those of mixed-race ancestry.

As the Church’s growth reached a more global scale in the early 21st century, Church leaders continued to emphasize full racial equality. In 2020, President Russell M. Nelson called on all Church members “to lead out in abandoning attitudes and actions of prejudice” and “to promote respect for all of God’s children.”