It was alleged that the grandmother of a family in Fillmore, Utah, who had joined the LDS Church in rural Alabama in 1896 and had come to Utah in 1905, had black African ancestry. Though her grandchildren showed no African American characteristics, the males were denied priesthood ordination and the family was denied access to temple rituals. The history of this family’s plight included intercessions by Marion G. Romney in 1944, David O. McKay in 1957, and Spencer W. Kimball in 1977.

Robert A Greenwell