Click here to listen to part 1 of my Mormon Stories Podcast interview.  

This aired March 31, 2007. Darron is interviewed by KUTV news about his new book Black and Mormon.

Since integration, some African Americans have been brought in closer contact with white America, and middle class African Americans, to be sure, have truly benefited from such relations. However, working class blacks continue to suffer from low wages and unemployment in a nation determined to...

WHEN I CONVERTED to Mormonism in 1982, I had minimal knowledge of the Church’s past policy of withholding the priesthood from men of color. I was a naïve eighteenyear- old and did not make the connection that this policy would have affected my ability to receive temple blessings had I come...

Darron Smith believes firmly that, despite the 1978 policy change, African American church members must become “culturally white” to fit in as Latter-day Saints. A doctoral candidate at the University of Utah and assistant to the vice president at UVSC, he teaches a class that...

Mr. Smith, I just got through listening to your discussion on RadioWest. I am so very glad that more people are talking about the issue of Blacks & Mormonism. I am white. I’ve tried hard to understand the Church’s old policy that Blacks could not hold the priesthood. Luckily I...

Darron Smith, co-editor of the, Blacks and Mormon, suggests LDS leaders should step forward to clear the air. Smith, who is black, wrote in 2003: “Blacks who do move toward Mormonism should not be made to feel that blackness is synonymous with curses, marks, or indifference. And this can...

EARLIER THIS YEAR, I was at an acquaintance’s house watching a basketball game between the University of Utah and Brigham Young University. Out of two dozen players, only one was black, so I guess it was natural for some of the guys to comment on the lone African-American. They didn’t...