Paul Reeve

We bring acclaimed and emerging Latter-day Saint scholars, authors, poets and artists to audiences in the Upstate New York area.

LDS Studies Collective of Upstate New York

Professor Reeve will discuss recent research highlights from the "Century of Black Mormons" research project.

473 Mendon Ionia Rd

From Black to White: Religion and the Racial Passage of the Enoch and Mary Able FamilyThe 1900 United States census for Cache County, Utah, listed just over eighteen thousand residents then living in the rural agricultural area on the state’s northern border with Idaho. The census enumerator that year found a total of ten Black people in the county, nine of whom lived in the county seat of Logan, and one who lived in Richmond about thirteen miles to the north. Eight of the ten belonged to the same household, that of Enoch and Mary Jordi Able who made their home in the Logan Latter-day Saint Fifth Ward, their geographically based religious congregation. Enoch was in fact the son of Elijah Able, the Church of Jesus Christ of Latter-day Saints' most well documented Black priesthood holder in the nineteenth century. While historians have paid considerable attention to Elijah Able, his descendants have not received the same level of consideration. This presentation is designed to offer the beginnings of a correction to that. It will explore the racial passage of the Enoch Able family, from “Black” in the 1900 census, to “mulatto” in 1910, to “white” by 1920. Enoch died in 1901, leaving his white, French-speaking, Swiss-born-wife a widow with seven children to raise. The Logan Journal newspaper announced his death in 1901 and then noted that “Able left a wife and large family in destitute circumstances.” The family’s difficulties navigating those circumstances will form the backbone of Professor Reeve’s presentation. The story that emerges represents the challenges of being of mixed racial ancestry in the Jim Crow era of racial segregation in the United States. During the same time period, the Church of Jesus Christ of Latter-day Saints entrenched around segregated priesthood and temples which added an additional layer of prejudice for Enoch’s surviving children to navigate. About Professor ReeveW. Paul Reeve is the Simmons Chair of Mormon Studies and former chair of the History Department at the University of Utah where he teaches courses on Utah history, Mormon history, and the history of the U.S. West. His book, Religion of a Different Color: Race and the Mormon Struggle for Whiteness, (Oxford, 2015) received three best book awards. He is the recipient of the Utah Council for the Social Studies’ University Teacher of the Year award, the University of Utah’s Early Career Teaching Award, and the College of Humanities’ Ramona W. Cannon Award for Teaching Excellence in the Humanities. He is author of Let’s Talk About Race and Priesthood, published by Deseret Book in 2023 with a foreword by Darius Gray. He is Project Manager and General Editor of an award-winning digital database, Century of Black Mormons, designed to name and identify all known Black Latter-day Saints baptized into the faith between 1830 and 1930. The database is live at <a href="http://www.centuryofblackmormons.org/" title="http://www.centuryofblackmormons.org/" target="_blank" data-msys-clicktrack="0" rel="nofollow noopener noreferrer">www.CenturyofBlackMormons.org</a><a href="https://profiles.faculty.utah.edu/www.centuryofblackmormons.org" title="https://profiles.faculty.utah.edu/www.centuryofblackmormons.org" target="_blank" data-msys-clicktrack="0" rel="nofollow noopener noreferrer">. </a>With Christopher Rich Jr., and LaJean Purcell Carruth, he is the author of This Abominable Slavery: Race, Religion, and the Battle over Human Bondage in Antebellum Utah (Oxford, 2024).

Paul Reeve

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Paul Reeve

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