[Wednesday marked] the 33rd anniversary of the restoration of the priesthood to members of The Church of Jesus Christ of Latter-day Saints, of African decent. On June 8, 1978 LDS church leaders announced that the priesthood would be extended to Mormon men of every race. Those who were there for that remarkable day have said that they can remember exactly where they were and what they were doing when they heard the news.

Marcus Martins is a former mission president who served as the first Black missionary following the 1978 revelation on the priesthood. In a 2021 “All In” episode, he discusses how misguided attempts at explaining the priesthood ban hold lessons for all of us regarding racism of all kinds.

We all want to be good member missionaries, and usually we can answer questions about our religion without too much difficulty. But occasionally a particularly difficult question comes up. Thankfully, the Church is providing valuable resources and very recently released new topic pages to help with these challenging questions at the "Gospel Topics" section of LDS.org.

Marcus H. Martins holds a bachelor’s degree in Business Management, masters in Organizational Behavior, and a Ph.D. in Sociology of Religion, Race and Ethnic Relations. A native of Rio de Janeiro, Brazil, he worked as a systems analyst and project manager for the Brazilian government and as a freelance consultant before moving to the United States in 1990. He served as Chair of the Department of Religious Education at Brigham Young University–Hawaii, and teaches Church Organization and Leadership, Marriage, and occasionally Managerial Leadership. Previously he taught at BYU and Ricks College, and has lectured on a variety of topics throughout the U.S., Brazil, Hong Kong, Japan, and Malaysia. Among his topics of interest are: strategic management in a global environment, computer technology, languages, law, politics, and world cultures. His current research focuses on temple symbolism, the implications of the doctrines of the restoration on daily religiosity, and the impact of globalization forces, technology, and immigration on the growth of the Church of Jesus Christ of Latter‑day Saints. He wrote the book Setting the Record Straight: Blacks and the Mormon Priesthood published by Millennial Press. Brother Martins joined the Church of Jesus Christ of Latter-day Saints in 1972, and in 1978 became the first Latter-day Saint with Black African ancestry to serve as a full‑time missionary in the twentieth century. Since then he has served as a mission president, twice as bishop, six times as stake high councilor, and also as temple officiator, and translator of the Book of Mormon. He married Mirian Abelin Barbosa and they have four children and seven grandchildren. Brother Martin's YouTube Channel: DrMHMartins Brother Martin's Website: DrMHMartins.com

Elder Joseph W. Sitati of the Seventy of The Church of Jesus Christ of Latter-day Saints spoke at the “Black, White and Mormon” conference Friday, October 9, 2015, at the University of Utah on the topic of “Race and the International Church.” Elder Sitati, who is from Kenya, addressed self-reliance, race and the growth of the Church in Africa.

The real heroes of the story are women such as Jane Elizabeth Manning James, a free black woman who was baptized into the LDS Church in the early 1840s and then traveled with a small group of black converts from Connecticut to Illinois in winter, the last 800 miles on foot. “We walked until our shoes were worn out, and our feet became sore and cracked open and bled until you could see the whole print of our feet with blood on the ground,” James recounted in a brief autobiography several decades later. James walked to Utah with the Mormon pioneers in 1847 and remained a devoted member of the Church until her death in 1908, outliving its first five prophets. Upon her death Church leaders recognized James as a pillar of faithfulness—after having denied her access to Mormonism’s most sacred temple rituals by virtue of her race.

The following article, posted on lds.org, shares the story of six faithful black Latter-day Saints who were members of the Church when the priesthood ban was lifted.

Recently, two biographies were published on Elijah Abel/Ables, a black Mormon man who held the priesthood in the nineteenth century with the blessing of Joseph Smith and many of his contemporaries. Rather than attempt a traditional review, I decided to write a conversations post with Russell Stevenson, the author of one of the two biographies. Stevenson is an independent scholar with a master’s degree in history from the University of Kentucky. He recently self-published Black Mormon: The Story of Elijah Ables. In order to make the post easier to read, I have arranged the questions I asked and Stevenson’s responses into categories.

The following is from the 2014 BYU Religious Education Student Symposium. In celebration of the 40th anniversary of the revelation that extended the priesthood to black men in the Church, we wanted to share this article highlighting female black pioneers and their sacrifices for their faith.

By now the notion that we are in the midst of a Mormon moment is clichéd, although if Rick Santorum continues to threaten Mitt Romney in the GOP primaries, the public focus on the Latter-day Saints could fade. For the time being, however, my religion is being examined in the public square like never before. It can be an uncomfortable experience. Consider a recent Washington Post article on race and Mormonism. Before 1978, The Church of Jesus Christ of Latter-day Saints denied its priesthood, which is normally extended to all adult males, to black men. In examining the legacy of that ban, the Post interviewed Randy Bott, a religion professor at church-owned Brigham Young University.